Sometimes, even I can’t tell by looking at walls when someone has painted over existing wallpaper. But when you remove the switch plate covers and find this – it’s a sure bet!
Painting over wallpaper is a bad idea for many reasons. Click the link to my page on the right.
It may take some time, but almost always it’s possible to get that paper off the wall.
But sometimes, it’s unavoidable, as in cases where the previous installer hung on top of new drywall and didn’t use a primer to seal off the drywall.
In cases when the paper cannot be removed, if the surface is sealed and prepped correctly, it would be OK to paint or even hang wallpaper on top.
Someone painted over the wallpaper in this powder room. At this point, removing the paper would be a huge, messy undertaking, so I’m going to leave it in place and prime over it. There was a scroll-edged border at the top of the wall and below the crown molding. Here you can see the edge of that border visible under the paint. This will show under the new wallpaper.To prevent the edge from ” telegraphing ” through the new wallpaper, I have skim-floated over it with joint compound (” mud “). Once it’s dry (I used my heat gun to speed things up!), I will sand it smooth, wipe off the dust, and then prime the entire wall surface. No no one will be able to detect it under the new paper.
Home office wall before – textured wall was skim-floated and sanded smooth, wiped free of dust, primed, and ready for wallpaper. Done! The homeowner wanted the “hourglass” pattern centered on where her desk would sit, rather than on the wall itself.Close up. The silver lines are metallic raised ink, and there is a “grainy” design that gives the impression of a textured surface. Graham & Brown is a British company that is among my favorites.
Working from home during COVID (and now for good), this homeowner wanted to enliven her workspace and get rid of endless grey walls. This fun pattern certainly did the trick!
This non-woven wallpaper was a lot more stiff and a lot less workable than most G&B papers. I used the paste-the-wall installation method for this simple accent wall, but pasting the paper would have made it more agreeable to work with.
The home is contemporary in style, and is in the Garden Oaks neighborhood of Houston.
There is a vertical seam down the center of this picture. Look closely, and you will see that the strip of wallpaper on the right is darker than the strip on the left. The manufacturer didn’t keep the color of the ink consistent across the width of the paper. This is called shading or paneling. Even though the pattern of the horizontal hash-type lines matches across the seam, I thought the difference in color would be jarring to the eye. In the grand scheme of things, I believe that uniform color would be more important than a perfectly matched really tiny pattern. So I used a trick called reverse-hanging to bring an even color to the seam areas. That’s when you hang one strip right side up, and then hang the next strip upside down. What this accomplishes is to place the same side of the strip next to itself. That way, a darker area, for example, is next to a darker area, and your eye doesn’t notice any abrupt color difference. It’s a simple concept, but difficult to explain. This technique is usually used on solid textures or materials like grasscloth. I was able to get away with it on this patterned paper because the design was symmetrical whether it was right-side-up or up-side-down. From a short foot away from the wall, you can’t notice that the horizontal lines don’t line up perfectly.
This nicely renovated bungalow in the Houston Heights had a 3-room suite in the rear of the house. Included were a mud room, a walk-in pantry, and a vestibule leading to the kitchen. This photo shows the mud room before wallpaper. The paper will be installed above the wainscoting. The mud room finished. I plotted so the trees would land evenly balanced (centered) on the wall.Pantry beforePantry afterFrom kitchen looking through vestibule into mud room, before.Same area finished. A very, very cool 3-dimensional affect!Another view of the mud room. The blue colorway of the wallpaper works beautifully with the khaki color of the woodwork. The vestibule had four doors, and thus four areas in between the doors. In the two larger spaces, which flanked the pantry door, I futzed with the width of the strips so that I could place the trunk of the tree down the center of each space. I didn’t want all four areas to have the tree down the center, so in the third I let the pattern fall as it would, which placed the tree trunk to the left of center. This was a softer look. Sorry – no photo. The fourth space was only about 6″ wide, and the tree trunk would be much too distracting here. So I again manipulated the width of the strips so that only foliage showed between the door moldings in that last space. Sorry – no photo.Close upThis very popular pattern is called Raphael and is by Sandberg, a Swedish company. Their papers are quite nice. They are on a non-woven material. There are quite a few advantages to these non-wovens, both while working with them and after they are up on your wall.
Powder room before.Whoah … this is really COOL! I love the colors against the blue woodwork. The homeowner is debating what color to paint the vanity base. This wallpaper is in the Fornasetti collection by Cole & Son. It’s called ” Frutto Proibito “
Like most papers by this manufacturer, this was a non-woven material. The instructions say to paste the wall, but this brand is known to expand when wet with paste, so it’s better to paste the material.
The home is in the Heights area of Houston, and is a nicely updated older bungalow.
Bumps from textured walls look bad under wallpaper, and they interfere with good adhesion. To smooth a textured wall, I skim-float with joint compound (a plaster-like drywall material). Once it’s dry, I sand it smooth. This makes dust. In the photo above, the wall only needed a light skim-coat, so the sanding was minimal. Yet, you can see how much dust was generated. On the right is the “tent” of plastic I ran across the wall to prevent dust from getting to other parts of the room. Here’s a closer look at the powder that has fallen to the floor. And also the sanding sponge I like. The 90 degree corners tend to be too sharp and can gouge the surface, so I take a scissors and trim that off. That’s the exposed red area you see along the edge there.
The next step is to vacuum up all this dust. Then residual powder must be wiped off the wall with a damp sponge, and you have to rinse the sponge frequently. The next step is applying a wallpaper primer. Once that’s dry, the wall is ready for wallpaper.
Here I’ve measured the wall and the wallpaper, and the design, and plotted where I want my first strip to hang – in this case, with a vertical line of the wallpaper smack in the center of the wall. The black object you see in the foreground is my laser level, and it’s shooting a vertical red line onto the wall, right where I want my first strip to land. Here I’ve positioned my first strip along that vertical laser line. This ensures that my strip is perfectly plumb.
Headboard accent wall before. Textured wall was skim-floated and sanded smooth, then primed. Now it’s ready for wallpaper.Finished.Closer look.Detail. The seams were invisible. The lines on this paper are raised a bit, so there is a 3-D effect. I hung this non-woven wallpaper by the paste-the-wall method. Here I have rolled the strips backward, to prevent the decorative surface from hitting the paste on the wall. When I’m at the top of my ladder, I will take off the elastic hairband and let the paper unfurl down to the floor. It’s rolled so the top of the strip comes off first. I have measured the wall and noted where the center point is, then determined where I want my first strip to fall. The black box in the foreground is my laser level, and you can see the vertical red line it’s shooting at the wall, which is where I am going to line up my first strip. Positioning the wallpaper strip along the vertical laser line. This muted geometric pattern is in the Jaclyn Smith Home line by the Trend division of Fabricut. It was mighty nice to work with, and will hold up for years until the family is ready for a change of decor. Then, the polyester-content non-woven material is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece.
The home is in the Memorial Villages neighborhood of Houston.
Vanity area before.Vanity area after.Vanity from the front. Note the stripes perfectly centered / balanced on the wall, both above and below the sink. The wall-mounted faucet and handles, along with the stuck-to-the-wall mirror made this wall challenging. In fact, this one wall took me two and a half hours. Stripes on the toilet alcove are also nicely balanced. Looking up past the linen cabinet.Close up. The wallpaper looks textured, but it’s just fooling your eye. It has the look of fabric.
This is a semi-contemporary new home in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston.
The manufacturer is Wallquest, one of my preferred brands, and the pattern # is MS91603.
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