I need to remove the wooden drop ceiling in my hall, as shown in the attached photo, but it's been painted with what may well be Artex, so before cutting the wood down I wanted to clean that off. I bought a tub of X-Tex, which is meant to turn it into a goo which scrapes off easily, and a heavy duty long handled (300mm) metal scraper.
I applied it liberally and left it for an hour, as per the instructions, but it was still hard work getting it off. It appears that the wood was papered over and then painted/artexed, so I was really just scraping the paper off, like I would be if I was just stripping normal wallpaper, and the X-Tex didn't seem to actually do much to the Artex, it just made the wallpaper damp and thus easier to remove, the same as soaking it with plain water would.
The actual hall ceiling also appears to have been painted with Artex, so I applied the X-Tex to that at the same time. It didn't seem to do much there either, and because there's no wallpaper there I didn't have much luck scraping off the Artex.
So I applied another coat and left it overnight, actually for about 18 hours, then I sprayed it with water to reactivate it, left it for about an hour, then had another go at it, but it still didn't seem to help. I got a bit more of the wallpaper off the drop ceiling but when trying to scrape the coating off the real ceiling I was mostly just removing the sticky out bits and making it flatter but not actually stripping it back to the concrete
The other photos show the state of the drop ceiling and the real ceiling after both attempts. I'm thinking of just removing the drop ceiling by cutting along with edges with my multi-tool as there isn't any Artex there, and then trying to remove the Artex when I've got the wood flat on the floor, which will probably be easier than having to reach overhead to do it. I'll need to cut the wood into 2 or 4 pieces to dispose of it, so I think I need to remove the Artex before I do that. Does that sound like a good plan?
As for the real ceiling, what would you suggest I do with that? I've got a scraper attachment for my multi-tool, so maybe if I try that after applying another coating of X-Tex that will work better than the manual scraper? Another option might be to just screw some clips and channel to the ceiling and fit plasterboard to cover up the ceiling but I'll have to change all the doorframes (5) to do that, because the new ceiling will be 4-5cm lower. I've been planning on replacing the doors and frames anyway, so that's not a major problem, but I'd need to do that first before fitting the ceiling.
I applied it liberally and left it for an hour, as per the instructions, but it was still hard work getting it off. It appears that the wood was papered over and then painted/artexed, so I was really just scraping the paper off, like I would be if I was just stripping normal wallpaper, and the X-Tex didn't seem to actually do much to the Artex, it just made the wallpaper damp and thus easier to remove, the same as soaking it with plain water would.
The actual hall ceiling also appears to have been painted with Artex, so I applied the X-Tex to that at the same time. It didn't seem to do much there either, and because there's no wallpaper there I didn't have much luck scraping off the Artex.
So I applied another coat and left it overnight, actually for about 18 hours, then I sprayed it with water to reactivate it, left it for about an hour, then had another go at it, but it still didn't seem to help. I got a bit more of the wallpaper off the drop ceiling but when trying to scrape the coating off the real ceiling I was mostly just removing the sticky out bits and making it flatter but not actually stripping it back to the concrete
The other photos show the state of the drop ceiling and the real ceiling after both attempts. I'm thinking of just removing the drop ceiling by cutting along with edges with my multi-tool as there isn't any Artex there, and then trying to remove the Artex when I've got the wood flat on the floor, which will probably be easier than having to reach overhead to do it. I'll need to cut the wood into 2 or 4 pieces to dispose of it, so I think I need to remove the Artex before I do that. Does that sound like a good plan?
As for the real ceiling, what would you suggest I do with that? I've got a scraper attachment for my multi-tool, so maybe if I try that after applying another coating of X-Tex that will work better than the manual scraper? Another option might be to just screw some clips and channel to the ceiling and fit plasterboard to cover up the ceiling but I'll have to change all the doorframes (5) to do that, because the new ceiling will be 4-5cm lower. I've been planning on replacing the doors and frames anyway, so that's not a major problem, but I'd need to do that first before fitting the ceiling.
