I'm in the process of buying a house and, although I love it, it has horrendous popcorn ceilings. I'm planning to remove the popcorn ceilings before I move in, but I can't decide if I want to do it myself or just hire someone. I know I'll need to hire someone to retexture (I'm sure there uneven drywall under there), so:

A) For those of you that removed popcorn yourself, was the money you saved worth the effort? How did clean up go? Did you retexture the ceilings yourself?
B) For those of you that hired someone to remove the popcorn ceiling, how much did it cost? Did they retexture also? If so, how much did that cost?

In case it's relevant, I'm buying a two story, two bedroom 1214 sqft place built in 1984. I'm not particularly concerned about asbestos. Some of the ceilings are vaulted.

Why was that ever popular or acceptable for interiors, gross.

I did this once,  I drywalled over it - in essence, added another layer then finished the new drywall. It was a pain but a big improvement.

Oh Janice,  did I mention I infused the spackle with sage?  I'm sure yours turned out much better.

popcorn ceiling is seriously the worst thing ever in home decor. Like BH said....how this was ever popular is beyond me.

My mom and sister removed it themselves in my parents' house a couple of weeks ago to save money.

Sometimes popcorn ceiling would have those sparkly things built in. I always thought that was a nice touch. Went well with the shiny wall paper.

Those sparkley things that made the children cry? (all those popped balloons)

OMG,  our entire house had that sparkly popcorn stuff when I was a kid!  I think it was supposed to be fancy back then.

I just love Janice!  It's sort of a Bree Van de Kamp   - Katherine Mayfair thing between us.  I get warm fuzzies!

Ha Ha I babysat for this family who had the trippiest sparkly popcorn ceiling. I recall staring for it praying for the parents to get home.  The kids also like nutritional yeast on their popcorn, this was before I learned of such hippy foods.  All around bad popcorn association in suburban California.

Interesting wikipedia info on popcorn ceiling .. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po…

I think the line that catches my eye the most is " If they may have been applied before the ban on asbestos, their removal should only be done by a licensed professional or after testing to rule out asbestos contamination."
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To remove it, you need to spray it with water mist to make it really wet first.  Then it's just a matter of scraping it off - not that hard, just kind of messy.  I had someone quote me about $5,000 for an 800 sq ft area which I thought was really expensive but they may have assumed it had asbestos in it..  I had mine tested at an online laboratory for $30 and the results came back negative for asbestos.

I've done both and trust me, hiring someone is the way to go. The work, mess and chronic neck and arm fatigue was not worth the money saved. Also, no matter how hard we tried we could not get that smooth professional look.