BEFORE you do carpets and wall painting.. I am dead serious when I tell you scraping popcorn will make THE biggest mess you've ever seen..
Its not hard: get a garden sprayer and spray the ceiling with water.. get the largest mud knife you can find and you just run it parallel with the ceiling.. if its wet enough, the popcorn will fall right off the ceiling, very easily.. but, you gotta lay plastic down on every inch of the floor.. if you plan on doing it room by room, you need to hang plastic over any open doorways or anything like that, as the dust will totally envelope your whole house..
The sad thing is, once you're done with the room, you fold up the plastic, vacuum up what you missed, dust the room 5x, and over the next 2-3 days dust will STILL fall out of the air and cover everything in the room.. its a mess, but totally worth it when you're done..
Beauty of scraping popcorn is its basically sweaty equity.. doesn't cost you anything provided you have a water sprayer and a HUGE putty knife.. the large the knife, the better - don't try to do it with a small putty knife.. you need something like this:
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Friendship is like peeing your pants.. Everybody can see it, but only you can feel the warmth..