Pretty sure this applies to like 1% of the people reading this, if that, but whatever — maybe somebody from Belarus stumbles across it later.
We were renovating a place and I honestly didn't expect the ceiling to require that much thought. There are way more options than I realized, especially once you start looking at the condition of the old surface and what actually needs to be fixed first.
One of the resources I ran into was this guide to repairing a ceiling. I bookmarked it mostly because it explained a few things in a pretty straightforward way.
Turns out the boring prep work is probably the part you really don't want to cheap out on.
If there's any interest, I can do a proper follow-up on the whole renovation. We handled quite a bit of the kitchen ourselves, so there's plenty I could share about the DIY side of it, what took forever, what was surprisingly easy, and what I'd change next time.