hi again guys. we took possession of our new house and immediately went in to start priming. one room in the basement has a cold storage of sorts, and that half of the room was covered in wood panelling, the previous owner was using it as a bar area. I specifically asked him what was under the panelling, he told me drywall. So we thought this would be easy, rip off the panelling, patch up the drywall, prime and paint and it's done. We ran into a few problems. the 2 walls adjoining the cold storage are concrete, and the previous owners have wallpapered right over it. the place has all new windows but at some point their old windows were apparently letting in moisture, so the concrete closest to the window is crumbly. there's a hole cut out by the floor to allow access to a drain in the cold storage since there's a water softener in there, but the hole was covered by the wood panelling anyway. the back wall and half of the right-hand wall are wallpapered right onto raw drywall. =_= so I'm not sure how to strip the wallpaper from either the concrete or the drywall without doing damage, and not sure where to go after that. we're thinking we can either: -plaster over the concrete to get a smooth paintable finish, or -put up some strapping and then drywall overtop of it. the problem with this is there's a doorframe on one part of the wall, and the corner where it joins with the finished part of the room has a window. the windowframe goes right up to the corner, and we actually tore a bit of the trim around the window off trying to get the panelling off. since the window was redone long after the panelling was put up, seems that it was overlapping overtop of the panelling. so is the brand new flooring, so bits of the panelling are still stuck in there around the flooring, but whatever we can't get out will be covered when the trim goes back on so that's not a huge deal. seems to me that plaster is the way to go here, otherwise we're looking at rebuilding the doorjam and would run into issues with the window. (though if we went with drywall we could even add a bit of insulation.) the issue with plastering is the crumbly area and the hole in the concrete wall. i don't *think* there's a mould issue but it definitely smells musty in there after pulling off the panelling. our longterm plan is to convert that cold storage into a walk-in closet, but i don't think it's going to happen just yet. i would honestly rather tear it right out but hubby doesn't think it's possible (well anything is possible, but he says it would be very difficult and expensive) so anyways I guess I'm wondering if anyone more experienced can put in their 2 cents here, and maybe give us an idea of what we're looking at in terms of doing it ourselves vs cost if we hire this out? the areas are quite small, i don't have measurements but will get them later today as well as pics. it's half the width of a small-ish bedroom and I dunno, maybe 6 feet deep?

I have vaulted ceilings in the living room kitchen and dining room and I want to remove a half wall that divides the kitchen from the living room. It has on 4x4 that goes to the ceiling on the end of the wall. I went in the crawlspace and there is no piling under that part although it does rest on a beam that runs parallel to the wall I want to remove. My feeling is the post is there purely to hold the wall from warbling since it does not connect to the ceiling except for the 4x4. Is it safe to say that this post isn't needed as load bearing. There is not another post in the identical location on the other span of the vault in the living room. I have included two pics that I hope will help. Thanks for the help in advance. Tim [ATTACH]20472[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]20473[/ATTACH]