How to check your home for asbestos (by yourself) before renovating

Homes built and/or renovated from 1930-1970 can contain asbestos materials.  Even though materials containing asbestos were not manufactured after the laws were updated in the 1970's, materials already produced and stockpiled were allowed to still be used in construction.  But why worry about the specific years of all the materials in your house?  Just test them and be 100% confident.

Asbestos can be in vinyl flooring (the tiles themselves) and/or the mastic used to glue them to the floor.  It can be used in the padding around hot pipes or as the insulation in attics.  It can also have been used in exterior siding, and mixed in paint and compound to create a textured look.  Honestly, it was a plentiful and cheap material, and possibly could have been mixed in and used anywhere in an old home.

Since we had a couple of ceilings and walls with texture/popcorn paint, we decided to get it tested before doing a project where we would scrape and sand it off the walls.  Since we would definitely be aerating it it makes perfect sense to just get it tested first.

If you don't want to hire a professional to come and test your house, the next best thing is to find a company you can send samples to for testing.

I have used this company before and I was very happy with the results:

https://www.slabinc.com/shop/asbestos/asbestos-test-kit/

They also have a combo asbestos/lead/mold testing kit which is very convenient.  If you are testing for asbestos, you likely have lead paint since it was used around the same time as asbestos in construction.  Best to get it tested all at once and save money on multiple test kits. 

When I sent samples away for testing, I sent a sample of vinyl tile I knew contained asbestos just to see what the results from the lab would say.  I knew the tile was asbestos tile based on pictures I matched online and from an asbestos removal company who tested it for me.  However, I was mainly worried about the mastic behind the tile, since that often contains asbestos as well and is more difficult to remove from flooring.  The remediation company didn't test the mastic since they treat it as thought it contains asbestos when removing it whether it tested positive or not.  

When you send samples away for testing, it is recommended to send several samples of the same material from different areas.  For example, when I was testing the vinyl tile and mastic, we sent in several samples from different areas of the floor.

The testing kit comes with instructions of how to collect a sample safely.  Mainly, you wear gloves, spray it with water before disturbing it, and you should also wear a mask that is rated for asbestos fibers.  Luckily for me, we had pieces of tile, paint and other materials that had already broken off that we could just collect and put in the bags.  We still used gloves/water/mask but didn't have to break off samples (and possibly create aerated fibers).

The asbestos kit looks like this:

Inside you will find a form to fill out.  You have to note where each sample was collected and then label the zip lock bags appropriately.

 

The samples in bag look like this:

When you purchase a test kit, you can select the turn around time for the testing.  They offer next-day, 1-day and five-day options.  

To get the results for your test, you will be given a log-in to their website.  From there you can look at the results.  One thing I really liked about this company is that they tested every layer of whatever we sent.  Below is an example of what the report looks like:

There was no extra fee for testing each layer of the sample. They have identified that the sample in the picture above does not contain any asbestos (see the highlighted yellow text above).  They have also identified that it does contain cellulose fiber and non-fibrous material.  Cellulose fiber is a construction material made from plant fibers and in not considered harmful for humans.  It is often used in insultation.

When you do have a sample that contains asbestos, the report looks like this:

I highlighted in yellow the results for the tile, which show it does have a small amount of asbestos chrysotile.  The mastic, which we had several samples tested, did not show as having any asbestos.  However, when we remediated the asbestos, we still had the mastic sealed in after the tile was removed.

I hope this post helps any who are hesitant to get their house tested.  The process is very smooth and does not take much time.  Also, no worries if your sample has several layers.  The testing company apparently will test all layers at no additional cost to you.

We did eventually get the asbestos tile in the basement remediated by a professional company.  That process will be described in a future post.

