Wall/Ceiling texturing experience

Has anyone had experience with wall texturing? 3/4 of my walls/ceilng is going to have new drywall (see pictures in my sig). Some amount of my walls will be cloth covered, TBD. The rest (and the ceiling) I need to texture.

I have a compressor and can get a texture gun with hopper. This seems to be the standard method, but messy.

Have folks had any luck with roller/sponge/other applied texturing?

Actually, I'm not trying to match the texture. The only original drywall left will be the front section of the ceiling and some of the soffits/light shelf. Everything else will be new.

Because of that, I plan to take off the moulding and retexture everything.

I wasn't going to remove the textured drywall, however. Maybe knock it down a tad with sandpaper and texture right over it. I suppose that means my new texture needs to be 'rough' enough to hide any remaining old texture.

Is that going to work, or do I need to actually remove all the drywall?

The texture there now is a very light/fine splatter (not knocked down at all).

I think the 'popcorn' word sometimes refers to the really heavy texture used for ceiling work where there are actually specs of styrofoam or something in the paint. Major craggy stuff. I'm just talking about normal light speckled wall texture, mostly used to help hide imperfections in the taping/mudding job.

Since I'll be doing my own tape/mud and this is my first time, I'll probably need all the hiding I can get.

Poking around on the web some more, it sounds like I need to experiment with different techniques and see what I like. If I can avoid spraying, I will. Since I'm going to be doing double drywall with green glue on most of my side walls, I'll have a lot of space to experiment with. Once I have the first layer up, I'll try some different roller approaches on the first layer of drywall, then wipe it off (or at least smooth it down).

We'll see what happens. Thanks for the help.