@lucillelucillelucille: On the spots where the popcorn was coming loose, I got a wide paint scraper type thing (about 8 inches wide) and would get up on the ladder, put the thing under the hanging popcorn, and scrape. Sheets of it came down, sometimes sheets the size of a hand, sometimes little chips, which would spray all over the place, and lots of dust spraying. The tops of the door moldings had dust, anything nearby had dust and chips of popcorn ceiling, and then it all had to be washed (or covered first and then still there would be little chips that snuck in under the plastic). All over the floor was dust and chips. Then it had to be swept up and then wiped with either a wet rag or wet paper towels, since even with sweeping with a broom, it was still leaving a dusty film on the floor. Then take a shower because now I’m dusty.
Part of what made me not want to even attempt the whole ceiling was that with this amount of work and mess from the small spots, I could not imagine the work and mess from the whole expanse. The spots, there were maybe 5 spots, the largest about 3 feet by 3 feet. The room is like 20×30 so to do the whole thing would have been rough.
@chyna: Some parts of my ceiling, the popcorn was adhering well, so those I left alone. When I tried scraping portions just to see how it went, it was the spraying dust and chips-mess=disaster. When I painted the ceiling, some parts that I thought had the popcorn adhering well had more coming down, from the wet paint. Really frustrating and time consuming.