I have a brick house built in 1941. Pieces of the ceiling upstairs fell and have some walls and ceilings that are cracked or had a crappy repair job throught the house. We decided to update the house to drywall. We also decided since we are going to replace the ceilings and walls with drywall, we are also going to rewire, reinsulate, and install an attic fan. I started knocking the plaster off where it had broke and started thinking I should do some research before I get carried away. I have started to do some research but I still have some unanswered questions. I would like to do this project 1 room at a time that way we can still live in the house and basically just take our time so I can do it right the first time and I'm a perfectionist and like things looking nice and clean so that will eat up time too I'm sure. So here are a couple questions for the demo part for now : - the trim around the doors and windows is real wood and I do not want to disturb them if I don't have to. The ceiling comes down at a 45 degree angle and some plaster goes around the trim at the top. The trim goes into the ceiling maybe 1/4". Now to reinsulate the ceiling, I would have remove the lath, which in turn is going to give me issues for the trim. So in your opinion, would it b worth updating the insulation? The insulation is the blow in type and looks like old news papers. I would like to update it to R-38 or R-30. - the insulation for the ceiling is blown in. I know breathing them in is harmful so should I consider leaving the house until the project is done even though I'm doing one room at a time? Those are my 2 biggest questions at this time. I'm a handy man and can do the job, just trying to get my ducks in a row to do a time consuming job while working 40+ hrs a week. Any tips, tricks, and suggestions are much appreciated. Thank you all in advance!

Hi guys I'm new here. I just bought a condo and I'm glad I found this site! I'll be frequenting this site as I seemed have opened up a can of worms. Built in 1980 as a apartment, where each unit is connected on its side, this condo has been severely neglected by the last owner for the 15 years he's been here.... This is only one of many repairs I'm trying to do... Anyways, So the problem is that the bathrooms had a couple layers of wallpaper, first 3 layers were easy to remove but the very last layer, which probably was put in when they built the place will not come off. I tried scoring, wallpaper remover spray, scraping tool, steamed it without luck so I tore it down to the brown paper. So far what I found online was to, either seal the paper and joint compound, or just joint compound only, or dig down into the gypsum and seal and joint compound. Also I've read on some other posts here about similar problems to use a oil base sealer and joint compound. Im leaning towards the oil base seal and joint compound method but I cant find the oil based sealer primer, or guardz sealer anywhere in my town. So I bought the valspar all purpose sealer primer which is water based. Would this sealer work? Is there another method? Can I primer over the old glue? The old glue is fused into the outer layer of the wall. Thanks!