Quoted from Blitzburgh99:I am debating on what to do with my bathroom ceiling. It’s in pretty good original shape. What would you guys do with it? Salvage and use it as is with the drywall walls? Removed the lath and plaster and put dry wall there too? Just put drywall over top?
If the plaster is intact, I would save it and use it "as-is". Drywall compound sticks nicely to both plaster and drywall, and you can blend between the two pretty easily.
If it's cracking and falling apart, then drywalling over may be the easiest and best way. I used plaster washers to keep the remaining plaster in place (visible in 2nd pic near drywall edge), and then screwed drywall right over it. I've seen people put furring strips up first, but the ceiling plaster and lath is so thick that I was worried that even 3" screws wouldn't reach through all the layers.
Here are a few pics of the ceiling progress. You can see where I extended the one wall up with framing instead of demolishing the rest of it.
This bathroom was carved out of the room next to it in the 1940s, so there's some old hackwork in there.
We're almost ready to tape and mud and then start painting.