I am redoing a kitchen and have several random questions.  The first is about sealing brickwork.  I uncovered an old hearth behind some cabinets that I took out.  The brickwork was originally parged but the homeowner would like to display the brick.  The bricks and mortar are in fairly good shape but should probably be sealed in some way to prevent erosion.  How could I do this?

2.   She also would like to restore the original floor which is currently covered with linolium.  There are lots of holes in the floor made by plumbers and electricians mostly.  I plan to patch the hole with plugs and glue but some of them were covered with tin plates and mason jar lids.  She was wondering if it was possible to glue them down and seal over the whole floor with polyurathane.  Sounds like a bad idea to me but what do y’all think?

3. Patching drywall flush to a plaster wall with old wallpaper…if the wallpaper is attached well, is there a need to scrape it off before mudding if the wall is just goig to be wallpapered over?  I would think so but there is a lot of it so I would hate to waste my time on something that is unnecessary.

what do you think?