The walls in this dining room in a home in the Garden Oaks / Oak Forest neighborhood of Houston were originally textured. Texture looks bad under wallpaper , and it impedes good adhesion , because wallpaper wants to stick to a smooth , flat surface . So I have skim-floated the walls (do a search here to see previous posts). The next step is to sand the walls smooth . Sanding creates a lot of dust . And that dust sifts over just about everything. The dust is light and gets into the air. And HVAC ( heat / air conditioning ) systems circulate air through the whole house . So the HVAC system can pull dust from the room, into the vents , and then discharge it through the whole house. To prevent this, besides putting protective painter’s plastic over the furniture that’s been gathered into the center of the room, I put plastic across the doorways and entryways . This picture shows just how strong those air currents can be. No problem when the A/C / heat system is not blowing. But when it comes on, here you can see air currents charging through the dining room and out into the entry hall . Here it’s pulled the plastic and tape away from the wall . As air moves past the plastic , it’s also pulling a little sanding dust with it. In this scenario, only a little dust escaped the corralled area. I was able to clean up (most of) it.
This window had leak issues ( rain , sprinklers ) some years back, which have been solved by replacing the window, and doing other repairs. In the photo, I’ve applied my light blue wallpaper primer to the top half of the wall but not yet the bottom portion, so that’s why the color differenceEven though the leak has been stopped, vestiges of it are still appearing. Water that entered the wall left vertical streaks on the drywall . All these years later, after the paint and texture have been removed , the stains remain.Water stains , along with some others, such as blood , rust , ink , marker , grease , oil, cosmetics , and the like, will bleed through joint compound , primer , paint , and wallpaper , creating new stains on the surface . It may take a couple of months , but they will make an appearance . In this photo, I’ve already applied my blue primer. It only took a half an hour for these stains to work their way through. This is the top right corner of the window , where the bracket for the mini-blinds is attached to the wall. Note the stains on the underside of the window . To prevent these stains from working their way through the new coating / paint / wallpaper , it’s imperative to thoroughly cover them with a stain blocker . And – trust me – water-based products won’t work, despite what the label claims. You need an oil-based product like this KILZ Original , or a shellac-based like BIN by Zinsser . Both are prone to splatter , so be sure to cover your floor and baseboards with dropcloths . KILZ has strong fumes and can make you high , so ventilate or wear a respirator mask . It’s a hassle cleaning the liquid out of the brush , so I use a cheap-ish disposable “ chip brush ” from Home Depot or Sherwin-Williams . The products usually dry pretty quickly. Note that wallpaper paste won’t stick to most oil-based primers , and shellac is too glossy for good adhesion , so I’m going to go over the stain blocker with my usual Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime wallpaper primer , which sticks to just about everything , and creates a good, matt finish surface for the wallpaper to cling to.
Vanity wall was originally textured and painted with a semi-gloss . Here it’s been skim-floated , sanded , and primed – ready for wallpaper. Finished. There’s a cool light-up mirror that will hang on the brackets under the light fixture .Opposite corner before.Finished. This room wouldn’t have half the impact without the black moldings and ceiling. The homeowner said she envisioned a jewel box – all tufted and lined with velvet . Well, I’d say she nailed the look! As the dark and mysterious wallpaper moved from left to right, the room began to take on a mood . I love the juxtaposition between a clad wall and a bare wall. Close-up.Detail.The husband is handy, and I really appreciate that he removed the vanity and sink . This made it a lot faster and easier for me, and ensured better adhesion of the wallpaper around the plumbing pipes . And also eliminated stress and creases on the paper that can happen when bending and folding to work it around obstacles. Here is the modern looking vanity that will go into the powder room . To keep white primer from showing at the seams , I striped black paint on the wall under where each seam would fall. Do a Search here to read previous posts about this technique.I use matt finish craft paint from the hobby store , a scrap of sponge , and a bottle cap full of water . Do a Search here to read previous posts about the process and materials . I also run chalk along the edges of the wallpaper, to cover up the white substrate , to ensure there will be no white peeking out at the seams . Again, do a Search on key words to learn more about this technique . Dang it! I forgot to take a picture of the label! But this wallpaper is by York and is called On The Prowl . It’s vinyl on a non-woven backing . The instructions said you could paste the wall for installation . But I pasted the paper, and I think with this product it’s better, because it did seem to want to expand a bit. If you paste the wall and then the paper stretches, you’ll end up with buckles at the seams or bubbles within the strips . The material was fairly flexible , which was nice because it allowed me to “mush” the paper to conform to some pretty un-plumb walls. Although York is one of my favorite brands , I wasn’t real crazy about this particular wallpaper. Still, it seamed up nicely, didn’t shrink, has a vinyl surface that will resist splashes and fingerprints , and is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate . This is a townhome in the Rice Military area of central Houston .
In a recent post, I mentioned how when there’s a strong contrast between the color of the woodwork and the primer, you don’t want any primer peeking out between the wallpaper and the molding. So when rolling on the primer, I cut in with an angled trim brush along the molding. But I’ll pull back just a tad, leaving a 1/16″ or 1/8″ gap or so, so the white primer doesn’t actually touch the woodwork. This prevents any of the primer from showing after the wallpaper goes up. Wallpaper paste doesn’t adhere well to glossy paint as is used on moldings, but this teeny bit of of a gap won’t be enough to cause adhesion worries.
You’re looking at the junction between a wallpaper border at the top of a wall and the ceiling. You can see crackled and flaking paint on the ceiling.
This was almost surely caused by the previous wallpaper installer getting paste on the ceiling (which is typical and normal) but failing to wipe it off completely.
The paste is clear and difficult to see. Even when you do a diligent job, it’s easy to leave some residue behind.
