Preservation work: old inns

Preservation work in an old Vermont Bed and Breakfast Inn --
One of the challenges to showing respect for a 200 year old building like Hickory Ridge House is deciding what to preserve and what to repair.
Our dining room walls are made of fragile plaster covered by only two or three coats of paint. It did not seem to have been painted for at least thirty years. One of the distinguishing features of the walls is a hand stenciled border of vines, grape leaves and grapes. The colors in the stencil match the colors on the wall and all of it seems appropriate to a Federal building -- linen white and a reddish brown color we haven't found a name for but that looks to be a little bit richer, deeper and redder than Sienese brick.
Miriam and I talked about repairing the plaster, repainting in the same colors, and either removing the stencil or leaving it as a kind of border. We couldn't agree, but I thought the time had come to work those walls. While Miriam was on a visit to family, I repaired one panel in an obscure part of the room, and painted it in colors matching the original, covering the stencil with painter's tape. This produced a border with a straight line.
When she got home, she liked it much better than she thought she would.
We're just about finished with the dining room walls. When we're done, we'll be asking our guests to vote on whether to keep the design as is. Please be sure to cast your vote.