Old Light Fixture and Thermostat

I’m all about old things , particularly from the ’20’s, ’30’s, and ’40’s . I don’t know if this hanging light fixture is original to this 1936 bungalow in the Eastwood neighborhood of Houston , but it sure fits in. I think it’s gorgeous!

Here’s something I’ve never seen before … an oldie thermostat . Note the well-known brand name Honeywell. I don’t know if it operated heat or cooling , or if it’s as old as the home or was added later . But I sure think it’s super cool. So do the homeowners , who are making sure that it stays right there on the wall !
wallpaper installer

Wallpaper Paste Residue = Crackled Ceiling Paint

You’re looking at the junction between a wallpaper border at the top of a wall and the ceiling. You can see crackled and flaking paint on the ceiling.

This was almost surely caused by the previous wallpaper installer getting paste on the ceiling (which is typical and normal) but failing to wipe it off completely.

The paste is clear and difficult to see. Even when you do a diligent job, it’s easy to leave some residue behind.

The problem is that wallpaper paste attacks water-based paint, and will cause it to do what you see above … crackle, flake, chip off. This can happen if the paint was in place before the wallpaper paste got on it, or if there was paste residue and fresh paint was applied on top of it.

In fact, the decorative paint finish called “crackle finish” is accomplished by applying hide glue onto a surface and then coating it with latex paint.

The crackly paint on the ceiling is unattractive, and impedes adhesion. It takes a lot of scraping and sealing and skimming the wall to rectify this.

A way to avoid this is to astutely wipe off all paste residue. Better yet, what I do is to use special plastic tape at the top of my wallpaper strips, so that no paste gets onto the ceiling in the first place. Do a Search here to see previous posts describing that technique.

You can also use a stain blocker like KILZ Original oil-based primer, or BIN shellac-based primer, to seal off the area before painting. There are water-borne primers that claim to seal such problem areas – but I prefer to stick with oil or shellac.

Stains on Wall Around Crib

Look carefully and you’ll see an oval-shaped dark area on this wall. Stains have soiled the high areas of the textured wall. This is where the crib was up against the wall. Probably the child ran her hand or feet across the wall. Over time, oils from our skin can cause stains like this.
Before smoothing the wall, I applied a stain blocker to this area, to prevent anything from bleeding through the new wallpaper.
I like oil-based KILZ Original best, but there are others out there. BIN by Zinsser is another good option.
The smoothing compound and / or wallpaper primer then goes over the stain blocker.
Additionally, once the new wallpaper is up, it’s important to protect the wall and take steps to prevent new stains from developing.

Food Stains on Wallpaper

his wallpaper is on the backsplash of a kitchen counter. Over 30+ years, you can see splatters that have stained the paper.

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On these pieces that I have stripped from the wall, you can see that the stains have leached through to the back of the paper. Since stains like this usually contain grease, they can bleed through to the new wallpaper, too. So it’s important to make sure that none have gotten onto the drywall behind the wallpaper. If so, a stain blocker will be needed to seal them off. Oil-based KILZ and shellac-based BIN are two good options.

On the right is the KILZ that I used to seal off these stains. It’s important to use the ” Original ” oil-based version, and not any latex or water-borne formulas…. they simply don’t perform as well, no matter what the label says. And know that the fumes are … well, they will get you high and knock out a few brain cells, so wear a respirator, or at least open the windows for good ventilation. Wallpaper paste will not adhere to oil-based products, nor will it stick well to the glossy surface of BIN. So, once the stain-blocker is dry, I go over it with my usual wallpaper primer, Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime.

Preventing a Stain from Bleeding Through

See that oval ring on the paint? That’s from someone lying on the bed and letting his head rest against the wall. Don’t know whether he used hair tonic or not, but even a clean head of hair will contain oils, and those oils will wick into the paint and cause a stain.

The bad thing about this and wallpaper is that certain substances will bleed through wallpaper, staining the surface. Oil and grease are sure contenders.

To prevent this bleed-through, I painted over the stained area with a stain blocker. My favorite is KILZ Original Oil Based. It stinks to high Heaven and breathing too much will make you high, but it is outstanding at sealing all sorts of nasty substances.

Wallpaper paste will not stick to this, so, once it’s dry, roll your usual wallpaper primer over it.

Working in a 19th Century Historic Home

I don’t normally show pictures of my clients’ personal spaces, but this is a documented historic home, and already well-known to the public. The homeowners were eager to share with me the history of the home as well as its inhabitants.

I am proud to be working in this well-preserved structure. It was built in 1883 and is still mostly authentic, retaining original woodwork, flooring, hardware (door knobs, hinges, transom mechanisms, doorbell), and many other elements.

The home is located in the Old Sixth Ward of central Houston. The whole neighborhood is designated a Historic District. This means that there are protections ensuring the preservation of buildings there, as well as preventing out-of-sync new construction.

I highly approve!

Weird Cracks

I have just finished stripping off wallpaper that I hung 12 years ago. The walls beneath are in perfect condition.

Except that, along just about the full height of just about every seam, I discovered these hairline cracks.

What is very odd is that the cracks have not made the wall unstable, and no material has pulled away from the wall (as often happens when you have layers of incompatible materials that will not adhere to each other – do a Search here on “delaminating”).

I believe that my original prep 12 years ago was to skim-float the walls and sand smooth. Then I wiped off the dust with a damp sponge, then followed with my favorite primer at the time, KILZ Original oil-based primer.

My thought is that the KILZ, or possibly the underlying joint compound, has separated due to tension put on it by the wallpaper seams, possibly shrinking and expanding over the years due to minute fluctuations in humidity and temperature.

