Evelyn, The description of your childhood home sounds very much like our house in Michigan. It was at least 100 years old when we lived in it. We had a cellar with a cistern, rows of canned goods on the wooden shelves, a bin with apples on one side and potatoes on the opposite side. The apples each had to be wrapped in newspaper so they'd last all winter. I decided, as a teen ager, I wanted my bedroom painted instead of wallpapered. I began scraping off a small section of wallpaper, layer after layer until I finally reached the wall. When there, I had to paste the wallpaper back over the section as the plaster was crumbling underneath. The only thing holding up the plastered walls was the multiple layers of wallpaper! Faith