My helper for today. This has got to be the biggest Black Lab I’ve ever seen – easily way over 100 lbs.For size comparison, that’s my foot, bottom center. And a 1-gallon bucket by his head.
And, yes – he eats sponges , paper towels , dropcloths , phone totes , and shoes .
I don’t know what these white specs are, but they seem to appear everywhere I hang wallpaper . I mean, I can be install ing black wallpaper , and still little bits of white thingies end up on the floor . And I put down dropcloths , too. Oh well. They’re easily wiped or vacuum ed up.
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.
That request/point is made in both my initial Info Pack, and then in my Pre-Install Check List. Yet sometimes Install Day rolls around and we hear, “The painters will be working in another room – but they won’t be in your way.” Oh, no? Then, AFTER I told them I was getting set up and asked them to collect any materials they needed out of the room, then WHY did they need to come through my workspace AGAIN?! And I’ll guess a bigger question is WHY CAN’T THEY KEEP THEIR FILTY SHOES OFF MY TOOLS AND SWEATSHIRT??! I mean, just walk around it. Or, better yet, wait 8 seconds and I’ll move things out of their way.BTW, that’s not a dirty floor. That’s my padded moving blanket spread out to protect my client’s hardwood floor. Along with my sweatshirt and blue dropcloths in what I thought was a safe, out-of-the-way place. So, homeowners, when the Wallpaper Lady is there to install your paper, please make sure that ALL work is FINISHED and that ALL workmen are OUT OF THERE. Yes, we WILL be in each other’s way. End of rant. 🙂
I like hanging wallpaper in my stocking feet, so I leave this mat at the door to set my shoes on. It’s also handy for paste buckets and other things you don’t want to set directly on the client’s floor, until I get my dropcloths set up in the room where I’m working. Today I walked in to see that the rest of the family finds this a handy resting spot for their shoes, too!
To protect the toilet from primer splatters, and the occasional tool that gets set on it. I tried the fuzzy covers they make for your grandmother’s toilet lids, but they were too bulky and didn’t fit right. Enter little kids’ T-shirts! They fit perfectly, are easy to transport with my dropcloths, come in cute colors and slogans, and, at 50c or so from Value Village (my favorite thrift shop in Houston), they can be replaced when they get too soiled.
It’s the end of the day and I’m packing up. Items are sitting on the table that I normally would not allow. I’ve already pulled up the dropcloths I had along the walls. But you get the idea of my work area set-up , and the tools I use. The table is for measuring, trimming, and pasting. My other, smaller, hand tools (not shown) are used for the actual wallpaper installation process. My toolbox is in the rear right.
The mural was to go in one wall, but that wall had several corners and turns.Don’t be distracted by the mirror on the left, which is reflecting clothing and dropcloths. The focus is the beautiful etched-looking mural!Before.I love the way the trees creep along the wall and in between the mirror and door moldings.Close-up.Here is a picture of the mural as shown on the company’s website. Both the homeowner and I expected that the trees would reach up higher, and would be visible over the mirror and door. I was disappointed that the company printed it too short for those treetops to be visible over the door, but the homeowner was OK with it. In the end, it worked out nicely, because the homeowner wanted another area covered that I had not measured for, and the lack of trees above the doors meant that I was able to pull that off. More on that in another post. The manufacturer is Rebel Walls ( rebelwalls.com ), and I like their material and quality a lot. Their murals are custom-sizeable, too, which is a bonus. This popular pattern is called Bellewood . It’s a non-woven material and you can paste the paper or paste the wall to install. The home is in the Memorial Villages area of Houston.
Mural panels standing on edge are cut, sequenced, staged, and ready to be pasted. The panel lying on the floor will be my last strip, and will need to be measured and trimmed narrower before it’s ready to be pasted or hung. I use several different methods to paste pre-pasted wallpaper, and you can do a Search here to read more. But for today, I’m using the tried-and-true historic method of running the strip quickly through a water tray . At the top of the photo, several strips have already been submerged and pulled through the water, then folded pasted-side-to-pasted-side. This is called booking . Booking allows the adhesive on the back of the wallpaper to absorb the water and become activated. And it allows the wallpaper substrate to absorb moisture, expand, and then contract a little. This method can sometimes get the material a little too wet, which can lead to over-expansion and then bubbles on the wall. That’s why I’ve placed the booked strips at a slant and over the bucket – so excess water can drain off. Usually I paste and book one strip and then paste and book the next strip. While I’m hanging one, the second one is booking and waiting its turn to be hung. But with this water tray method and certain brands of pre-pasted material, such as Anewall , York , or Sure Strip , the paper sometimes gets so wet that it needs more time to dry before attempting to hang. So I’m pasting more strips at a time, so they can be drying out a bit while I hang the first strips. There’s a bit of a risk to this, which is the potential for the paper to over-expand as it sits wet waiting to be hung. Then once it’s on the wall and starts to dry, it can shrink. All wallpaper shrinks when it dries. But if it has expanded too much, then when it dries and shrinks, you can be left with small gaps at the seams. Again, gaps are common with all wallpapers (most all), but can be exaggerated when dealing with over-saturated pre-pasted material as it shrinks. Back to the method … You see the water tray, filled 3/4 full with clean water. I’ve set it on towels, which are in turn set on top of a thick plastic clear shower curtain. And that’s on top of my usual dropcloths, which are absorbent on the top (blue) side and water-proof on the underside. All this keeps any splashed water from getting onto the clients’ floors. I also sometimes set the water tray in a bathtub, with towels set over the edge of the tub and on the floor.
Wallpaper is comprised of two layers – the top, decorative layer, and the bottom substrate layer. The first step in stripping the paper is to remove the top layer. In this case, the material is a solid vinyl. These solid vinyls usually separate easily from their backing and come off in one large strip. The next step is to soak the backing with water. I use a bucket of warm water and a sponge. You will need to wet and re-wet the backing several times. This water will reactivate the paste. Once it’s wet enough, the paste will let go, and, if you’re lucky, the backing will pull away from the wall easily and in large pieces.Sometimes you have to work a little harder, and use a stiff putty knife to gently scrape the paper off the wall. A good primer underneath will facilitate this process, as well as protect the wall. I hung this original paper 30+ years ago, and once it was all off, the walls were in perfect condition, and I was able to hang the new paper with no additional prep. This is the sink room.In the tub room, the paper was the same brand, but the backing was different. This is a gritty, thicker, manilla type paper backing. This stuff usually absorbs the water nicely and lets go from the wall easily. Not so in this case. First, the top vinyl layer wouldn’t pull off, but had I had to get under it with the putty knife, and then it came off in small pieces, maybe 5″ square. The backing also didn’t let go easily. Even when very saturated with water, it held tight, and I had to use the putty knife to gently scrape it off the wall – mostly in small chunks. Talk about eating up time!All you need to remove wallpaper is a bucket of plain water, a sponge, and a stiff, 3″ putty knife. I know some folks are fond of their additives. But I don’t think they speed the process at all. Plus, I don’t want any residual chemicals left on the wall. Oh, and don’t forget the dropcloths!
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