The problem is that wallpaper paste attacks water-based paint, and will cause it to do what you see above … crackle, flake, chip off. This can happen if the paint was in place before the wallpaper paste got on it, or if there was paste residue and fresh paint was applied on top of it.
In fact, the decorative paint finish called “crackle finish” is accomplished by applying hide glue onto a surface and then coating it with latex paint.
The crackly paint on the ceiling is unattractive, and impedes adhesion. It takes a lot of scraping and sealing and skimming the wall to rectify this.
A way to avoid this is to astutely wipe off all paste residue. Better yet, what I do is to use special plastic tape at the top of my wallpaper strips, so that no paste gets onto the ceiling in the first place. Do a Search here to see previous posts describing that technique.
You can also use a stain blocker like KILZ Original oil-based primer, or BIN shellac-based primer, to seal off the area before painting. There are water-borne primers that claim to seal such problem areas – but I prefer to stick with oil or shellac.
Most homes in the Houston area have textured walls. These bumps are unsightly under wallpaper, and also interfere with consistent adhesion. So I like to skim-float the walls with drywall joint compound (I use the Plus 3 version) and then sand them smooth. Sanding this stuff creates lightweight, powdery dust that sifts through the air and gets over everything. Homeowners tend to hate that. 🙂 So here I’ve created a ” tent ” out of painter’s plastic along the walls where I will be sanding. This creates a pretty darned effective barrier that prevents dust from getting into the rest of the room. Here’s the dust created by smoothing just the top 5′ of wall area. And my ShopVac to clean it all up. I find it easiest to let the dust fall onto the floor and even the carpet. It’s easy to vacuum dust up off these surfaces. Dropcloths and plastic tend to get sucked up into the vacuum hose, and the dust doesn’t come with it. I once tried protective self-adhesive plastic that’s made to cover carpet … but it was extremely difficult to unroll, plus, it was even more difficult to get back off the floor. I truly feared it would pull off the surface finish of the floor along with it. The vacuum gets most of the dust. But there is still a fine, invisible layer left on surfaces. So you need to take a damp rag and wipe the floor. I also vacuum the walls. After the visible dust is gone, it’s imperative that you take a damp sponge and wipe residual dust off the walls. You have to rinse the sponge frequently to get all the dust. If not, it’s like, as I like to say, it’s like flouring a cake pan – the wallpaper will kinda stick – but not really stick. Once the walls are perfectly dust-free and dry, follow up with a wallpaper primer. Then go and hang your wallpaper!
he lure of (false!) claims of easy to install and easy to remove led these homeowners to purchase peel & stick ” wallcovering ” and try to install it themselves. It did not go well. The wall was coated with a gloss paint, as per manufacturer’s instructions. Yet, here you can see that it is not even trying to adhere to the wall. Many brands come in rectangles of a few square feet, rather than traditional strips that are long enough to reach floor to ceiling. These small rectangles are much harder to keep perfectly lined up, so you are very likely to end up with overlaps or gaps at the seams. It’s not pliable or malleable, so won’t readily be eased into corners or turns. Here, note wrinkles and warps in the corner in the center of the photo, and at the ceiling line in the center top of the photo. The wall was not smoothed before applying the paper, so you see unsightly texture. The roughness is also interfering with good adhesion, because the paper is only sticking to the tops of the bumps, instead to the entire surface. So much for easily removeable. As you can see, trying to take this stuff down – it took the paint along with it.
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.
Paint pulling off wall where tape was removed.Paint pulling off wall when painters tape was removed. Paint pulled off wall and stuck to back of tape that was pulled off wall on new construction site.
It’s important to have a stable surface under wallpaper.
That’s because, when wallpaper gets wet with paste, absorbs moisture from the paste, and it expands. Then, as it dries, it lets go of the moisture and shrinks. When wallpaper dries and shrinks, it puts tension / torque on the walls.
If the surface under the wallpaper is not stable, the tension of the drying wallpaper can cause the underlying surface to pull away.
This photo is not showing the wallpaper pulling away from the wall. What is happening (usually) is that the paint (or whatever has been applied to the wall), has actually delaminated (come apart) from the wall.
This results in a “curled” seam, or a “popped” seam.
One way to test for this is to apply a strip of tape (blue painters tape, tan masking tape, clear Scotch tape, or other), let it sit a few minutes, and then yank it off. If the tape takes any paint along with it, you have a potential problem of the wallpaper not adhering correctly.
This is why it’s important to:
1, Before applying any coating, you must remove all dust from the wall, using a damp sponge, which must be rinsed frequently
2, Before hanging paper, a primer formulated specifically for wallpaper should be applied / rolled on and cut in to edges
A wallpaper-specific primer is designed to withstand the torque put on the wall as wallpaper dries. And it facilitates installation by allowing sufficient “slip” (maneuvering the paper) and “stick” (adhesion). The chemistry behind all this is fascinating – but too complicated to get into here.
If a wall is too “iffy,” and you don’t feel like the mess and expense of scraping off all the old paint, a liner can be applied before the actual wallpaper is hung.
A liner lessens the drying time of the wallpaper, which reduces the time there will be stress on the wall. A liner also redistributes stress on the wall, so much less chance of having seems detach from the wall.
A liner also adds additional cost to the job – for both material and labor, which may include an additional day(s).
“Orange peel” texture on wallSame wall smoothed and primed and ready for paper
You don’t want to hang wallpaper on a textured wall. The bumps will show through and look bad. Plus they impede good adhesion.
I’m pretty darned good at smoothing textured walls, through the skim-floating or skim-coating procedure. You can do a Search here to read more.
Note: The slight texture in the second photos is from the roller that applied the primer. The photo is magnified many times. In real life, this wall is nice and smooth and ready for wallpaper.
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