Another Fun Challenge, Disguising a Kill Point

If you start hanging wallpaper in a corner, for example, by the time you get around the room and come back to that first corner, the last strip will need to be cut vertically to fit that last space, and pattern will not match up with the pattern on the first wall. This is called the kill point. Usually you try to place it in an inconspicuous place, such as behind a door.

This powder room did not have any hidden corners. I didn’t want to end up with an 8′ high corner of mis-matched pattern, so I decided to put the kill point in a 15″ high area – over the door. A mis-match in the middle of a wall (such as over a door) catches the eye more quickly than a mis-match in a corner. But I knew this pattern would help me minimize that.

What I didn’t expect was that, miraculously, the pattern almost matched itself up perfectly, with only about a 2″ of excess paper. Plus a little tracking due to the crookedness of the walls and ceiling. See second photo.

I did a splice. I matched the strip of paper to the pattern on the right, and then matched it up to the pattern on the left. This left the pouch of excess paper that you see in the second photo. I cut this paper in two vertically, as you see in the second photo.

To prepare for the splice, I took a strip of clear flexible plastic (polystyrene) strip and placed it under the area to be spliced. This would protect the wall from being cut. (Scoring the wall can leave weak areas that could pull loose and delaminate, as the wallpaper dries and pulls taught and puts tension on the wall…. which could cause the seams to curl up.) You can barely see this clear plastic strip at the bottom center of the third photo.

Then I overlapped the strips, took a new, sharp razor blade, and cut through both layers of paper, tracing along the curved elements of the design, such as the tree trunk. A straight cut would have sliced leaves and trees abruptly, but a curved cut helps disguise a pattern mis-match. Also, following along the trunk of the trees maintained the design of the pattern and gave the eye something that it expected to see by maintaining the rhythmic repeat of the design.

Once the cut was made, I pulled away the excess paper from both the top and bottom layers, and removed the lexan strip (which can be washed and reused). I smoothed the two sides of wallpaper together and wiped off residual paste.

In the last photo’s finished view, you can hardly notice any mis-matched pattern.

Tags: clear, corner, kill point, lexan, mis-match, over a door, paste, plastic, powder room, splice, strip, wallpaper