I white-washed my red bricks about 25 years ago. Easy and I think it looks great. Still did when we moved out 4 years ago. I don't recall having to wipe anything off. I did most of it just during my kid's afternoon nap time. And my brick was about 6 feet wide, floor to ceiling, 9.5' ceilings. I just thinned white paint with water, sponged it on, and had plastic on my wood floors with towels layered on top to catch any run-off. If I recall correctly, there was a little but not much. The plastic without towels probably would have worked fine. I worked from top to bottom so I was able to quickly sponge any lines of paint that did stream down the brick. I'd say give it a try. If you don't like it but were going to paint the brick anyway, you can always paint over it. Personally, I hate the look of painted brick so I was a bit worried but hated the cheap brick (really Z-brick facing bricks) in my 1908 house with all the original, unpainted woodworking. It was a modernization attempt gone wrong. Might have worked better in a different style house. What I really liked about it is that the brick looked like real white brick when I was done, not like bricks that were painted. The paint was thinner in some areas than others so a little bit of the brick barely showed through but just looked like darker spots, not like red brick. It looked very natural. I received many compliments on it. Give it a try. You really have nothing to lose if you don't like your current brick.

From Wikipedia. Popcorn was used pre-1970s and in early formulations, it often contained white asbestos fibers. When asbestos was banned in ceiling treatments by the Clean Air Act in the United States,[1] popcorn ceilings fell out of favor in much of the country. However, in order to minimize economic hardship to suppliers and installers, existing inventories of asbestos-bearing texturing materials were exempt from the ban, so it is possible to find asbestos in popcorn ceilings that were applied through the 1980s.

It doesn't look "blue" to me but true white is a cool tone, you have trim that looks to be in the yellow family and the walls I can't tell if they're yellow or green toned on my laptop. It also looks very top heavy with the fireplace being so much lighter and all the trim and cut outs in your wall. Are you or your husband good with woodworking? If it's in the budget and you're willing to put in the work I think doing a more craftman style fireplace would look nice in either a light oak or cream colored.

Looking for advice on how best to get this travertine fireplace to match the rest of updates in the house. Ideally I’d like to keep the stone look as the outside of the house has limestone, but don’t want it to just look painted over. Pictured are two views of the fireplace & the view from the kitchen (backsplash not yet installed but will be a subway tile with a ripple/wave to it). Thank you!