ditto. just have them removed. (you can even DIY the scraping part) it's not that expensive. covering it up will still cost you money.

I would not do the tiles.

Depending on age, the popcorn may contain asbestos. I just had mine removed and had to hire an asbestos remediation company.

you can cover with sheet rock for a smooth surface.

Just remove the popcorn ceiling. It's not too expensive. You can always cover it with drywall too.

would definitely remove it. a clean smooth ceiling looks nice and clean. its worth it- you will be happy you did it in the long run

Don't remove the popcorn before testing it for asbestos.

if the townhome was done in the last 35 years, theres no asbestos in the popcorn.

All you have to remember is to keep the material wet as you go along , use lots of garbage bags to collect the wet material as you work . Even if it is asbestos as long as it is wet the stuff can’t blow around. But I agree chances are there is no asbestos in the ceiling and to remove it and have the ceiling mudde to be smooth is the best way to go. The other would be to cover it with thin drywall and have that finsihed.

Removing popcorn ceiling without checking for asbestos is completely irresponsible.

I had my asbestos ceiling removed and it has to be taken to a special disposal site because if it is disposed of with normal debris, it polluted the environment.

It was quite a procedure and once it was removed, my home had to be certified as asbestos free in terms of the air.

Beyond possibly creating your own toxic environment, you are making the environment worse for everyone else.

The ceiling may or may contain asbestos. There is no firm cutoff date because products were available with asbestos for years after they officially went off the market.

a garden sprayer filled with water, a ladder, a large dustpan, and a large putty knife. DIY. Spray a portion of the ceiling, let sit about 2-3 minutes, climb ladder, hold pan under portion of ceiling, scrape, dump filled pan in trash, count the money you save from not paying someone THOUSANDS of dollars to do it for you.

i don’t understand people continuing to advise on removing potentially toxic ceilings and disposing of them illegally.

If they test free of asbestos, remove them yourself.

If they di contain asbesto, you need to have them removed by a certified asbestos company to prevent contamining your home and everything in it and ALSO polluting he environment because you will be disposing of hazardous material in with regular trash.

No asbestos in the popcorn since mid 80s.

If there is no asbestos, there is no asbestos and no reason not to remove however you want.

But people are not prefacing their posts by stressing that one needs make sure there is no asbestos before removing without having it done by a certified asbestos hazmat company.

I don't think people need to read the warning over and over again to understand it.

I too have popcorn ceilings. My living room is a sunken living room with high vaulted ceilings. I would love to have the popcorn removed but the quote came in at $3,000 for removal. Then it would be extra to have them plastered and painted. For now we will keep the popcorn in the living room and paint it a bright white to add some brightness to the room.

After I scraped my ceilings sulightishere all it needed was a little bit of sanding around the seams and paint. Not a ton of mud work.

sunlightshere,,get a few more estimates. 3K seems rather high. sounds like they didn't want be bothered.

check with painting companies. their price should include scraping, skim coat, prime and paint.

Sometimes you can get away with just the scraping, and a coat of primer afterward. No need to plaster or skim.

Yeah it must be the high ceilings. I had about 800sf removed for about $1300.

wow. I have a vaulted ceiling in my living room and it cost $400. it was quite awhile ago though. ( 20 yrs?)

I think that included a slight skim. There was water damage (dark mark from a roof leak that had been repaired), so it had to come down and for some reason the popcorn was only on parts of the first floor.

I was quoted $3200 just to scrape the popcorn off. just to scrape it off! I don't have a large home either it's around 1800sf. that is when hubs and I decided to try it ourselves. it was literally a pain in the neck but it was worth it. I had sparkles in my popcorn ceiling *gasp*

We had the popcorn ceiling removed in our previous home back in SoCal - 984 square foot, vaulted ceiling 2 story townhouse with a loft upstairs as the bedroom ...also on the second level was the bath+walk in closet. The guys who painted the place were the ones doing the removal of the popcorn, so as to be expected there were a few spots where they'd gotten carried away with how vigorously they were scraping the stuff off that had to be smoothed out. But it wasn't terribly expensive (probably because they were also there to paint the whole place including kitchen cabinets which they took the doors off to do them properly...) even for SoCal it was pretty reasonable on cost. I'm sure glad that we had that and the painting done BEFORE the new flooring and carpet was put in...something to think about - splotches of paint can wind up in some odd places and you don't want those odd places to be newly carpeted or where your new flooring has just been put down.

When I bought the place, the painters I used that time weren't so great...They painted over nails in the wall - left the nails there and painted over them...and they put in the bath hardware (tp holder, towel bar) BEFORE they painted...so the new stuff had little flecks of paint on it. At the time I was so frustrated I just decided to leave it that way and resolve to know better than that for the next time. Even though that 'next time' was...15ish? years from the first one. :P That's a long time to look at paint flecks and whatnot, wishing you'd had the nerve to complain and get it done properly.