Wallpaper – Poor Adhesion Issue Due to Dusty Walls

The existing wallpaper in this sink / vanity room of a hall bathroom is unique, because instead of coming in rolls, it came in pieces of torn paper, each about the size of a paper plate, that were placed on the wall in random ways, with the pieces overlapping each other.  This was a fairly popular wallpaper option back in the ‘90’s. 
I’m to hang new wallpaper in this room, so my first step was to remove the torn paper.  

This started out seeming easy, because the paper was literally falling away from the wall – but only around the top, and only the top 5” or so.  The lower areas were stuck nice and tight to the wall. What’s going on?

The original installer hung his wallpaper directly on new drywall / Sheetrock , with no primer and no other prep.  Turns out that, under this wallpaper, there are actually several different types of wall surfaces related to the new drywall.  

The main part of drywall is grey in color .  But here you see a band of white running along the top of the wall, under the ceiling, about 5” wide.   This is where the joint compound was applied , to smooth over joints , drywall tape , and nail heads . 

But the curious thing is that the wallpaper is adhering to the drywall – but not to this white band of joint compound below the ceiling line.
The reason?  After the drywall guys sanded this area smooth, no one wiped off the dust left over from sanding .  Thus, there was  a layer of dust on the wall, between the wall and the wallpaper.  Well, the wallpaper paste wants to bite into a solid surface, and it can’t get a grip on dust.  That’s why you see this top portion pulling away from the wall. 

I have a lot more prep to do in this room.  But before moving forward, I took a sponge and bucket of water and wiped the dust off that top portion of wall.  Now I’m assured that any smoothing compound or primer or wallcovering or other that is applied, will stick . 

For reference, here’s a shot of the un-primed drywall being uncovered as I strip off wallpaper in another area.  This picture shows the sections of drywall , joint compound , and also paint (from overspraying the woodwork ).  Wallpaper adheres to all these different surfaces in different ways.  Another reason to always use a wallpaper primer – it will adhere to just about any surface, and will create a uniform coating for the wallpaper to adhere to. 
I like Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime.

Printing Defects With Flavor Paper Brownstoner

Here are two strips of wallpaper, dry on my work table, next to each other, plotting how they will be situated on the wall.  But – whoops! – The pattern doesn’t match properly across the seam.  The design on the right is a repeat of the design on the left. 

Here’s another section, and the pattern also repeats.  Double image.  Won’t look good on the wall.

With the strips separated, you can see the mis-match a little better.  Note the strip on the right should be moved a bit lower to get the correct pattern match.  Still, the pattern has been mis-printed at the factory, so the match isn’t accurate . 
On this left edge of the strip on the right, note how thick the black vertical line is.

Now on this same area of the pattern (same building and bricks) but from a different roll, note how thin is the black line on the left edge of the wallpaper
Butting up strips against each other from these different rolls will result in either a really fat black line , or a really thin black line.  Neither is what the pattern is supposed to be, and will be eye-jarring.

Both these rolls are from the same Run , or Lot .  Which means they were (supposedly) printed at the same time.  So, theoretically, they should both be exactly the same.  But here, you see, obviously, they are not.  Obviously, some mis-steps at the factory with either printing or trimming .   Or, someone slapped the wrong labels on the packaging .  I’ve had suspicions of this happening with previous installation s. 

The pattern is reminiscent of New York City , and is called Brownstoner  .  In the EZ Papes line of pre-pasted material – which I usually like a lot.  However, this is the second time in two months that I’ve encountered unacceptable issues with this material .  See previous blog posts. 
In addition, this stuff bubbles / blisters .  These usually dry flat as the wallpaper paste dries – but not always. 

The manufacturer is Flavor Paper .  They have really innovative patterns , so a fun brand to explore.  Note that I’m not fond of their vinyl material, and definitely not their peel & stick .  The one I will work with is this pre-pasted EZ Papes option.   Still, I wish they would get their quality control re printing , packaging , creased material , run / lot numbers , and suspected shipping out returned material as if it was new material.  (Search to read previous post )

Here’s a close-up so you can see how cute and fun this design is.
I spent a lot of extra time to get this wallpaper up and looking good.  Including plotting layout to avoid the double-image at the seams , overlapping some seams , tracking down bubbles and popping them with a razor blade and chasing the air out with my plastic smoother tool . 

