To keep the downstairs shower room vaguely waterproof we intended to cover the walls in damp proof plasterboard. But why stop at the walls? As anyone who has lived with a small poorly ventilated bathroom knows, the ceiling is just as likely to get damp and flake paint.
Therefore we set about stripping the ceiling out too. Luckily most of the space above head level is made up of the underside of stairs, to the extent that it was just a thin strip of plaster which needed to come down. To facilitate this a tarpaulin was strung up across the floor, ready to collect the cascades of plaster.
Crowbar in hand, the old, flaky ceiling put up little fight. Simply bashed into submission it dropped piece by piece into the plasticky embrace of the sheet underneath. This was summarily dragged outside and man+womanhandled into the skip.
Still more plastering was required, particularly the underside of the utility window. In stripping off a curtain batten, quite a mess had been made of the wall. It's still fairly unclear actually how, the retaining nails having been left in the wall. Nevertheless, a right mess it had become, occasionally dropping parts of itself onto the windowsill. The first step, as with most masonry remedial work, was a large quantity of PVA to help everything stick and hopefully stop even more coming off.
The real problem was reconstructing a new flat surface alongside a caving-in old one. The plan involved holding everything in with a laminated board. These are like the chipboard kitchen carcasses. This one indeed used to be a sill in the kitchen. Cut to size, it would form a smooth, flat and hopefully non-stick surface. Plaster was duly crammed into every cranny until it was spilling forth. Next, a rudimentary frame was erected underneath and finally reversed clamps employed to crush the board upwards.
The result is surprisingly excellent. The plaster has gained a glassy smooth surface from the laminated board and the resultant structure appears to be holding very well indeed. In the words of Private Eye: trebles all round!