Do Picky Paperhangers Get A Good Night’s Sleep??

My by-line for the Wallpaper Lady is “The Picky Paperhanger.” I like that, and my customers like that. And I’m proud that I do notice little things and they do bug me, and that I do take the time to fix them.

But, gee. I sure would get more sleep if I weren’t so picky!

Twice this week, I had jobs that I “could” have done from Point A, and they probably would have looked just fine, and the homeowners would have been happy. In both cases, it had to do with wall prep, and I just wasn’t happy with the walls at Point A. So I put extra time into getting the walls to Point B, which means nice and smooth and, as I like to say, “a good bed for the paper to lie in.”

In the first job, the builder had accidentally textured the walls in the room to be papered, so he had his workmen sand off the texture. Well, they did an OK job, and I guess I could have primed it and hung the paper. But the more I looked, the more I saw gouges, tears in the Sheetrock, rough spots, gritty spots, and areas where they hadn’t removed the texture at all. All this was going to show – ever so slightly – under the new paper. And, since the paper had a metalic sheen, any imperfections would show up even more.

So I decided to skim-float the entire room. This added about three hours to my day, but it yielded a perfectly flat, smooth wall, and the finished job looked great.

On the second job, the original paper came off fairly easily, and the walls were in OK shape, and I again could have gotten away with a simple primer.

But it kept bugging me, and I just knew the walls weren’t as smooth and flat as they could be, and that the job would look better and last longer if the walls were in better shape.

So I skim-floated this room, too. Float, wait for it to dry, sand, vacuum, wipe dust from the walls, wait for walls to dry, prime, wait for primer to dry, finally hang the paper. Looked great, and definately worth the effort. The homeowner was totally thrilled!

Now, what does all this have to do with sleeping? Well, for one thing, when I know I’ve done the best I can, and haven’t skimped or taken the easy way out, I sleep better!

But also, all this extra work takes extra time. In both these cases, I finally finished and left work at 9:00 p.m. Then there’s the drive home, checking phone messages and e-mail, watering the yard, fixing something to eat, playing with the (world’s sweetest) cats, and maybe a little relaxing before turning in for the night. A very late night.

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Tags: picky paperhanger, room to be papered, Sheetrock, skim float, wallpaper, wallpaper hanger houston