Kill Point Over Door

If you’re hanging wallpaper around a room with four walls and four corners , virtually always when that last strip of paper meets up with the first strip you hung some hours ago, you’ll have a mis-match of the pattern . That’s why we try to tuck this in an inconspicuous place like a 1′ high corner above or behind a door.
But sometimes you don’t have a hidden corner , and all four corners are highly visible and run the full height of the wall. In these cases, it looks much better for the pattern to match floor to ceiling , as you see in this photo. But you have to put the kill point somewhere!

In these cases, a more logical and less noticeable location for the mis-match is the shorter area over the door – where nobody is going to be spending much time looking at, anyway.
My first strip is on the left, and the rest of the powder room has been papered, and I’m working my way from the right to meet up with that strip on the left.

Here it is going into place. I’ve matched the pattern on this new strip to the strip on the left . The strip is too wide, and is overlapping the strip on the right. And, as expected, the pattern doesn’t match up on the right.
As an aside, that blue plastic tape you see at the top of the strip of wallpaper is to keep paste off the ceiling. Once I’ve trimmed that excess paper off, I’ll remove the tape , and the ceiling will be nice and clean – no paste residue to wipe off or worry that it will be visible or damage the paint / cause flaking .

Here I’ve trimmed that short strip at ceiling and above the door trim. As you can see, it’s overlapping the strip on the right, leaving a bump, and plus, the pattern doesn’t match .
To be honest, with this busy pattern and this short area up over a door , this 1′ of mismatch isn’t going to be very noticeable. But I wanted to make it look better.
I’m going to splice these two strips together.
In the photo above, the left strip is overlapping the strip on the right. I don’t like the way the pattern is lining up. A splice will leave branches cut off, and will be noticeable.

So here I’ve reversed things and have overlapped the strip on the right on top of the strip on the left . Now the pattern gives a better option for a splice . I like that there is a curved vertical tree trunk that I can cut along. This will help disguise the splice.

So now to do the splice, I have push hard enough on my blade to cut through two strips of paper. But it’s important to not score the wall surface beneath. When the wallpaper paste dries and the paper shrinks a tad, it will put tension on the wall surface . If that underlying surface is not unstable or not sound, due to being cut into, or dust is another factor , that tension can cause the wall surface to pull apart , and the wallpaper can come away from the wall. Actually, it’s not the wallpaper coming away – it’s the layers of the wall pulling apart.
So I use these thin flexible polystyrene plastic strips under where the splice will be. You can’t cut through them!

Here I’ve pulled the two strips of wallpaper away from the wall and am positioning the plastic strip under where the splice will take place. Next, I’ll smooth the two wallpaper strips back into place, with the right one overlapping the one on the left.

I like to hold a single edge razor blade in my fingers , but you can use a blade holder or trim knife , too.

Here I’ve free-handed my cut , trimming along the vertical tree trunk at the top , then straight down through blank area, then through some branches, and finally at the bottom again trimming along a curved vertical tree branch. Now I’m removing the excess from the left side of the trim / splice .

Lifting the strip on the right so I can remove the excess piece that was trimmed off on the right.

Now removing the polystyrene strip.

Using my plastic smoother to gently press the two trimmed strips of wallpaper into place.

Here it is all done. Trimming along the vertical branch at the top has helped disguise the splice. The bottom area doesn’t match 100% perfectly, but I’m OK with that. I’ll work on smoothing out that teensy overlap and the seam will be nice and flat.

All done!

The wallpaper pattern is called Luminous Branches and is by York . It’s non-woven / paste the wall material , and very nice to work with, durable , stain resistant , and will strip off the wall easily and with no damage when you redecorate .
If you’re interested in the source for the splicing / double cutting strips , or the thin blue tape to keep paste off the ceiling, please email me at wallpaperlady@att.net

Kill Point Over Door

aaHere’s what this flowing viny wallpaper pattern looks like in this dining room in the Garden Oaks / Oak Forest neighborhood of Houston . The bottom 1/3 of the wall is block paneling / wainscoting , so the wallpaper on just the area above is not overwhelming .
A kill point is the place in a room where your last strip of wallpaper meets up with the first strip you hung . this virtually always results in a pattern mis-match . So we try to hide that in an inconspicuous place, such as in a corner behind a door .
In this room, all of the corners are very visible . A mismatched corner of 7′ high would be very noticeable .

