This old house...

I've finally worked my way around to working on the kitchen and started stripping off the old wallpaper today, but here is what I think I've discovered about our kitchen

Walls: plaster and lathe

Then someone put several layers of wallpaper on the plaster

The next person didn't want to remove the wallpaper, so they plastered over it. With asbestos containing plaster. I was standing next to the wall, glanced up at it, saw some sparkling things, took a closer look and...well, i'm pretty sure it's asbestos (based on my previous experiences (yes, plural) with asbestos in this house).

OK, then the real genius starts.

They painted over the asbestos-containing plaster. Makes sense.

Then the next person comes along with a genius idea of...(drumroll please) covering the walls with contact paper!.

Then the next person paints over the contact paper.

Now here's the fascinating part. They did all this craziness only on one of the walls.

sigh