Popcorn ceiling removal

Acoustic ceiling texture scraped, the ceiling retextured or smoothed, and repainted. On a house of a certain age it gets tested first.

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One flat fee to find out what is wrong. You are told it on the phone before anyone is dispatched, and it comes off the job if you hire us. Read our Plain Terms

What the work is

Popcorn removal is a wet-scrape job. The texture is misted so it releases instead of powdering, scraped off in sections, and then the ceiling underneath is repaired: scraping reveals every seam, every fastener and every place the original crew relied on the texture to hide their finishing.

That repair stage is most of the work and it is the stage that gets skipped. A scraped ceiling that goes straight to paint shows its seams forever, and a ceiling is the one surface in a house that is lit from every angle.

Age matters here, and not for cosmetic reasons. Acoustic ceiling texture in older houses can contain asbestos, and federal rules govern how surfaces in pre-1978 housing are disturbed for lead as well. On a house old enough for either to be in play, the correct order is testing first and scraping second. We will not guess, and we will not scrape a ceiling that has not been cleared.

The practical side: the room is emptied or everything in it is sealed, floors are covered wall to wall, and the scraping stage is genuinely messy even when it is done carefully. It is a room-at-a-time job and we plan it with you around where you sleep.

What is included

Testing before scraping on houses old enough to require it
Floors and any remaining contents fully covered and sealed
Wet scraping, then seam and fastener repair across the whole ceiling
New texture or a smooth finish, primed and painted

What is not

Asbestos abatement. If a test comes back positive, the work goes to a licensed abatement contractor and we say so plainly
Scraping a ceiling that has already been painted over multiple times without telling you first that it may not release cleanly
Ceilings with active water staining, until the source is fixed

What is different here

Washington County's housing stock skews new by national standards, and most of the subdivisions that fill the county went up long after acoustic ceilings went out of fashion. But the older parts of St. George, Washington City and Hurricane have plenty of houses that are old enough to need testing first, and that is a question about the address rather than about the county.

If your house predates the late seventies, treat testing as part of the job rather than an upsell. Anyone who offers to scrape it the same afternoon without asking the age of the house is telling you something about how they work.

What to ask anyone quoting this, us included

How old is my house, and does that mean this has to be tested first?
Who does the testing, and do I get the result?
What happens to the ceiling after it is scraped, and who repairs the seams?
Smooth or retextured, and what does each one cost?
How do you contain the mess?

What we can show you in writing

Every line traces to a document we read in full. The number after a sentence points to the research below.

EPA lists textured paint and patching compounds used on walls and ceilings among asbestos-containing products, and says plainly that sampling is not a homeowner job: a trained and accredited asbestos professional should take the samples, because there may be an increased health risk if fibers are released.1
Federal law treats homes built before 1978 differently. Under the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, work that disturbs more than 6 square feet of painted surface in a room inside, or 20 square feet outside, must follow the rule's work practices — and sanding or scraping paint counts as disturbance. Window replacement counts at any size.1
The rule requires two separate credentials, and they are both checkable by anyone. The company doing the work must be an EPA-certified firm, and a certified renovator, an individual who has passed an accredited course, must be assigned to each job. EPA publishes a public search for certified firms, so you can look up anyone quoting you.1
Before starting work in a pre-1978 home, the firm must give the owner EPA's Renovate Right pamphlet no more than 60 days beforehand, and either obtain a written acknowledgment or a certificate of mailing at least 7 days before the work begins.1
The USDA Forest Products Laboratory puts it in four words in its own surface preparation guidance: do not sand lead-based paint.1
Of Washington County's 88,415 housing units, 7,613 were built before 1980 — about one in eleven. That is why the age of your house is the first question here rather than a formality: most homes in the county are too new for the federal lead rule to reach, and the ones that are not cluster in the older parts of St. George, Washington City and Hurricane.1

Where this comes from

Every line above traces to a document we read in full. The number after a sentence points to the research below; hover it for the section. If you find a line wrong, tell us and we will fix it and say so.

Painting research, September 2026 Compiled from Utah DOPL's contractor classification list and Utah Code § 58-55-305, the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E, the USDA Forest Products Laboratory's Wood Handbook chapter on finishing, EPA's asbestos guidance, and the published technical data sheets of Sherwin-Williams, Benjamin Moore, PPG and Dunn-Edwards. 6 sections cited. Hover a number above for the section.

The rest of walls and ceilings

Drywall repair and patching
Holes, cracks, water damage and the patch somebody else left proud of the wall.
Texture matching
Knockdown, orange peel or hand texture matched so the repair disappears instead of announcing itself.

The quote is the number. There is no second number.

Call (801) 680-6859

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