Modern Electrical Technology Makes Hanging Paper Easier

Bad photo, but I’m to put wallpaper in this room, including the tall and deep fir-down at the top right, which has two recessed light fixtures in it. You want the paper to go behind the light fixtures, not cut around them, if at all possible. In the photo, at the far middle left, you can see one fixture dangling by it’s wires below the fir-down.

Some of these recessed fixtures are tricky to take down (many won’t come down at all), but these ones turned out to be held in place by tension springs, which fit into sideways hooks, which you can see at the left inside the hole.

Here’s a closer look. These are the same type springs that hold the vent covers to exhaust fans in place. As you push them upward, they spread apart and hold the fixture securely in place. Easy-peasy! You can also squeeze the springs together and remove them from the mounting housing, which lets the fixture dangle from its electrical wires.

That’s what I’ve done here. Now it’s much easier to work the wallpaper around the fixture. But it could be made even easier – by removing the light fixture all together.

Most light fixtures have black and white wires coming from inside the wall that connect to black and white wires on the electrical fixture and are connected and held in place by a twist-on screw cap or wire nut. What’s very cool about this particular fixture’s electrical connections is that it’s made by this orange plug, which fits into the orange receptacle – no wires to twist or cap, and no need to cut off the power. It’s all simple and perfectly safe.
Here I’ve disconnected the two orange parts.

With the light fixture completely out of the way, it’s much easier to install the wallpaper, and no paste gets slopped onto the fixture.

Here’s the wallpaper installed and trimmed around the inside of the opening.
Oh, and don’t mind the slight pattern mis-match on the left … there were issues with un-plumb and un-level walls coming into play.

And here I’ve reconnected the orange plug parts, and placed the spring back inside those hooks, then pushed the light fixture up and back into place. Look at how nicely the flange (outer ring) of the fixture covers the cut edge of the hole and the wallpaper.

Smoothing Over Holes and Bumps

The artwork and hanger have been removed, but this wall anchor remains in the drywall . It will leave a bump under the new wallpaper . I removed it from the wall. That left a hole that will leave an indention under the new paper .

Here I’ve collected a bit of joint compound (we call it mud ), a plaster -like substance that’s used for installing drywall , as well as for patching holes and smoothing textured walls (called skim-floating or skim-coating )

Here it is applied over the hole.

To speed the drying process, I use my heat gun .

Using a sanding sponge to smooth it.

Wiping dust off with a damp sponge . Important, because neither primer nor wallpaper paste will adhere to dust .
After this dried , I primed over this area and the whole wall with wallpaper primer . I like Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime .
Now the wall is ready for wallpaper, with no worries that bumps or dips will show through .

Weird Water Supply Line On/Off

Here is the water line as it comes out of the wall and leads to the toilet in this powder room in Houston.
Usually this line or pipe is accompanied by a faucet handle, which you can turn to either turn on or shut off water to the toilet.
But this is the first time I’ve ever seen this different method of controlling the water flow.
Instead of turning a handle, you pull the small plug and it closes the pipe and shuts off the water.
Or, push the knob in and it will open up the lines and let water flow.
The round silver plate against the wall is decorative for hiding the hole in the wall. This plate is called an escutcheon .

Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Phone Jacks

These days, most families don’t use these phone jack connections. Why have this cover plate in the middle of the wall, if you’re not using it?

Unscrew from the wall, and they’re easy to disconnect. Just push a flat head screwdriver or similar into the latch connection at top and bottom, and ….

…. Voilà! The gizmo is disconnected.

The wiring is still intact, in case the family wants to reconnect at a future date. For now, I’ve stuffed the wires into the wall …

… and covered the hole with wallpaper. The small recessed area is barely noticeable, and looks a whole heck of a lot better than a useless white cover plate.

Patching a Hole Around a Pipe

You’re looking at a water supply line underneath a pedestal sink in a powder room.
This hole is a little wide, and offers the wallpaper nothing to adhere to. In addition, there is no escutcheon (decorative plate) to hide the hole.

I took some special paper and cut a ” collar ” to fit around the pipe and also cover the hole.

I dipped the “collar” into Gardz . This is cool stuff. It soaks in to porous surfaces, adheres to surfaces, and dries hard.

Here is the patch in place. Once it’s dry, I’ll skim-float with joint compound (” mud “) and then sand smooth.
The finished product will be a smooth, intact surface for the wallpaper to adhere to, with only a tiny gap around the plumbing.

