My husband and I bought a 1973 ranch house and had the popcorn ceilings tested for asbestos. It showed that they contained 5% chrysotile asbestos. We considered having it professionally removed but the cost was about $3000 for only 3 small bedrooms/450 square feet. I found that many local clean air agencies post complete instructions on popcorn ceiling removal online and other than being super labor intensive, it didn't seem like rocket science so we decided to do it ourselves. We checked with our county's clean air agency and got a permit to complete the removal.

Without getting too into detail about the job, I'll just say that we did put up plastic all over the walls and floors and sealed them up. We sprayed soapy water all over the material and kept it wet and repeatedly sprayed the rooms to keep any potential dust down. We wore disposable suits rubber gloves, boots and asbestos grade respirators.

BUT! even after all of that some contamination still occurred -- some of the tape holding the plastic up came away from the wall allowing wet, crumbly popcorn chunks to escape the containment, probably about one or two shot glasses worth of material spread out over the 3 bedrooms. Also even after wiping the walls above the plastic, I noticed (after the plastic was removed) that there was still some trace amounts of white dust remaining. We vacuumed up the remaining bits using a shark upright vac with a HEPA filter and I re-wiped the walls with wet rags. But I still can't stop wondering if we somehow still managed to release asbestos fibers into the air. And if so, could that amount be considered hazardous?

I would say that if anyone is considering doing this job themselves to reconsider! If I could go back, I'd spend the $3000 to pay a professional!. It's not worth the worry and the stakes seem pretty high if you mess it up. Basically I'm posting this hoping that someone with abatement experience can tell me how big of an error I did or didn't make. I'm considering getting an air test done but the guy can't come by for several more days.

Thanks for any feedback!