The ceiling in the family room had these fake wooden beams on it, as well as being covered with a rough texture.    To get rid of the texture the two choices are to either skim coat it with plaster, or to just rip it down and start anew.   Since we would have had ot remove a large chunk of the ceiling anyway for the new skylights, it was an eeasy decision to just tear it all down.   It was an easy job, as I was able to go in the attic and hammer down most of the drywall.  However that was just the start of it, as the cleanup would end up being far more work than just knocking it down.  Since we didn’t rent a dumpster I got some nice Glad Force Flex contractor bags.  Which although they were quite expensive (50 cents a piece), they don’t rip when you put 40lbs of drywall into it.  This made the job pretty easy, but it was still a lot more debris than I would have imagined.