This Week’s Delaminating Walls – Finished Project

Re my two previous posts, once the wall was repaired and a liner hung, the next step was to hang the wallpaper. It went up beautifully, and the seams are invisible. No way the seams can open up again!

This pattern is called Brooklyn Toile, and is by Flavor Paper, and is in their EZ Papes line, which is a pre-pasted paper that goes up easily and also will strip off the wall easily when you redecorate. I liked it a lot.
And many thanks to Flavor Paper, who helped make the replacement paper a little more affordable for this new family and their precious baby boy.

All told, it took me three days to strip the wallpaper, repair the surface, hang the liner paper, and replace the paper on just one wall plus a few short strips over two doors. There are, of course, charges for materials and labor to factor in. Much better to anticipate this potential problem ahead of time and take steps to prevent it. Liner, seam tape, overlapped seams are all good options.

Typical Texture in a New Home in Houston

Not all parts of the country have texture on their walls, but here in Houston, we sure do. These photos show a pretty typical texture found on walls in newer homes in our area.

This style is called “orange peel,” but it’s much heavier than what was being used a few years ago. I don’t care for this style much, but it’s MUCH better than the old “popcorn” stuff that was popular in the ’70’s.

And, yes, the texture has to be smoothed out before wallpaper can go up. For one thing, the bumps will show under the paper, and it looks horrible. For another, you want the wallpaper to have a flat surface to grab on to. If texture is left on the wall, the paper can only stick to the tops of the bumps, and won’t have maximum potential for adhering.

Liner paper won’t disguise this sort of texture. Besides, it takes as much time to line a room as it does to skim float it. That’s my preferred method – skim floating with a layer of joint compound (sort of like plaster), then sanding smooth and then priming.

Voilà – a perfectly smooth surface for the new wallpaper!

The Azalea Trail and Wallpaper

I went on the Azalea Trail Home Tour today, put on every year by the River Oaks Garden Club. River Oaks is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Houston, and one of the fifth in the nation. So the point is, we got to see some VERY lux homes. http://www.riveroaksgardenclub.org/AzaleaTrail.cfm

Three of the four homes I visited were traditional in style, and two of those dated back to the ’20’s and ’40’s. In these types and caliber of homes, you expect to see wallpaper in various rooms, quite often exotic hand-painted silks or high-end designer papers. This year, though, I only saw one room that was papered, a dining room.

It was a small diamond shaped lattice pattern in a light orange/red on cream background, and it was the perfect background for the setting. It looked to be one of the British papers. What amazed me, though, was that you could see the texture from the wall showing under the paper!

Granted, it was a very light texture, and I had to look hard to be sure it was texture and not a mottely color on the background of the paper. But, still, it was visible.

If I had done this job, I would have ensured that the walls were smooth before hanging the paper. It’s possible the installer did use a lining paper, as many of them do with these British pulp papers. But liners don’t completely hide texture, so other steps should have been taken to make sure the surface was as smooth as it could possibly be.

Just my 2¢. It’s possible the homeowner didn’t want to have the wall smoothed, and it certainly wasn’t glaringly noticeable. The finished room was lovely, tiny bumps or not.

I just wish there had been more wallpaper on this home tour!