Love/Hate Relationships Updated!

Update:  Last night, I was noodling about with some possible solutions to the new bedroom situation that didn't entail a) kludges, b) lots of destruction and rebuilding. The thought occurred: "Skin the existing wall with drywall!" I figured that was a good compromise to  my problem and met my requirements.

Today, I was overjoyed to discover that there is such a thing as 1/4" thick drywall! Several of the reviewers at Home Depot said it was an excellent way to cover old walls.

So, I am now the proud owner of three 4' X 8' X .025" sheets of drywall, plus accoutrements. And if I have to do this again, I'm paying someone to pick up and deliver the stuff!
 </update>

The Flight Attendant Girl Friend introduced me to working on old houses when she bought her house back when we were dating in the last century:

(Courtesy Google Street View.)

 It was built, as near as we could tell, in the late 1910s or early 1920s.  Working on it proved the rule that, when estimating the time required for a project you should give it your best estimate, double that, and then bump it to the next higher unit of measure.  So, for example, a three day job takes one month. ( 2X3 days = (about) 1 week, next unit of measurement is a month, ergo, 1 month.)

When I worked on my own (newer) places, the law pretty much still held, but those places had far fewer surprises.  No interesting dry rot in the bathroom that was (supposed to be) the three day job. No electrical that followed the evolution from Edison to modern code compliance. Needless to say, I learned lots.

Flash forward to today. I have decided to move my bedroom from the back room of the third floor to the front room of the second. This reduces the possibility of damage from a leaky roof (it's getting fixed next week!), and more importantly, puts me in a room that has heat from the boiler/radiator system, rather than relying on the (very, very) expensive wall heater.

So, I decided that I wanted to spruce the place up a bit by painting it. Relatively easy and cheap. Wash the walls, floor and ceiling, pull out all of the old, useless hardware, patch some spots on the wall, and paint. The goal was to have the ceiling, walls and trim done by Wednesday (tomorrow).

There has been, in the words of every airline everywhere, a delay.  Observe:

This...

...turned into this...

...resulting from this...

...and this!

Scraping one little bit started to pull up goodly sized strips of painted-over wallpaper. I admit, there was something satisfying about  the way all that effing wallpaper came off so easily. (I really, really hate wallpaper.)

And, as I had expected, we're dealing with lath and plaster:

You can see to bits of lath poking out above.

And there is a bit of a gap between the wall and ceiling:

Given the gaps at the ceiling, and at the wall,

...I'm starting to toy with the idea of pulling out that the lath & plaster, and replacing it with drywall.

What could possibly go wrong??