Complete Removal (rip-out), Expansion and Rebuild of Master Bath in a 1950's Cape Cod House

Our house is a Cape Cod house, so the bathrooms on the second floor are small and have sloped ceilings.  The master bedroom has an en suite bathroom, which in our area is an uncommon luxury.  In fact, most houses in our area only have 1 bathroom in the house--usually on the second floor.   So having a bathroom in the master bedroom, albeit small, is something we greatly appreciate.  Although 1950's construction was built to last forever (or ~70 years in our case), things have gone wrong.  For us, it was a leak in one of the pipes for this bathroom which we could not fix by going through the ceiling of the room below.  Additionally, we had mildew and peeling/chipping paint on the popcorn ceiling from poor ventilation (fan vents are not required in our area if the bathroom has a window so we bought this house without bathroom fan vents).  

We didn't just renovate the master bathroom.  We completely gutted it, changed where the fixtures were, and expanded it.  See the graphic below for a visual of how the layout changed and expanded.

The before pictures of the master bath are given below.  The bathroom door is awkwardly in the center of the bedroom wall.  This means large bedroom furniture cannot fit on either side of the bathroom door (i.e. bureau).  The bathroom door opens directly to the sink, which is right below a window.  This means that the mirror/medicine cabinet is not above the sink, but to the right of the sink (to use the mirror while using the sink means stepping to the side).

The shower is to the left of the door.  It has a sloped ceiling and lots of built up mildew on the popcorn ceiling.  If the ceiling wasn't textured, remediation of the mildew would be easy, but on a textured surface treating and repainting is very complicated (see above right photo).  The shower did have a nice custom glass door, but was also dark, small and foreboding (lower left photo).

To the right of the bathroom door was more peeling paint, mildew and sloped ceiling (top right photo).

On the right side of the skinny bathroom was the toilet (check out that vintage toilet!), mirror/medicine cabinet, light switches and radiator.

To renovate this bathroom, we started by completely ripping it out.  We hired people to rip out the two inch thick concrete on the walls, floors and ceiling.  They also removed the sink and toilet.  We paid for a dumpster to dump it all in.  It took two guys two weekends to rip out this bathroom, another bathroom we had downstairs, and remove other scrap wood we had in our basement and garage.  The total waste was about 6.5 tons.

The complete demolition is shown in the next two photos below.  The left part of the bathroom is shown first.  This is the side that had the built-in custom shower.

The photo below shows the right side of the bathroom.  That is the side that had the toilet, light switches and medicine cabinet.

The photo below shows the full dumpster.  It weighed about 6.5 tons, and had the concrete from two bathrooms and lots of scrap wood we had in the garage and basement thrown in.

Reconstruction of the bathroom included making it much larger.  The master bedroom had lots of space, so it really wasn't an issue to make the bathroom larger.  Also, the door was moved to be from the center of the wall to the right side.  This will allow a large piece of furniture to be placed on that wall now.

The photos below show the new frame of the larger bathroom and the position of the door now on the far right side of the wall.

When the construction was complete, the door on the right hand side of the wall opens to the toilet (see photos below).

The pedestal sink is now replaced with a double vanity.  The vanity sits against the wall towards the bedroom.  The shower is still against the same wall as before, but is much more open (see photo below).  The bathroom now has vanity lights above each sink.  Each vanity has a mirror and an outlet.  A ceiling fan was also installed, and it doubles as a light.  The bathroom now has all smooth walls without texture, which will be easy to maintain and update in the future.

The shower has a space behind it where the ceiling dips low.  This space can have shelves installed or can be used to hang additional towels (photo below right side of image).

This last photo shows the updated window.  Below the window we eventually put a wooden bench with a suede cushion.  The bench can be used while changing or to put clothes on while changing.

We hired a different contractor for the "deconstruction" and reconstruction of the bathroom.  The plumbing had to all be replaced, new electric outlets and lights run.  The radiator had to be moved to be under the window (not shown here).  In total the reconstruction part took about two weeks--but this was not the only project our contractor was working at the time.  Possibly it could have been done sooner if this was the only project.  This project was done during COVID lock down, so many materials were difficult to come by, this also impacted the timeline.