Thanks to help from Rousey we got things moving quick with demo! P was out of town so us girls went crazy tearing stuff up. We were able to get the paneling and the ceiling taken down in the living room. Once P got back we were able to get all of the plaster off of the two interior walls. Our plans are to take the wall between the kitchen and living room down and to create some sort of open structural shelving where the wall dividing the hall and living room used to be.
Things we have found in the walls so far include...
a doorway
a hobbit door
a newspaper from the 1920s
a newspaper from the 1960s
an old yard stick
I am keeping all of them.