Restoring/Preserving Old Wallpaper

[AndVeeGeeMakes3]

Hi there,

After removing five layers of hideous wallpaper in our diningroom, we came across the original wallpaper which is quite beautiful. A big part of me wants to stop now and preserve this paper (and we, actually, have been living with it like this for almost 5 years! ). It has hand-stenciled gold grape bunches and is kind of a nicotine-ey color behind that. Very pretty and charming. Problem is, because, I guess, of the many layers under which it hid for probably 50 years, it has static electricity and is a major magnet for dog hair. Kinda gross.

So, has anyone tried putting something on top of old old wallpaper to preserve it, or have any ideas what I might do? There are also parts where that paper got ripped off and exposed the plaster (I think that's kind of cool looking too), and in a couple of those spots there are small cracks in the wall from house settling. We'll have to repair those cracks, but I'd like to do that in keeping with the rest of the "look" that we've got going on. I'm thinking of just doing some additional plaster and then "faux" finishing the new stuff to look like the old stuff.

Thanks for any input you can give me!

[milletpuff]

Yes! We had the exact same experience! We ripped off old paneing with vinyl wallpaper to find this amazing pale pink, yellow and gray peony-and-rose paper that's crumbly and cracked and so beautiful. We have a friend who does big fancy painting jobs and she said, "uh, people play me LOTS of money to make a new wall look like this"

She helped up pick out a clear coat basically, and we painted a few layers over the paper. We left all the little cracks. This is only one wall, so there wasn't that much that was damaged.

If you PM me I can send you a pic if you like...maybe I can also dig up the can of paint that we used. We did it about a year and a half ago and it looks beautiful still. The clear coat is matte, so it doesn't look like anything is on there, but it does protect it. I don't know about the static electricity tho!