Repairing plaster walls/ceilings in 100-year-old house
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http://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/rooms-and-spaces/walls-and-ceilings/how-to-repair-a-plaster-wall
Yeah, this stuff is called oil cloth. My mother put this up in our house in 1959 because the plaster was starting to break loose from the wood lath.
It may be that the keying of the plaster is starting to give-way. In that case the ceiling will start falling down in chunks after you remove the oil cloth.
Removing everything and installing a new ceiling is an ugly job, but if you need to do other work like wiring and plumbing, this may be the time.
If not there are several sources available that will tell you how to hold that ceiling together and make it look like new again. Here's one:
http://www.dummies.com/home-garden/walls-ceilings/how-to-repair-sagging-plaster-on-walls-and-ceilings/
If it's just a crack that hasn't yet started shelling out, it's pretty easy to fix. We did so by tape & bedding as in drywall. On other walls, we put half inch drywall over the plaster. After taking out the lathe & plaster on our 1st wall, well.... That was enough we determined capping the plaster with drywall was by far the easier & better way to go.
If the paper on the plaster has a pattern on it, then it's wallpaper. If it does not have a printed pattern, then it isn't wallpaper but rather the outside paper of the plaster.