Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms - Removing ceramic tile from plaster walls

How do I go about removing ceramic tiles from plaster walls? It's an old house but the walls are in good condition. I haven't decided if I want to re-tile or put in some type of wood wainscoting.

this has got to be next to impossible, plaster walls in old houses while beutiful are very fragile, I would think the tile are attached to the plaster with thinset which does not release easily. Are the tiles on the wall falling off or are you just looking to redo for astetics? If you are going to retile or do wainscoating it does not really matter that the plaster remain underneath - you can use sheet rook or cbu, then you just have to deal with the transition between the two surfaces assuming you are not tileing to the ceiling.

I am planning on remodeling the bathroom as the space is used poorly, once I do that I am either going to have to remove the existing tile or find some way to fill in the gaps with more tile or a different material.

I think if you want to remove the tile then the plaster behind it will need to come out too. As I mentioned you can then replace with more modern substrat and retile. If the tile only goes half way up the wall cut the plaster at the top of the tile row first so not to ruin the plaster above - this is very tricky to do given the fragile nature of plaster but I am not sure you have other options if you are set on replacing the tile