Staring at the Ceiling

We bought an apartment a year ago. It has a vermiculite ceiling. In the USA they seem to be called popcorn ceilings. I just call them ugly. We've been getting some quotes on how to get rid of it.
Our choices seem to be:

- Live with it. I don't like that option.
- Paint it. Everyone I know who has done that says it takes lots of paint. They sell a sealant that's supposed to mean that it drink in the paint. People say it looks much better but you can still see the shadows.
- Rip up the ceiling - we're on the top floor so we wondered whether if we could just put in a new ceiling all together. We've been told that because we're on the top floor we have to have a fireproof ceiling which would be more expensive and possibly would need an inspection. The advise of the people coming in for quotes was "Oh you wouldn't want to do that".
- Put in a drop or false ceiling. This looks like the only option. It won't be grey and ugly but we'll lose some height. We can do the normal fixings which lose 10 cm and put in downlights (environmentally friendly ones obviously) or we can tack it on the existing ceilig and only lose a few centimeters.

At the moment we're still waiting for the quoters to send us they're quotes. They we have to get decide what we want and get it aproved by the body corporate. The next meeting is February. I thought we'd be irritated waiting for so long. Fortunately it appears to take so long to get quotes that we'll probably be lucky if we have the whole job planned out by then.



Whatever happens the ceiling MUST GO.