Why that happened I don’t know.

This past year, I’ve had opportunity to remove wallpaper from several jobs that I hung as far back as 20+ years ago. All were over the very same original prep conditions. But none showed these little hairline cracks.

I always like to understand why something happens. That way, you have the potential to prevent it from happening in the future.

Not that I’m particularly concerned in this case. The tiny cracks have not created any problems, and the wall is not unstable.

I felt perfectly comfortable hanging the new paper right on these walls – however, I made very sure that no seams of the new paper landed exactly on top of those cracks. That would eliminate the chance of any stress put on the cracks by the new seams potentially causing them to weaken and pull away from the wall.

KILZ Stain Blocker to Cover Green Ink

See the green vertical line to the right of the paint can? The previous wallpaper installer probably had a little white wall showing at a seam, so used ink that matched the color of the wallpaper to disguise it.

Ink (along with other substances, like blood, rust, water stains, oil, tobacco, mildew, wood sap, and others) can bleed through joint compound, paint, and wallpaper. Sometimes it takes a few months or years.

So it’s important to discover these stains, and to treat them with a stain-blocking sealer. Water-borne products simply don’t work, no matter what the label claims. Shellac-based sealers like BIN are good. But I like KILZ Original, the oil-based version.

20+ Year Old Paper – Still Perfect

I hung this paper in a master bathroom in Bellaire more than 20 years ago. It is still in perfect shape!

This is due partly to the good quality paper the homeowner chose (not low-end, pre-pasted, paper-backed, solid vinyl), to good ventilation removing humidity from the room, to good installation techniques, and to the great primer I used at that time – Oil Based KILZ Original. Unfortunately, EPA regulations forced changes to this primer, and wallpaper paste will no longer stick to it.

The homeowners are going to renovate and update the bathroom, so I was there taking measurements for the new room. When it comes time to remove this old paper, I know that it will strip off easily and cleanly, because of the installation and primer used when it was put up.

Chinese Hand-Painted Silk Mural

Here is some delicious stuff! This is silk wallpaper, hand painted in China with these beautiful bird, butterfly, and botanical motifs. Look at the close-up shots to see the gorgeous paint detail.

There are some historic companies who make these murals, like Zuber, Gracie, Fromental, and de Gournay, and they can run $500-$1200 per panel. (This wall took seven panels.) But my client found another manufacturer who was way more reasonable. http://www.worldsilkroad.com/

The mural was custom-sized to the homeowners’ wall. The studio added 2″ to the top and bottom, and a little more to each side, for trimming, and to accommodate walls that are not perfectly plumb and ceilings that are not perfectly level. (Never order a mural to the exact dimensions of the wall, and always best to have the paperhanger measure before ordering.)

There are a lot of things that make an install like this much more complicated than a traditional wallpaper. For starters, the silk can easily be stained by just about anything … wallpaper paste, water, hands. So it’s important to work absolutely clean. You will NOT be able to wipe off any errant bit of paste. The paper also had a half inch “bleed” of excess paper along the edges that had to be trimmed off by hand (no photo).

The material was thicker than expected, wanted to stay curled up as it had been in its shipping tube, and the backing was very absorbent, which meant that it sucked up paste and was almost dry by the time it was finished booking and got to the wall… So it required extra paste on the edges to get them to stick tight, while, once again, taking care to not get any paste on the surface of the paper.

The company provided precious little information. Well, actually there was information, but it came in Chinesnglish, and, bless their hearts, was virtually indecipherable. The company was very responsive, but, unfortunately, was unable to provide adequate information about paste recommendations, booking time, was a liner spec’ed, if the substrate was paper or non-woven, if the silk had a protective coating, and even whether or not the goods had to be hand-trimmed or came pre-trimmed. There was a lot of other mysterious content on their instruction sheet that ended up best being disregarded.

So I used common sense and traditional installation methods, and it turned out great.

In one photo, I am rolling out the panels, to be sure they are in the correct sequence. Even though the manufacturer had told me the panels were pre-trimmed and ready to butt on the wall, while rolling them out, I discovered that if I did that, the pattern match would be off. This is when I discovered that 1/2″ had to be trimmed off one side of every strip.

This also meant that each strip would be 36″ wide, rather than 36.5″, so my measurements and layout calculations had to be revised. This was particularly important because that first area to the left of the window was barely more than 36″ wide – and I didn’t want to end up having to piece in a 3/8″ wide strip of this delicate material.

Two other pictures show some crinkles in the material. I believe these happened at the factory or during shipping, because the same defects appear in two consecutive panels, at the same position. They were both up high, and, once the material got wet with paste, expanded a little, and then applied to the wall, these flaws were not detectable.

The last photo shows what you should expect from hand-painted products. They probably had one guy working on Panel 6, and another working on Panel 7, and each probably had a different size paint brush, and possibly their stencil (or whatever they use) was a bit off. Either way, this mis-match is not considered a defect, and is part of the beauty of a hand-crafted mural. There were really only two areas that matched this poorly, and they were both low toward the floor. In the upper areas where branches crossed the seams, the pattern matched very nicely. Really, it’s quite incredible that their precision can be as good as it is.

I’ve never worked with this brand before, but overall, I was pleased with the quality and the installation. You can find the manufacturer by Googling World Silk Road. It comes from England, but is made in China. (Gee…. why can’t they have one of those British guys translate the installation instructions?!)

This mural went on one accent wall in a master bedroom of a home in Idylwood, a small, idyllic, and very desirable neighborhood of 1930’s and 1940’s homes on Houston’s east side. The homeowners love vintage as much as I do, and are keeping most of their home true to its original state.