Before we took possession, I lined up an asbestos removal company to come in and test the entire house for asbestos. The house had several areas that needed to be tested due to the various additions that were put on. Fortunately, the previous owners left us original drawings from the 1970’s additions, and so we generally knew what was done when, which helped us plan out what locations needed to be tested. Basically there was the original main house, the kitchen extension, the master bedroom extension, the deck close-in, and the partial car port close-in. (At least we thought this was all – we later discovered other areas, but more on those another time.)

The person who came to take samples was great at identifying all of the materials we needed to test – drywall, plaster, ceiling tiles, and fireplace mortar. They took 12 samples in all, sent them off to the lab for testing, and two weeks later we had our results.

Fortunately, the original house did not contain any asbestos. Unfortunately, the 1970’s extensions all contained asbestos in the drywall joint compound. So, all of the drywall in the areas of the 1970’s additions would need to come out. This included the back wall of the kitchen/dining area, the full master bedroom and parts of the “spare” bedroom, and part of the basement (a hallway and bedroom area). Not the best news, but also not the worst – I don’t know what we would have done if we’d had to remove ALL of the walls!

We had the same company remediate the asbestos – remove all drywall in the above areas – in December of that year, while we were out of town for two weeks. It was very painless having it done while we were out of town, and not as expensive as I thought it would be. The downside was that it left us with many open and uninsulated stud walls, and a huge amount of air leakage, heading into winter. This was really not smart timing! But it felt great to have it gone, leaving us free to work on the house without worrying about asbestos.

In other hazardous material news, we tested for lead paint using these test kits from Amazon. And we found lots of lead paint throughout the house – it seemed like the original primer had lead, plus we found lead on older paint layers in a few of the rooms, window sills, and trim. So we assumed it was everywhere, and planned to seal off rooms while we demo’d them.