"Swirl" artex ceiling - knock back peaks before boarding?

[YodhrinForge]

I've got a "swirl" pattern artex ceiling in my living room that I want rid of. It's been tested professionally and came back negative for asbestos thankfully, so I could just paint over it, but honestly I hate the stuff. Local plasterers were giving me comedy quotes, clearly can't be bothered to do a fiddly job on a high ceiling which is their right I suppose, but that leaves it up to me and having investigated the options(learn to plaster properly, use roll-on filler, overboarding) I'm pretty sure my skill level is more on the "taped and jointed overboarding" end of the scale. 

 

The one question I had though is this; some of the swirls have some pretty aggressive looking pointy peaks, do I need to bother going around and knocking all of those back manually before I start putting boards up, or will the boards just deform a bit to accommodate the bumps if I shove them up against those spots?

[Alan Ambrose]

I have scraped those off pretty well in the past with a scraper but ... I believe people are concerned about the asbestos risk these days.

[Nickfromwales]

Asbestos risk in hand, then just over-skim it. 
 

Don’t even dream about buying some filler in a tub and DIY’ing it, you’ll be looking for a cyanide pill half way into the job if you do and your arms will be hanging off before you even begin sanding. 
 

The dust and mess from this will be horrendous and right through the house. 
 

Persist with finding a plasterer, and all they should be doing is asking you for some staging or scaff tower on wheels, so they can do the job properly.

 

Clean, quick, and one sitting.

 

You just use a 4” scraper to knock all the highest ‘snots’ of Artex off, and then it’s a lathering of neat PVA and leave that to dry. If you want to save money, and attract a plasterer a little easier, do this first. Realistically, it’s an hour or so for a spread to just do this themselves, so pick your battle.
 

Then the plasterer will neat PVA it again and lay straight on to the wet PVA with one set of skim to dub it all out.
 

If it’s been scraped throughly then 2 sets would be enough, but if really lumpy then I finish that with a sponge float and then leave to stiffen up, and then 2 sets over that. 
 

Find a good spread, ditch the idea of over-boarding as it’s not as good a job and will be more expensive too (cost of boards, labour to install, and ceiling will still need to be heavily scraped back to board over anyways!).