Battling Curled Rolls

Wallpaper comes in tight rolls. Often, when you cut a strip off the roll, it wants to remain curled up, as you see here. Some types of non-woven material are really bad about this.

Even with weights on it, it’s hard to keep this stuff flat enough to get paste on the back. And when you do, it’ll often curl up again and get paste on the surface of the wallpaper .

So I’ll take the bolt of paper and carefully roll it backward , securing it with an elastic hairband from the dollar store. This was a several-day job, so I let the rolls sit over night. But often all you need is a few minutes to eliminate what we call ” memory ” – the desire for paper to stay rolled up.

Look at how nice and flat and flexible this example has become.

Note: rolling backward can damage the material, particularly some non-wovens that are what I call “puffy” and thick. Folding these backwards can cause the fibers to crease – which doesn’t look good on the wall! So it’s important to roll the material around a form for support, such as an unopened bolt of wallpaper. And to roll carefully and slowly as you go. Once the paper is completely re-wound and the hairband secured, you can carefully remove the support. Still, with some types of N-W, you may still end up with creases.

A Shocking Event

When I take a bathroom light fixture down, I still need light, so I often use an elastic hairband to hang an extension cord with a light bulb from the exhaust fan or air vent. That’s what you see in the photo, a close up.
Well, I was working on the strip over the door and my chin bumped into the extension cord. ZAP!!
So what you’re also looking at in the photo is a section of extension cord that got frayed or, from the looks of it, maybe melted by my heat gun nozzle being placed on it somehow. However it happened, enough of the copper wire was exposed to give me a resounding shock!
Luckily I didn’t drop anything or mess up the strip of wallpaper I was working on.

An unexpected but good reason to carry electrical tape in my toolbox .

Here’s the patched wire. As you can see, it’s not the first repair this cord has seen.
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Dollar Store Hairbands to the Rescue!

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You never know what crazy item will fill a need. I already use hair bands from the dollar store for, well, for keeping my hair out of my face. But I also use them to rig a way to hang a light bulb on an extension cord from the ceiling; for instance, from an air vent or exhaust fan.

Here is another use: Most thick non-woven wallpapers are stiff and like to keep curled up like they were on the roll. If you take these strips to the wall that has been covered with adhesive, you run the risk of the paper bumping into the paste and getting messy, or even ruined.

So I roll the paper backwards, so the printed side will not come in contact with the wall. But the paper fight that back-rolling, so I use hairbands to hold the re-rolled paper as I want it.

When I am ready to hang the strip, I simply climb my ladder, remove the hairband, and let the strip of paper unroll, with its backside against the pasted wall. Then I can easily position it and smooth it against the wall.