The ceiling is made of some sort of thick cardboard-like substance. I knew this because the electrician made holes in it when he was moving a wire. I also might have damaged it myself when I was removing a bit of wood.
It’s a bit skanky in one corner — mould or damp or some such — and seems terribly inflammable. I thought I’d remove it and replace it with a nice new plasterboard ceiling. After all, I do have a set of things for attaching plasterboard to things that my thoughtful husband bought for me.
The ceiling has wooden mouldings to hide the joins, so I thought Id start with them. Now, you recall the excessively large nails holding all the woodwork to the walls? The ceiling’s woodwork is no different. There were two long thin lengths of moulding running the length of the ceiling, where the sloping parts meet the horizontal part. I think these show best how ridiculous the nail choice is. It’s like they didn’t have small nails in the 1930s.
To remove the mouldings, I scored along the edges to break the paint seal and/or the wallpaper seal with my Stanley knife. Then I took my smaller crowbar and levered off the wood. Some of the bits were more stubborn than others, so I had to take my clawbar and hammer it under the wood before I could lever it off.
In one place, the cardboard ceiling broke when I pushed the crowbar against it. It’s such useless stuff. I still got the moulding off by finding a joist and pushing the crowbar against that instead of the soft cardboard.
So now there is no wood attached to the walls at all in my room. There are a lot of holes, though. And huge nails sticking out at skirting board level; I can’t get them to budge, even with the bigger crowbar.
Next step: removing the cardboard ceilings.
