My house has lath and plaster ceilings. In two of the bedrooms the ceilings are in excellent condition, so after recently purchasing the house, I redecorated them - wallpaper on the walls and ceiling. The two rooms are looking great.
However, the third bedroom which actually looked the best of the rooms, has a terrible ceiling. I've only just found out having pulled the ceiling paper off this very weekend. This ceiling needs replacing badly. However, some of the laths straddle this room and one of the decorated adjacent ones mentioned above. I've come up with two suggestions:
- It seems that I'll only be able to replace about 70% of the ceiling with plaster boards and I'll have to replaster over the laths which straddle the two rooms.
- nail a batton into the ceiling joist that runs parallel with the wall and nail the laths into this, cutting them off close to the wall, allowing me to plasterboard 90-95% of the ceiling.
Do either of these sound sensible? I'm worried that if I saw the protruding laths, it'll weaken the ceiling in the adjacent room and I couldn't face having to repaper it. Will the old laths take modern plaster? Is there anything else you'd recommend?
Any suggestions much appreciated?