Hidden Ceiling

I was working on the walls in the laundry room when I looked up and saw this:

Hmm.

I climbed up on the ladder and pushed the cover out of the way and found this:

You see, the front half of house on the first floor has 10 foot ceilings. However, the back half of the first floor has your everyday run of the mill 8 foot ceilings.

The 8 foot ceilings are a fake! Why? The plumbing is not original to the house! In order to create space for all of the piping, they put in lower ceilings. Some of the piping is even galvanized, meaning it is iron and can rust! Craziness.

The hole might have been cut for a light at one point. The lathe ceiling appears to have been painted a grey blue and a grey green at two different times. Or is it beige:

It's peeling quite a lot in some places. Probably chalk full of lead. Yummy, lead paint chips.

I glanced back and realized that I could see what might have been original wallpaper for the kitchen area. Wallpaper was often used with plaster walls to help smooth out the plaster and keep it from cracking.

It appears to be a beige/grey color with large leaves and small flowers.

Looking back the other way, I found even more wallpaper.The room that we are using as our dining room is papered with stripy beige/green wallpaper. The stripes appear to have green vines and pink rosey flowers. Very Victorianesque. You can see the details of the wallpaper much better if you click on the photo to enlarge.

Then there is the random strip of wallpaper which looks to be very floral.

I think I'll have to climb up there one of these days and get a closer look at the wallpaper. Get closeup pictures. It will be an adventure!