Finished Kitchen Wall, Finished With the High-Wire Act

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Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

Yesterday I did the smoothed the wall and primed; today I put the paper up. It was just one wall, 5 single rolls, but took five hours. The homeowners were out of town, and left me a key, and I really appreciated the quiet, empty house, free of distractions, because that allowed me to concentrate on my footing, balance, movements, placing the pattern where I wanted it (see shot between the windows), etc.

Interestingly enough, this pattern is almost identical to the one I hung two days ago (see post). This one has a slightly shimmery silver design on a white background, printed on a non-woven substrate. It was supposed to be paste-the-wall, but for many reasons, that would have been very cumbersome while dealing with the extension ladder, so I pasted the back of the paper instead, and it went very nicely.

This wallpaper is by Brewster, and was bought at a discounted price from Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.

Getting High Spaces to Dry

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Today, I am smoothing a textured wall, so it will be ready to receive wallpaper tomorrow. The thing is, this wall is very high – 14′ or so – and so access requires an 8′ stepladder and a 16′ extension ladder.

In this photo, I have troweled on the smoothing compound, and now am waiting for it to dry before I can sand it smooth. It helps to have fans blowing on the smoothing compound, so this is what you see in the photo.

The thing is, because the walls are so high, I’ve had to place the fans up on top of the kitchen cabinets, so they can direct their moving air onto the walls that need to be dried.

All this is more complicated than it sounds, because I have to climb up the wobbly extension ladder, making sure it does not touch / rub against the top of the cabinets, and hold on with one hand while my other hand carries the smoothing compound, or, as in the photos, the (heavy and unwieldy) fans up the ladder. The fans have to be placed on top of the cabinets (previously measured to be sure they had enough space to fit), and velocity adjusted, to be sure they would not vibrate too much or topple off the cabinets.

All this to get the smoothing compound to dry.

This is just one step among many in getting this wall prepped and ready for wallpaper.
Sanding, vacuuming, wiping, and then priming the walls with a very watery, drippy sealer were other challenges to the prep of this wall.

The clients are out of town, and have provided me with a key. I love this, because I can work in total quiet and solitude, and can concentrate on my footing and balance and weight distribution and etc.

The wallpaper will go up tomorrow, so watch for more photos then.

Apologies for the dark photo.

Working Around a Free-Standing Bathtub

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This master bathroom sports a lovely claw-foot bathtub that stands away from the wall. I have to hang wallpaper on that wall over the window. My stepladder won’t fit in the 4″ space between the tub and the wall, and an extension ladder would lean at an unstable angle. I could put a ladder in the tub, but it would have to lean against the window – naaah, don’t think so!

My solution was to cover the edges and bottom of the tub with a padded moving blanket, then use this 2’x4′ piece of 3/8″ plywood to span across the tub, and then set my ladder on top, making sure to keep the legs of the ladder as close as possible to the edges of the tub.

The tub is 400 pounds and very sturdy, and I made sure to keep my weight centered on the ladder. The set up may look scary, but it is actually quite stable and safe.

Soft-Toned Damask on a Tall Bedroom Accent Wall

I don’t get many opportunities to pull out my 16′ extension ladder, but this week I did … the ceilings in this master bedroom were 12′ high! – just a few inches further than I could reach using my 6′ ladder. The first two photos were taken yesterday, as I was “floating” or “skim coating” the wall, to smooth it so the texture would not show through the wallpaper. The whiter areas you see have the plaster-like substance applied, as I work my way from top to bottom, from left to right.

Because of the dark paint on the other walls, I stopped the white “mud” just a hair away from the corner. In the second photo, that is my floating trowel hanging from the brace of the ladder. I floated the wall yesterday, and let it dry overnight. Today I sanded, vacuumed, wiped dust off the wall with a damp sponge, primed, and then finally hung the wallpaper.

I started in the middle (third photo), so I could center the damask motif on the wall, which will look nice once the homeowners get their bed and headboard back in place. The plastic is on my ladder to keep wallpaper paste from slopping all over it. I don’t have to do this with a normal step ladder, but extension ladders require a different angle of approach, and I couldn’t avoid having the pasted paper unbook and flop against my ladder. Yuck.

Fourth photo just shows some of the mechanics of how all this happens. The next pics are shots of the pattern; really pretty, soft, and nicely suited for a bedroom. They wanted a light color on the wallpaper, as it would contrast nicely with their brand new, very dark hardwood floors.

This wallpaper pattern is by Etten (by Seabrook), and is printed on the newish non-woven substrate, which is designed to peel off the wall easily and in one piece, when it’s time to redecorate. Note that, since these papers are generally thick and somewhat puffy, you often see the seams just a little (last two photos).

The room was a master bedroom in a fairly new home, and the location was Pearland, a suburb of Houston, Texas.

Don’t Try This at Home

This week I’m working in an old home in the Heights, which is being redone to be mostly historically correct (it’s in a Historic District, which has certain requirements, plus the owners want it to look authentic).

The master bath has a reproduction claw-foot tub with sculpted back, and it sits several inches away from the wall.  The walls are more than 12′ high.  All this makes it very difficult to get my ladder close enough to the walls to be able to do detailed work.

Here’s a little improvising… I noticed that the bottom of the tub was about the same height as my tool box, and that the tool box was about the same width as the legs of the ladder.  So I put one set of ladder legs in the tub and set the other on top of the tool box.  The tool box is sturdy enough to support the weight of both the ladder and me on it.

In the second photo, I’m trying to reach the top of the wall over the vanity.  The ladder is tall enough, but the vanity extends 20″ or so from the wall, and that’s too far to lean over safely, especially 10′ up in the air.  So you can see a 5-gallon bucket, stacked with a sturdy box.  I was able to put a foot on the box and balance myself well enough to reach where I needed to reach.

Both of these improvisations worked, but they  were far from OSHA-approved!

The next day, I brought my 8′ extension ladder, which is narrow enough to sit inside the tub.  The third photo shows a much safer way to get at that high wall!

In addition, I will bring another 5-gallon bucket, which will be more stable and sturdy than the cardboard box, and will support my weight better, plus be less rickety.

That takes care of the high reaches.  But it’s still quite a gymnastics match for me to squeeze behind the tub and be able to turn and maneuver and do what I need to do detailed work.

All of this jerry-rigging (Julie-rigging 🙂 ), repositioning, squeezing, etc. is adding quite a bit of time to the job, not to mention stress and worry and liability.  In addition, it’s really hard to do wallpaper with an extension ladder, because, since the ladder has to lean on the wall, it’s kinda hard to put wallpaper on that same wall!  It takes a lot of jimmying and jacking and moving around, to get just one strip up.

NEXT time, I’ll tell the homeowners that a tub like this must be removed before I will work in the room.  In this case, with the bathroom being totally remodeled, better planning would have had the wallpaper installed before the tub went in.