Test Room Done

I applied ceiling texture in the test room this last weekend. I hung plastic, sprayed the ceiling with water and scraped the old popcorn off. I work in a shop that does GIS so I had access to 42" and 60" wide maps that would have gone to the trash. Those went on my shed and were used to practice spraying the texture with the hopper. After practicing, texture was applied. I did the clean up. I took some time off around the Thanksgiving holiday to do projects and move into the house. So, I'm going to attempt to get the second floor done on Friday. That's about 1k sq. ft. minus the test room. Should be fun.

Here is what I learned from my test room.

• I made the mistake of putting up the 1 mil plastic first then trying to put masking tape on. Next time I'll mask off where the walls meet any popcorn texture using 1 1/2" masking tape, not the painter's tape (blue one). If I use the painter's tape I'm afraid the adhesive will not be strong enough to last getting soaked with the water. That'll allow me to staple up the plastic and not worry about over spray on the walls.
• When setting up the plastic I put it on the floors first, but I think I'll staple up the walls first on Friday.
• Use plenty of water. I was using one of those pressurized water sprayers, the kind you can use for things like pesticide and such. This worked fine while I was working in small areas. I'd spray once, wait a couple of minutes and end up spraying right before scraping. I've heard of people bringing in the hose to spray. In hindsight it might have saved me some time. I don't have a hose(s) right now that would reach so I used what I had.
• Make sure you have some other light source besides the one in the room. I didn't. Because of stupid daylight savings and the days being shorter I started to run out of natural light from the window. I'm going to pick up one of those halogen work lights.
• I was using a paint mixer that went on my drill. I can see where it would be a problem if I tried to mix a whole box of joint compound at once. When I do the rest of the upstairs I'll try to limit it to half a box at a time.
• For spray material I just used the topping joint compound, the one in the green box.
  
• I wanted a light to medium texture so the instructions with my hopper recommended the medium nozzle with the joint compound mixed so it was like thick paint.
• I only had a paper mask, but when I started scraping the popcorn texture the particulates in the air started to increase a lot even with it being wet. I will definitely invest in better breathing apparatus.

That's all I can remember for now.