Homeowner Tackled the Wallpaper Install – So, How’s That Working Out for You?

Digital Image

Digital Image

The homeowner tried tackling this wallpaper installation herself, without even consulting so much as a YouTube video. She didn’t do an all-out bad job, and the paper is still stuck to the wall after three years. But there are a number of things that were done incorrectly.

1. Walls were not primed with a wallpaper primer

2. Caulk should have been run around the top of the backsplash

3. Paper was wrapped around the edge of door moldings and not trimmed.

4. Seams were overlapped

5. Overlapped areas were not secured with a “vinyl-over-vinyl” adhesive.

6. Pattern was not matched.

7. And, last but very important – a poor choice of wallpapers.

I am not a fan of paper-backed, solid-vinyl wallpapers, especially the pre-pasted, lower-end products. Do a Search here on various terms, and you will learn a lot about the material and its poor performance. IMO

In the meantime, when I take on this job, I will remove all the old paper, scrub the walls to remove paste residue, fix any dings in the walls, prime with an appropriate primer, hang the paper properly, by matching the pattern, butting the seams, and trimming correctly along baseboards and door moldings, etc., and, when finished, I will run clear caulk along the top of the vanity and other key areas, then give the family my “lecture” about leaving the door open and using the exhaust fan and avoiding long steamy showers.

Wallpaper Repair Behind a Toilet

Some renovations were being done in this home in the Museum District, and the toilet was removed. The toilet tank had sat very tight to the wall, so the previous wallpaper installer was not able to get wallpaper behind the toilet. Instead, he cut around it, leaving a blank space behind the tank. Not a big deal at all, it happens from time to time. But once the toilet was removed, the homeowner did not like the idea of the empty wall back there. I failed to get a shot, sorry.

I was called in to patch the spot. I originally planned to replace a short, full-width strip, from the seam to the right of the toilet to the corner on the left, because all that would be potentially visible would be a horizontal splice about 14″ above the floor, and maybe a slight color difference between the paper on the wall and the paper that had been rolled up in storage for many years.

But after studying the situation, I decided to make the patch as small as possible. I could hide the splice better if I didn’t go all the way to the corner and instead kept it close to the toilet. This would also minimize any difference in pattern match, due to different expansion of the material, between what I installed and what the previous guy installed. (Different methods, different pastes, might mean different amounts of swelling / expanding.)

What I did was strip off the old original paper (a blue vinyl paper, installed before the other guy put up the tan ship yard paper). This was harder than I expected, because the original guy had not primed the wall, and when wallpaper is stuck directly to the Sheetrock, it can be VERY difficult to get off. I also removed the curled, un-stuck parts of the tan ship paper. I primed with Gardz, a good sealer for Sheetrock, and used a heat gun to dry everything quickly.

Then I cut a fresh piece of paper, matching the pattern, a little bigger than the section I had removed. I pasted it, booked it (let it sit a few minutes), and then put it over the area. Then I took a straight edge and a new razor blade and cut around the patch, just a little inside the edge.

I removed the outside area, then carefully lifted the new patch away from the wall, and removed the overcut area on the paper on the wall. Once that was removed, the new patch fit into place invisibly.