no such thing as a coat of paint

When you're in an old house at least.
.
This morning I woke up and decided that I finally wanted to get our library (we call it that because it has bookshelves and we're not sure what else to call it) completely painted. asap. Our game plan is to set up our Christmas tree in the library. And because we're hosting Thanksgiving at our house, we thought it would be fun to have the tree all set up to really set that holiday feeling.
But of course, I want the room to look fabulous with said tree.
So it needs to be painted.
We had already decided that the crown molding was going to need to be replaced in this room (long story I'll get to in the before/after...whenever that happens.) So we take down the crown molding. We had also decided that this would be one of the rooms where we painted over the wallcovering (read my whole argument for whether or not it should stay here) but upon further review this morning we came to the conclusion that the 'right' thing to do would be to get the wallcovering down - even if it meant having to refinish the walls behind it.
We started to rip. We discovered that these walls are paint on top of vinyl wallcovering on top of three layers of paper wallcovering. The first wall was a 'typical' one as far as wallcovering removal - meaning it was a total pain in the rear and difficult to get down.
Then we get to wall #2. And the wallcovering basically falls off in our hands.
Hmm.
And the oldest layer of wallcovering is damp.
So this is an awesome sign.
.
We have (at a minimum) two professionals that we'll need to bring in at this point.
And needless to say, pretty sure that Christmas tree will not be set up by Thanksgiving.
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Pandora's box of old houses.