Why is GW suddenly green? Or is it just my eyes? Hmmm... Sorry you don't feel well. Hope you get over it soon!! My parents bought a 1 yr old house when I was in the womb, then when I was 9, they built another. Sooo...I've pretty much always lived in new houses, haven't I?? Never even thought of that. I'm sure your parents thought they were doing a wonderful job when they were putting up that blue paneling! Gosh, I can honestly see that crud now. My in-laws have the white in their enclosed porch. We had a little of the brown in the kitchen, and a butt-load in the basement. It's all been removed, of course. Here I mean...in-laws still have theirs...lol. Some day I'm gonna have to get a picture in the kitchen and show you where the paneling was. It covered a hole, the hole was in the back of the built-in china cabinet in the dining room. My carpenter made a pretty cool door for it, out of an old original beat up door we found in the basement. Easy to describe, but takes me a lot of words, being as wordy as I am....descriptive I mean. You know what I mean Nineteen. ;-> That wall looks good, from what I can tell!! There's some really good masks, can't remember what they're called, but you can wear that when you're working on the chipped plaster, if you're really worried about it. Me? I rely heavily on the ignorance is bliss aspect of life...lol...just kidding. Long sleeves, pants, whatever you feel is necessary while working in those areas. Like I said, I had wallpaper, with some paint over the wallpaper, it all got the steamer. The foyer, up the stairs, the alcove, down the hallway and in the back area had one kind of wallpaper on the bottom, another on the top, with a border in the middle. Yack. Man was it hard to remove. Took me forever and a day. I found just one coat of white paint under, with a blue line, the line where the top went to and the bottom went. Let's not measure, let's use blue paint. Again, yack. I also had just scratch coats under that paint and nothing but the scratch coat in the parlor. But I used the NuWal, so it doesn't show. The sellers? There were times when the husband had to stop by here, and I'd ask where his wife was....she's out in the car, she loved this house tooooooooooo much!!!!!!!!! She can't stand the thought of anyone doing anything to it!!!!!!!!! eeeegaaads!! Did she have eyes?? We had a PLASTIC chandelier in the dining room! She couldn't stand the thought of me replacing that? And some of the plastic "crystals" were hanging by paper clips!!! I kid you not. The carpet in here, must have been at least 25 yrs old and wasn't showing it's age well.....she couldn't stand the thought of us pulling up the carpet to show the beautiful maple hardwoods?? Was she crazy?? me thinks so....oy.

I would think that you could get a non-textured paintable wallpaper and apply to the lower portion of the wall, where the wainscoting would be. The add a chair rail at the top edge of the wallpaper. Add pitcure frame panels below the chair rail. Paint the whole thing. I dont think you would be able to tell the difference. I would look like pitcure framed wainscoting panels on the lower portion and a textured wall above.

Here is a nice article for removing orange peel texture from a wall. Depending on the wallpaper material (canvas,paper, vinyl) and the adhesion method (peel and stick, paste, pre-pasted) You could just put the wallpaper over top of the texture. Since you specified that your wallpaper is not thick I would look at removing the texture.

I really don't know what "old world" even means-- whatever it is-- I'm just trying to figure out how to make my house look nice with the textured walls it has. The current owners have done nothing to make it look stylish, and my eye for design is weak. Nearly everything I can find online has smooth walls, and Pinterest shows beautiful homes that aren't so realistic. There must be a way to keep the walls is and still have the place look modern* *not modern like farmhouse vibe, but just that the house looks updated and fresh instead of what it currently looks like.