[quote=UCGal]What is the age of the home?
If it’s older – you need to test it for asbestos. Homes from the 60’s and 70’s often had asbestos in the popcorn ceiling. This adds *significantly* to the cost.
If the house is older, you can buy a test kit at Home Depot -scrape a little and mail it off.[/quote]
I may get scorched for this, but: If you discover your ceiling contains asbestos, you have gained information you really could have done without. Do it yourself or find a contractor that wants to be paid cash and does not mention the a-word. If you discover it has asbestos in it, you are then obliged to disclose that to the contractors and to subsequent buyers. Do yourself a favor: Ignorance is bliss.
You get the stuff off by wetting, scraping, and putting it into plastic bags, whereupon it quietly disappears back to the ground from whence it came.
You’ll probably have to sand a little bit; do so with a vacuum sander, wear at least a nuisance dust mask, and ventilate the house well.
You probably will have to have a drywall guy re-tape some of the seams. One motivation for sprayed-on ceilings is the shoddy work they hide.
One alternative, though it is not at all cheap, is to cover the popcorn ceiling with a 1/4″ drywall layer, thereby entombing the suspected nasty stuff.
