Geometric on Tricky Outside Corner

OK, never mind the ’80’s-era toilet paper holder that’s recessed into the wall here and is not removable – which presents a challenge all its own. My issue is adding the next strip of wallpaper to the left, turning the corner, and keeping the pattern matched as well as possible in both the inside corner and around the outside corner.
Usually, when turning inside corners, you wrap the paper around the corner 1/8 of an inch, and then cut a new strip of paper, match the pattern, and then overlap it that 1/8″ . That helps eliminate issues like mis-matches or wrinkles due to crooked corners or uneven / bowed / out-of-plumb walls . (no walls are ever perfect )
But in this case, we also have an outside corner to wrap. Even though it’s only about 2″ wide, that edge can cause the pattern to go off-plumb , or to create wrinkles in the wallpaper .
Going against most rules of wallpapering , I’ve decided to wrap the next strip around this 2″ wide wall and then onto the wider wall to the left .

Here I am, starting to position that next strip. I’m not going to try to wrap a full 27″ wide strip around this turn. Instead, I’ve trimmed it vertically along a horizontal stripe , which makes this strip narrower and more easy to handle , and also will help in placement of the next strip.

Now I’m pushing it into place into that corner. Note how the paper is wrinkling, both on the wide wall, and as it comes around the 2″ wall.

Another shot of the placement and wrinkles .

Using my plastic squeegee smoother to press the paper tightly into the inside corner. Note that, since the corner isn’t perfectly straight or plumb, there were a few areas where I couldn’t press the paper tightly into the wall, but had to leave a bit of a gap or air bubble, in order for the left edge to wrap around the turn.
The plastic smoother can also be used to gently push out wrinkles on the larger body of the strip of paper to the right. Don’t press too hard , nor overwork , because you don’t want to stretch the paper – that will cause more wrinkles.

The plastic smoother took care of the inside corner. Here I’m using my damp microfiber cloth to tightly press the paper around this outside corner .

OK. Paper’s wrapped tightly around this corner – but, because the corner isn’t straight , we’ve got wrinkles and warps .

Sometimes, you need to take a scissors to make relief cuts to help ease the paper around the corner . Try to make your cuts along an element of the design , to make the slit less noticeable.

here is that little narrow bit, finally wrapped around the outside corner. Now we need to add the next strip to the left of this. Note that this narrow strip isn’t straight nor plumb nor equidistant from the corner that we just turned. Nor is it equidistant from the next corner we have to deal with, which is to the left (not pictured).
Since we want the wallpaper strips to match in the corners, it’s important that the wallpaper pattern fall in the corner to the left at the same point from ceiling to floor. Complicated to explain.

So I’m taking a fresh strip of wallpaper , made sure the pattern matches correctly , and have trimmed it vertically along the tan stripe . Now placing it along this wrapped edge.
Because I’m overlapping instead of butting , I’m able to pull the new strip to the right or left, to keep it equidistant from the right outside corner . Or, from the inside corner to the left.
Actually, I don’t care much about the right side. The eye won’t notice if the new strip isn’t perfectly plumb . Nor will it notice if the pattern match isn’t 100% perfect . But it will notice if the pattern doesn’t match perfectly in the inside corner to the left.
So I’m pulling and manipulating and overlapping the strip a bit, so that the left edge of it is exactly 10-3/4″ from the left edge. This ensures that the pattern motifs fall all at the same point into that corner on the left.
Do I can cut my next strip, trim it vertically so the design matches with that in the corner, and get a perfect pattern match in the corner. Kinda difficult to explain, but I hope you can follow what I’m describing.

Note that this overlap is causing a bit of a ridge under the paper . Hard to see here, but when the paper dries and shrinks tight against the wall, it will be a little more obvious. But I’d rather have a ridge on the right, than a pattern mis-match in the corner to the left.
Oh, and never mind that little pattern mis-match to the right … that’s the paper wrapped around the corner, so you’re looking at different dimensions, not a pattern mis-match.

Here is that strip finished. The vertical strips isn’t perfectly plumb, but no one can tell that.
ut the pattern is perfectly straight in the inside corner to the left . So when I take my subsequent strip and trim it vertically to remove the right edge by approximately 10-3/4″ , the pattern should match perfectly in this inside corner. (It did!)

This “sort of” Greek key trellis geometric design is by Thibaut , one of my favorite brands. It was on a triditional paper substrate , and was hung via the paste the paper method .
It was purchased from my favortite source for wallpaper in Houston , Dorota Hartwig at the Sherwin-Williams in the Rice Village , who has more selection books than anywhere else in the city – and knows what’s in every one of them! Call before heading over (713) 529-6515 .
The home is in the Champions Forest area of northwest Houston.

Using Heat To Bend Vinyl

I will be wrapping a stiff , thick , embossed textured vinyl wallpaper around the inside of this window return . This 90* angle is called an outside corner . This is tricky enough.
But the real feat will be wrapping the material around that bend , and getting it to adhere to that little lip on the bottom next to the wainscoting – which is only about 1/4″ deep . That doesn’t give much for the paper to grab hold of, especially since it is stiff and will want to retain it’s flat position .

Heat gun to the rescue! Heat will cause the vinyl to soften and allow it to bend . This is my test piece. I’m experimenting with how much heat is needed and the delicate balance between bending and melting or burning .
Also how much time is required for the vinyl to cool and how well it will retain its new shape , and how firmly it will adhere to that little narrow 1/4″ lip .