Dining Room Faux Silk Repair – Foundation Shifting Twisted Drywall

Always save the leftovers from your wallpaper install! I hung this textured vinyl faux silk ” Wild Silk ” wallpaper by Thibaut ( # 839 T 344 ) at the beginning of the pandemic, a year and a half ago (April 2020 to see my blog post). Since then, the house had significant shifting of the foundation, which caused damage to the drywall over doorways. Here the homeowners’ ” guy ” has very skillfully cut into the Sheetrock, replaced studs inside the wall, and closed up the hole, leaving everything amazingly smooth, with no damage to the surrounding wallpaper. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a contractor do work this well.

I didn’t get pictures of my “during.” But here is the area right after I used left over scraps to replace the missing piece. I used a double cut / splice to to meld the two strips together at the bottom. (sorry, no pic). It was tricky getting the replacement strip of wallpaper in there, because the new strip expanded and twisted differently from the original wallpaper. Too difficult to explain here, but the bottom line is that the new strip was too wide for the space, plus the pattern drifted and so would not line up on the left side of the new strip. All this is evidence, I believe, that, with time and weather, the wall continues to shift and stretch. I did a lot of tweaking and twimming and touching up with pastel. All said and done, it turned out great. The white line you’re seeing is fishing line hung from the ceiling – not the wallpaper. 🙂

Still, there was a bit of a white line at the edge of the original strip on the right side. (not pictured) This was caused by the contractor either abrading from overworking or from smoothing compound infiltrating into the edge of the wallpaper. Either way, it was extremely minor, and unavoidable. Still, it left a pretty noticeable white line along 18″ of seam area. In the photo above, I have used chalk pastels to color the edges and even out color differences. From three feet away, you can hardly see it!

Here are the artist’s pastels I used to disguise the white area. They’re from Texas Art Supply (right around the corner from me!) I also used these chalks successfully on a 2″ circle of wall where someone had either abraded the surface by rubbing, or possibly bleached the area. No pic of that, but I was very pleased with how it turned out.

Hallway Wallpaper Repair – Thibaut Honshu

This couple in the West University neighborhood of Houston loves color and avant garde – unexpected and fun! I hung this Honshu wallpaper by Thibaut in their small hallway at the beginning of the pandemic – April 2020. Since then, they decided to change the faucets and showerhead in the bathroom on the other side of this wall. To access the pipes, the plumber had to cut a hole in the drywall. The ‘guy’ that this couple uses did a fantastic job of cutting the drywall, preserving the wallpaper, and then patching the hole. You can even see that his cuts are perfectly level and plumb!

Slapping wallpaper patches over the two holes would have probably sufficed. But I wanted to make it better, so I stripped off and replaced the old wallpaper. This meant patching the guy’s drywall repairs. I didn’t get a photo, but I used drywall tape and joint compound to even out the areas. A heavy duty floor fan plus a heat gun helped get the smoothing compound to dry in a few hours. I sanded smooth and applied wallpaper primer, and ended up with what you see in the photo.

To conserve paper, instead of replacing the entire two strips from ceiling to floor, which could have caused some problems with matching the pattern on the left side, I patched in about one foot down from the ceiling line. To disguise the appliqued area, I used a scissors and trimmed around the wallpaper design, as you see here. This is less visible than a straight horizontal cut.

In this photo, the two strips have been put into place. You could never tell there was a hole (or two) !

Strengthening a Tenuous Seam

Most people don’t use phone or cable connections in the wall anymore, so it’s common for me to remove the cover plates, stuff the wires into the box, and cover the hole with the wallpaper.

In this case, the seam was going to fall where there really wasn’t going to be enough wall for the wallpaper to be able to grab ahold of (see top photo). I was worried about the seam coming loose and gaping open.

My solution was to tear a bit of backing from a piece of scrap paper and use it to bridge the area over the hole where the seam would fall. This way, the wallpaper would be able to grab hold of the paper, and the seam would not pop open.

I had to separate the non-woven backing from the textured vinyl surface of the wallpaper. This gave me a thin piece that was not likely to cause ridge under the new wallpaper. It also got rid of the vinyl surface – wallpaper adhesives don’t like to stick to vinyl or other slick surfaces.

I tore the strip because the edges were then slightly feathered, which makes any slight bump under the wallpaper less noticeable.

I put plenty of paste on both sides of the patch strip, so it would stick to both the wall behind it and to the new wallpaper going on top of it.

No photo of the finished area, but it worked perfectly, with the paper and the seam stuck tightly and invisibly to the wall.

Hiding an Unused Opening in the Wall

Beneath this light switch is an equal-sized hole cut in the wall, with cable wires running behind it, intended probably for a sound or alarm system. The homeowners were not using it, and it had a blank wall plate over it.

Instead of having a white plate of plastic that was not serving any purpose visually clog up the wall, I removed the plate and just let the wallpaper cover the opening.

Right now, you can see a little warped area where the paper is spanning the void. But as the paper dries, it should pull taught and disguise the opening nicely. The mottley color of the wallpaper will further help to obscure the area.