Art hidden in the walls... Advice sought.

Too funny, I actually have the same experience. Our house was built in 1896 and there is a painting of a flapper-type gal on the wall of one of the upstairs rooms. We uncovered it by pulling off the wallpaper. We didn't use a steamer for that area, just some hot water and a scraper (the wallpaper in that room, much like in your dining room, came off pretty easily, though there were some spots where it was a bit gluey). We were careful once we started to see there was a painting underneath. Unfortunately, there was already some damage to that wall. Essentially, we tried not to make it any worse.

Having no idea what medium was used in the paintings, especially if it is water based or oil based, I don't know what advice to give you. If the wallpaper does end up needing steam removal, there's not much else you can do. It has a lot to do with the actual quality of the paintings and if they are something you actually want to keep. It's doubtful they are worth anything.

Ever wonder why " the Last Supper " never tours the world? It's a mural in a monastry, walls can't travel, that's why.

Good luck and sending you good karma through your steamcleaner.

By the way, the more the merrier on the Art Restoration thread!

Thanks for the advice. I guess I forgot a few details. The wall under the paper has been painted, possibly twice. The painting in the livingroom looks to be oil based, though I'm no expert. (I barely rank as an amateur... :wink: )

I guess a good question would be: how does one remove a layer of paint off another without ruining the bottom layer?

There is no foolproof way to remove a layer of house paint and leave the layer intact which is underneath. Light sanding would be the likeliest but painstaking. You're talking about a costly restoration that is likely no worth it.

you can find a hidden painting using a portable x-ray flourescence detector. (Most colleges with a materials science or geology department have the equip-also environmental consultants that have lead paint services can do this)
The xray flourescence 9XRF) will emit a signal of flourescence wavelengths due to a metal molecule being excited by a beam of low level Ka-1 radiation.(The radiation is shielded so dont worry)

The detector measures any frequency associated with specific metals. Since metals were used in pigments they are easily detected and they can be seen to vary as the metals (ie the colors) vary in a painting . SO, unlike the wall, which has only one colr or two at most. a painting will have variable color emissions over shorty areas. SO the XRF can see under paint or paper.
There are pros that can do this , and many geology students looking to make some money.

cleaning layers of paint is a specialty that places like WInterthur .org can help you. They are a conservation lab and have removed paint layers covering many , heretofore lost murals of Thomas Hart Benton. Benton was popular in the 30s and every post office had a mural and a few were Tom Bentons. Then he fell out of favor like many artists , so the POs painted his walls. NOW, the guy is popular so they had to find and uncover his murals. I know a conservation specialist who states that mostr of his cleaning chemicals are enzymes based upon the chemistry of SPIT. They use very small cleaning swabs, some as small as cuetips , and carefully clean , so as not to mess up the painting. If you arent a conservation specialist, dont do it yourself, Just leave it painted until you can afford it done right. AS wiz said, if its just some hobbyist (not Tom Benton) , chances are it isnt a national treasure , so why bother

On the other hand, you might like it. If it isn't worth spit (which, hmmm, contains lysozyme) then it wouldn't hurt if you ruin it (them) and you might make progress. At the least, it isn't one more boring wall.

My first question, that I didn't ask this morning as I had to rare up and be to work way early in case a cruise boat could cross into our harbor and unload potential gallery customers, was... do you like the one you can see?

(There I was at 7:45 a.m., turning lights on, etc. I gave up and went for coffee nearing 10. Arrived back at work at eleven. There they were, cruise folk, about four of them, nice people but of course not dying to spend bigish bucks on various items in our main gallery when they really wanted to stroll the town. I knew this before I did it. Keeping business partner happy re effort.)

Depends on who you are. I have lived in a house in a semiremodelled state for a few years now, and I like the walls with real plaster and some remaining wallpaper scum. Beats Navaho White to me.

I am not so sure that serious art value is the only value. There's also historic preservation value, and your own pleasure. Might be worth a fling with the equipment farmerman is mentioning.

Our home is an old tavern from the late 1700s and there is a room that had some stenciling of traditional federalist greetings(pinapples, tree of heaven leaf bracts, etc0 we cleaned these up with a mild cleaner and then painted the wall below the stencil , That way the stencils remained and were actually a focal point.
Folk artr on walls is sometimes a neat thing.
Our neighbors have several rooms with family trees and geneologies painted into corners of rooms.

Dang, ossobucco, you mean you got the proverbial "I'll be back?" Not everyone is Ahnold and besides, you wouldn't want them to drive their car through the front window of the gallery. A useful technique for "I'll be back" is to ask for the customer's watch or some jewelry. When they ask why, you say, "Then I know you'll be back."

As to farmerman's suggestion, it would be effective to use the UV equipment to find out if there's a painting underneath the paint but as ossobucco says, if it's not worth spit ( ) it's really not worth it.
I'm doing two murals for my niece's kids with a Nemo underwater theme (don't asked me how I got hornswaggled into that one) and if their painted over and some future family decides they are masterpieces, I will be highly flattered but I'm sure quite dead.

I seem to recall that one of Canada's esteemed
artists had his mural painted over at a library
when they decided to spring clean. That was back
when he was a "no name".....Subsequently, I
think they scrambled to try to recover it.

Makes you wonder how many murals have been lost....

There you go -- find out how they removed the paint. If it is one of the newer vinyls I don't believe the enzyme products will do any good. They are mainly for removing dirt as they will not attack nearly all water or oil paints. They're an alternative to the Castile soap and solvent formulas. Methylene chloride and naptha are some of the solvents that have been used in the past.

I think one or more Siquieros murals were painted over, perhaps with whitewash...

You are right, ossobucco, and the restorers will really never tell us just exactly how they removed the paint. Acrylic/vinyl housepaints are very durable and there are really no solvents that will attack them that won't eat up what's underneath.