We recently bought a house built in the 1970s. It is about 2000 sf, no basement, in Texas. When we bought the house I knew that we wanted to do some remodeling including adding a master bath and enlarging the masterbedroom (house is brick and has plenty of room at back to add on) as the master bath is tiny. We would be removing that bath (making it part of the master bedroom) and then adding on to the room and adding a true master bath. I also did not like the ceiling and wall texture and had in mind changing the texture. Also the prior owner had done a number of poorly done sheetrock repairs that I want to correct. The living room has a brick fireplace that we want to remove. There is a non-loadbearing interior wall we want to move and a closet we want to add to another room.

Overall we like the basic layout of the house. We have already replaced kitchen appliances (we converted the kitchen to electric). We would like to replace the cabinets and countertops but the kitchen layout is fine.

There is another bathroom that we would like to replace the toilet, tub, vanity but would not move anything.

We had originally assumed we would have the walls/ceilings sanded and retextured. We have had testing done and there is asbestos in the ceiling and likely the wall joint compound, however, it is not above 1% so it does not require asbestos abatement. That is, it could be removed by a regular contractor rather than an asbestos abatement contractor. However, I am concerned that if we ever sell the house (it is our plan that this is our retirement house so do not plan to every sell) that even though abatement is not required that it would hurt resale to have to say it has any asbestos at all in it. Also I don't want to have to worry about it every time we do anything to the walls/ceiling.

Given the fact that we want to retexture everything anyway and given the patches in the sheetrock that need to be redone and given the remodeling that we plan to do I was wondering about the feasability of simply ripping out all the drywall including the walls and ceilings and having new sheetrock put in. I realize that in doing that we would need to vacate the house while the work was being done (we would move all our stuff out and rent somewhere while the work was being done). I do not think we need to redo all the plumbing or electrical but do like the idea of being able to improve insulation or see if there are any problem areas.

Is it feasible to remove all the sheetrock and ceilings from the house? Is that hugely expensive? How does the cost of removing the sheetrock and ceilings and putting up new compare to the cost of removing the existing texture, repairing the poorly done patches and putting on new texture?

It sounds easier to me to rip all that out rather than sanding it down and patching. But am I wrong?

Any ideas of cost to do this? I am in Texas.