Because I can’t safely put my hands in front of the heat gun, and my plastic smoother tool would not hold up, I use this ” Euni Plate ” of stainless steel , which was invented and manufactured and sold by a colleague of mine in the Wallcovering Installers Association WIA .

Here’s another view. The plate has angles and rolled edges for various uses. The damp cloth is to quickly cool the vinyl, in hopes to keep it in the bent shape .

Another trick is to use a straightedge and razor blade to gently and lightly score the vinyl along the outside of the corner fold , to break the surface a little and allow it to bend . You’ve got to be careful, because cut too deeply and you’ll end up with a sliced edge that’s unattractive and also may delaminate ( come apart ).

Finished – with nice tightly wrapped edges that are staying in place .
wallcovering installer houston installation

Tricky Outside Corner

One of the rules of wallpaper hanging is that you don’t wrap long strips around outside corners – especially when another strip will be butted up against it.

Drywall corners are never 100% plumb, and most have some sort of bow.

The 3/8″ – 1/2″ bit of paper presents additional challenges. Besides the fact that is is 100% likely that it will not wrap around the corner perfectly straight, the tension involved in wrapping that little bit of paper around the corner means that it will want to not lie down flat, and will have a hard time lying down tight to the wall.

The 1/2″ of wallpaper did NOT wrap around the corner in a straight line. The middle section bowed to the left, and the top and bottom edges were drawn closer to the corner bead, and were narrower than the center section.

The answers to this would be to

~let the new strip of wallpaper gap at the top and bottom sections of the wall

~cut the paper vertically along the edge, and position the sliced-off 38″ piece on the new surface, and butt the subsequent strip next to it. This would keep the pattern intact, but present the same challenge of trying to butt the straight edge of the new strip up against a wavy edge of that 3/8″ wide strip. It would also leave a visible cut edge, as well as cut edges that might come loose as people walk past and brush against the wall

~cut the paper vertcally along the edge, and then throw away the 3/8″ wide strip, and place the subsequent strip next to it. You would still have a cut edge showing, but you would not have the wavy 3/8″ strip. However, since 3/8″ of the design would have been cut off and discarded, there would be a very noticeable pattern mis-match.

Quandry!

But the wallpaper came to the rescue! This paper (see previous post for brand info) was incredibly malleable and manipulable. I was able to match the pattern perfectly, and hang the new strip and push / pull it into position so it met the wavy edge of the previous strip without any visible gaps of overlaps.

Wrapping around the next corner to the left was the next hurdle, because now we had both a left and a right outside corner that were not straight, causing the left edge of the new strip to be really warped.

Not going to get into a long explanation here, but, again, because the paper itself was very malleable, and because the subsequent strip (not shown) around the left corner was only 3 1/2 wide and also very manipulable, and because the non-woven wallpapers don’t shrink when they dry, this series of walls and turns and Van Gogh wallpaper looked great, with no wrinkles, gapping or white lines at the seams.

Heat Gun – The Great Persuader

Today I was trying to lay some scrim backed textured vinyl (the Thibaut’s Bankun Raffia, same as yesterday’s post) around an outside corner that ended on a 3/8″ return. That 3/8” did not give the paper much to grab ahold of. In addition, the thick vinyl was very argumentative about wrapping that corner. Even though I augmented the wallpaper adhesive with my “secret favorite stick-um” – clear adhesive caulk), the vinyl was not sticking. Scoring the material vertically along the edge of the corner didn’t help.
So I called in the big guns – my heat gun that is (and an extension cord). Low heat, run for just a second or two over the vinyl where it was sitting on the corner, was all that was needed to get the thick vinyl to wrap and lie down.

Crooked Walls = Wrinkly Paper

Digital Image

Digital Image

Walls in homes are usually never perfectly plumb, just as ceilings and floors are never perfectly level. Not a problem if you’re painting. But if you are hanging wallpaper, that wallpaper wants to hang straight, and so it wants a straight wall to hang on to.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that if a wall is crooked, bowed, or off-plumb, wallpaper will have difficulty hanging butted up against it.

In this case, I had turned a strip of wallpaper around an outside corner – very tricky for several reasons, and more so because virtually no outside corner is perfectly plumb, which compounds the trickiness. If you wrap wallpaper around a wall / corner that is not plumb / straight, the far edge of the wallpaper will likewise become bowed or un-straight. So when you go to butt the next strip of wallpaper against this one, one straight edge will not be able to find another straight edge to “marry with,” and the strips will want to gap or overlap. Not good.

So what I did was, once I got around the outside corner, I made sure that the far edge of the strip of wallpaper was plumb and straight. I used a 6′ magnesium straightedge and a 4′ level as guides.

But making the far edge of the wallpaper strip comply to plumb caused the body, or central area, of the wallpaper strip to become wrinkled due to excess material. Thankfully, this was a forgiving pattern.

What I did was, I cut along some lines of the wallpaper design motif. This created some relief, so I could ease out the wrinkles and smooth the paper against the wall. Voilà! The wrinkles and stress on the paper are gone; cuts, splices, and overlaps are invisible, and the the far edge of the paper is straight and ready to butt against the next strip of wallpaper.