We’re furring down the ceiling and putting new wood beadboard up. We’ll lose a few inches but the ceiling is really high, and there was no incentive to rip out a ceiling. We did it in the kitchen, got lots of gross stuff in our face, and since then demo-ingwalls are enough, thanks. Before- uneven but cute beadboard:

As you can tell the old ceiling was so out of level by the time we made it across we were using a lot of shims. Four down, one more to go: