The simplest way is to knock on the wall until it doesn't sound hollow. This might only get you to within a few inches of the stud. An electrical receptacle might give you the location of one stud to sue as a reference point. To use a detector you must determine if the lath is wood or metal. Your contractor should know or you can tell by removing an electrical box cover plate. If it is metal lath you might be able to use the trial and error method but if the material is sound you can use moly bolts that are inserted in a drilled hole and expand when you tighten them. If it is wood lath a stud finder will sometimes work but it may be fooled by the inconsistent density of the plaster and the additional density of the wood lath but its worth a try. Be aware that there might be horizontal or diagonal bracing in the wall. It may be possible to search for the nails that attach the wood lath to the studs either with a detector that has a metal mode or one that is designed to detect only metal. Zircon is a good brand. Another way to find the nails is with a small magnet. There are small magnetic stud finders with a pivoting magnet that dips when over a nail. You can also hang a small magnet from a string. Its odd that your contractor wouldn't be willing to do this for you.

Progress: And 1 inch of what may have been the original 1887 wallpaper. I like the green: I ended up using the circular saw to make grid cuts 12-18" apart. I used the multi tool to make cuts closer to the wall and corners where the circular saw couldn't clear. I tried different methods to pry the sections off; some were too narrow; some had too much flex. A 5" wide blade, hammered in and then pried down, did most of the work. Where the ceiling met the wall, I did a combination of breaking the paint and skim coat with a putty knife hammered upwards, and just cutting around with a multitool. There was only about a 1/8" thick bond to break through so it came away, thankfully, easily. I'd say it was altogether 10 hours in a 6 x 8 room to get this far--crazy! I definitely won't be doing the rest of the house. In most other rooms I plan to knock off the flecky balls and skim coat the ridged scallops, like Worthy suggests. In the double parlor, which has crown molding, I'll go through this routine. It's a great upper body workout! Some of the original ceiling is loose, so I'll be putting in some plaster washer anchors. You can also see where they poked holes to verify the location of studs. Those and the cracks will get fiberglass tape and patched. A little skimming, a little sanding, a little paint, and she'll be done. Of course, before all that, I'll do a thorough scrub down with tsp and water, then rinse, dry, and coat with benjamin moore calcimine recoater. Then plaster bonding agent to all the damaged places, and then fiberglass tape, patch/fill with durabond, knock down with a putty knife, then easy sand, then sanding, priming, and finally paint. What could be easier?!? Hope everybody else is having as much fun as I am this weekend! And yes, I'm saving a sample of the wallpaper for the house book.

It sounds like you have what you need, and that you just need some practice. Any corded drill (or cordless) can handle this job. It sounds like you have standard, inexpensive bits which are usually high speed steel (HSS), and those are fine, too. You may want to get some better quality bits (like titanium coated) in the future. Unless your walls are actually concrete, you have no need of specialty tools, like a hammer drill or masonry bits. Impact drivers are wonderful specialty tools for driving fasteners into tough materials, but it would be the wrong tool to use on this project. (It would be nice to have a cordless drill-driver if you are driving screws, but you don't absolutely need that, and you need to master the use of a regular drill first.) Plaster drilling dulls bits faster than using them in wood, so you might want to have some extra bits on hand. And even though I have been using tools for over 50 years, I, too, occasionally break small diameter bits, so I keep cheap spares around. While I tend to buy high quality power tools, when it comes to disposables, like bits, I look for bargains since I do a lot of drilling; for your drilling needs, you might want to look at a place like Harbor Freight tools: Drill bits You can get decent bits there for cheap, including things like a set of half a dozen 1/16" or 3/32" or 1/8" bits for a couple of bucks. They have stores in many areas of the country and you can buy online. Too many homeowners have one set of bits that get dull early on and never get replaced, so I suggest you pick up some extras and toss them out when they quit performing well. Good luck, and tell me what happens when you try this again. Do you think it would help your skills development if you practice drilling into a scrap of wood first, just to get the hang of handling your new tool? I also assume that you have a standard variable speed drill, and it would be better to use it at a slower speed when going in to plaster. And did you confirm that the forward-reverse switch was in the correct position? :-)

There is no structural issue for interior finishes. If there were, it would be necessary to hang the panels vertically so that all edges were supported or to hang them horizontally and add blocking at unsupported edges but that kind of consideration would only be relevant for exterior sheathing for a house although I've had to deal with it for steel stud bearing walls in multi-story buildings. Please, let's not get into that discussion. Where I live all drywall is veneer plaster (blueboard) whether you ask for it or not and it doesn't matter how the panels are hung but horizontal is considered easier since the panels are usually longer than the height of the walls.