[74-911]

I've removed about 2500 ft2 over the past couple of years in this house and the following has worked well for me:

1. If you are doing very much (on 8' ceilings anyway), ditch the ladder and get one of the lightweight alum. work platforms at your bigbox... about 4' long and 2' high. You will go much faster and less tiring.
2. You definitely need to cover the floor. I found the cheap blue painters drop cloths (plastic on one side and clothlike on the other) works much better than plastic drop cloths. Plastic just turns into a slip and slide when it gets wet and covered with the wet popcorn.
3. Use a garden sprayer as suggested. Just takes some practice to figure out how wet to get the popcorn.
4. I used a 8' taping knife and an old 9x12 alum. cakepan. Just hold the cakepan under the knife as you scrape and you can catch about 95% of the stuff. You can also control the knife much better and scrape the ceiling much cleaner with fewer gouges and tape tears. Empty the cakepan into a garbage can when it starts getting heavy. The blue dropcloth absorbs the moisture and popcorn that gets to the floor and you can just take it out in the yard and shake the popcorn off and put it back down.

5. Ultimately, how much work you have do do after scraping depends on how well the ceiling was originally taped and floated. In this house they had applied 2 coats of texture over the tape and sanded it. All I had to do was some minor touchup and sanding, applied 2 coats of drywall primer and painted and it came out great. If they just slapped the sheetrock up and one coat over the tape you may have a lot of work ahead of you.
6. No matter how you do it, it is messy and a lot of work...