Old does not mean well built.

Spent the last few winters on this (Florida) Finally lifted my living room ceiling back straight(er) and removed the skylight. Adding an upstairs bedroom right here.

Some thoughts to share:

I really hate lath and plaster ceilings. Thoughout this project every single room has started to crumble somewhere from me walking on the old joists /dropping stuff / stepping wrong.

24s on 12ft spans are waaay under sized. I'm going to 26 and that's only barely enough because I'm sistering them to the 2*4s.

Termites suck, they've eaten a lot of stuff over the last 85 years.

Even poorly built/designed/maintained all that happened was massive sagging. I feel like the critical failure mode of everything that WAS wrong would still Be repairable. I can imagine a ceiling joist letting go or a roof rafter cracking, or a floor joist dropping out and aside from some sudden movement and sprinkles from the ceiling I can't see anything catastrophic occuring. It's all just wood man. I can fix wood👍