Hey guys,
I have a 1950’s ranch located in Las Vegas with a brutally rough plaster stippled ceiling I’d like to smooth. There is tons of info out there on solving the problem with popcorn ceilings, and even plaster stipple that was installed over different rigid backing, but I’m struggling to find anything when the stipple is the true finish coat on a 3 step plaster install. I’m fairly good with a hawk and trowel, but not sure what my best move here is. Scraping the stipple seems futile, as there’s no backing to say “you’ve gone far enough” and will need a final skim coat, sanding will likely take a month of labor and still leave a surface that also needs to be skimmed. Am I better off taking the extremely high points of the stipple down and skimming straight over the stipple to save the scraping/sanding time? I’ve read to use a hot mud for the first coat then standard mud for a top coat? Do I need to use plaster? 1/4″ drywall straight over it and go from there?
Anyone who’s ventured into this in the past and can save me the trial and error would be greatly appreciated.