Walls and Ceilings - Can popcorn save my ceiling?

We just bought a house that has the kitchen and living room lightly textured with swirls. We really don't like the swirls and it is damaged in some areas where lighting fixtures were changed and wall cabinets removed. It would be almost impossible to duplicate the design(for me) in the damaged areas (if I even wanted to).

My options are to either add new sheetrock to the ceiling and start over or ....could I just have the damaged areas repaired and have the popcorn ceiling sprayed on over the whole ceiling to cover the old design? I think I would prefer that, but am not completely opposed to re-rocking the ceiling if I need to.

Suggestions?

Troup

Personally I don't like popcorn [only because it is a pain to paint] but it would make everything uniform.

hi
popcorn would hide it
used medim type and when you mix it add a quart of white ceilling paint to it it will dry white and not yellowhish color.
also it hardern and lot easyier to paint after
cheers

pg

You stated that one of those rooms is a kitchen. I think acoustic texture would be a bad choice for a kitchen ceiling, not washable.
A better choice would be to apply a skim coat of drywall topping mud to flatten it out as much as you can and then apply a machine spray knock down finish or do a skip trowel hand finish.
At least that way it would be washable.
Just my .02

What about a "knockdown" ceiling finish? Will this cover the other design?

Depending upon the depth. Preferably, skim coat and start anew, save 2nd guessing.