IMO you have to have the right style house for beadboard ceilings to succeed - you can't just chuck them up anywhere with any ol' kind of decor and architecture. Ditto for coffered ceilings, IMO. 3-dimensional ceiling treatments are tricky. (I've finally got DH really sold on tin ceilings for this house - steered him past a display of it at the home center and subtly made him think it was his idea LOL - but it'll have to wait until we find out if the downstairs ceilings have to come down to fix the "trampoline floors" upstairs. Bleh.) As long as it's never been painted, removing popcorn ceiling material is easy, if messy, so doing that part yourselves could save you some real money. Demo work always costs more than it seems like it ought to and it can be awfully therapeutic. ;-) Remove all the furniture from the room, cover the floors with waterproof disposable tarps (run them up the wall several inches and use wide painter's tape to secure them so water won't run under the baseboard, and tape the tarps together too) and turn the electricity off to the room and remove or cover light fixtures. If you have nice wallpaper or easily-damaged paint on the walls, tape plastic over the walls too. Even though it looks idiotic put on a shower cap, trust me on that, and oversized safety glasses. Get yourself a garden sprayer - the kind with the hose and canister - fill it with warm water, and wet the popcorn stuff down. Let it sit for a few minutes. Chances are some of it will start splatting on the floor all by itself but scrape gently at it with a wide scraper. You can even get scrapers that will screw onto a threaded wooden pole (like old-fashioned broomsticks), they're in the paint department at Lowes/HD, so you don't have to teeter on a stepstool or ladder. You may need to wet stubborn areas down more but you don't want to saturate the drywall. You may not be able to get every trace off but once the ceiling dries you can go over it quickly with a sanding screen on a pole sander and knock off any stubborn bits. Roll/fold up the tarp with the popcorn glop still on it for disposal; if there's a lot of water and you have a shop-vac available, by all means use that to suck up as much of the water as you can. All the supplies together would cost less than $100, maybe $150 if you needed a LOT of plastic (that's not counting a shop-vac, but that's not mandatory, and you might be able to mooch one off your contractor friend), once you get the hang of it it goes fast, and your contractor will have a nice clean surface all ready for skimcoating. If you're up to painting you could just have the contractor do the actual drywall-finishing work, saving you even more money. IMO if you put up beadboard or something on the ceiling I do think it would be best to remove the popcorn anyway in order to have a smooth surface to work with, but you can do a bit more mickey-mouse job of it. ;-) I think 8 foot ceilings are wonderful... my previous house had 7 foot ceilings (and slanted ones upstairs that went down to 3 feet high). In this house I'm blessed by ceilings a little over 8 1/2 feet (depending on where you measure LOL) downstairs and upstairs again those angled ones that go from 8 feet to 4 feet.

dang this new ipad. I can't figure out how to cut and paste pics from my photo bucket account here. I've had it for five mins so forgive me. I'll explain what I have and try to get a pic tomorrow (it's in photobucket igloochic lake house kitchen if you know how to search photo bucket). Anyhoo I had the same problem and I love our solution which was a fridge debth cabinet which is open in the front (just a 9" opening and then molding). In the back of the deep cab I keep trays and serving platters we only use for parties. But in front of those I have my yellow ware bowls and they are a lovely accent for the kitchen plus easy to reach since we have a kick stool in the kitchen. It's a very functional space.

E K, after extensive deliberation, we have decided to keep standard height interior doors throughout (6'8"). We are going with higher windows and sliding French doors in rooms with higher ceilings. I ended up deciding that the 6'8" interior doors looked fine and that windows can be set higher than the doors (I looked at lots of pictures and actual houses). I actually drew several walls to scale with the 6'8" doors and higher windows to ensure I would like that look. I decided the 7' doors were an unnecessary expenses and wouldn't look that much different from 6'8" doors. I think the higher windows will bring in more light and help the ceilings to look taller. There is one bedroom where I have one 8' wall that slopes up to 9' and I will have windows on both these walls - that was my trickiest problem. In that room, I've decided to have 6'8" window height on the 8' wall and 7'8" window height on the 9' wall with 6'8" windows. Its not built yet but I hope it looks ok. Below is a house that helped me think through my decision. It has higher windows than doors. In addition, in one room the windows on two walls are set at different heights. I think it looks ok and I think the sloped ceiling in my room will make the varying window heights look even more intentional. [https://www.houzz.com/photos/contemporary-farmhouse-farmhouse-family-room-san-francisco-phvw-vp~2207590[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/contemporary-farmhouse-farmhouse-family-room-san-francisco-phvw-vp~2207590) I do think you can do 7' doors with 8' ceilings (or 9' doors with 10' ceilings). In fact, I will be doing 8' sliding doors and windows set at 8' in our master bedroom that has 9' ceilings. This room will also have 6'8" interior doors. I can post pictures but it won't be built for several months.

As cp says - you are now going to have to be on him like white on rice. Line up an independent inspector NOW, and pay him / her to visit your home and list code violations, substandard workmanship and a hi / med / low priority fix list on a VERY REGULAR SCHEDULE - and you then have to stay on the contractor. He's shown his colors to blatantly violate the structural integrity of your new home for a couple of days and some $ - that tells you a lot. Buckle up.