So in this room, I was able to cleverly disguise the mis-match in a much shorter area, over a door . This is only 6″ high . Here my first strip is on the left, and my last strip is on the right, with two short strips needed to bridge that gap .

Here the strip on the right has been put into place.

Here’s the piece that will butt up against the strip on the left. Eeek! It’s 1/2″ too narrow to cover the gap. Also, as you can see, there is an obvious pattern mis-match at that seam on the right.

look at this tree branch . I’m going to use that to my advantage.

Here I’ve taken another piece and have matched the pattern on the right side. Note that it’s not matching on th left.

Here I am, back to that strip we saw a few photos ago, that will match with the strip on the left. Remember tha tree branch I pointed out? Here I’ve trimmed the wallpaper vertically along that tree branch .

Here I’m putting it into place, butting it up against the strip on the left, and overlapping the strip on the right. But that’s going to leave a vertical ridge under this strip, where the strip underneath it ends on the left.

But you won’t notice that overlap if it runs under a design motif . Here I’m using a pencil to trace the outline of that tree branch, bringing it in so that the tree branch will overlap just 1/8″ – 1/4″ over the strip on the right.
Note that since the surface of this paper is vinyl , and wallpaper paste doesn’t always adhere well to slick plastic , I’ve used a special border paste or vinyl over vinyl or seam repair adhesive just on this small 1/8″ overlapped area .

Strip on the right trimmed to conform to the curves of the tree branch.

Tree branch piece being put into place.

Tree branch strip trimmed and finished.

SDone and viewed from below. OK, so the pattern doesn’t match 100% perfectly the way the designer intended. Some of the motifs are closer together than they “should” be. From here, who the heck is going to notice?! This looks pretty darned good – and it looks way better than having a 7′ long mis-match in a very visible corner .

The pattern is called Twining and is by Graham & Brown . It has a very light texture , and also a slight
metallic sheen on the branches . It’s a non-woven / paste the wall material , and will strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate . I like their papers a lot .
You can purchase G&B from Dorota at the Sherwin-Williams in the Rice Village . Call first, as hours vary. (713) 529-6515 .
Here’s another cool thing … Go back to that first photo. Since I started hanging paper by centering the pattern between the two windows on the wall to the right (not visible in the photo), by the time I worked my way around to the wall between the windows you see in front of you, the pattern was not going to be centered in between the windows. I thought it would look better if it was balanced symmetrically. So I positioned the dominant part of the tree branches in between the windows. And then I used the same overlap-and-disguise trick over the window on the right.

Spoonflower Swimmers on Art Wall

This couple in a nicely updated 1939 home in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston has a blank wall in the back of their large walk-in closet.  They have a lot of colorful , modern art and wanted a backdrop for it that would be fun, but wouldn’t compete .

One of the gals is an administrator for the athletic department in a local school district – so this small print “ Swimmers “ design is just perfect.  In fact, the day I hung this, she was away at a swim meet in Austin ! 

Note that Spoonflower offers scores of designs under the “ Swimmers “ name, so be sure to check all of them, and all the colorways they come in, too. 

Detail

Spoonflower is a little different from most wallpaper companies, in that it’s material comes in individual panels, or sheets – which they call rolls .  Each of these is 24” wide, and then you choose the length you want, between 3’, 6’, 9’, and 12’.  Each roll comes nicely packaged in an individual thick plastic zip-lock bag . 
These ones are upside down, so I had to re-roll them so the pattern would be coming off the top of the roll . 

Here are some tips about hanging Spoonflower. 
First of all, I like their “ Pre-Pasted Smooth Removable “ option.  And it’s the only one I’ll work with.  Their “ Traditional Pebble “ is a heavy vinyl that requires special trimming , bubbles, and is better suited for commercial spaces.  And, the Peel & Stick – well, everyone ought to forget  that sad stuff.  Please read my link to the right about that material. 
In this photo, you can see that the white material is thin and translucent , allowing things underneath to show through, sort of like a shadow .  So I need to be careful to make my pencil marks and notes on the wall very lightly. 
Side note: Never write on the wall or paper with ink or marker or crayon or grease pencil – it will bleed through the wallpaper .

This is a pre-pasted material , meaning that a thin layer of paste is already applied to the back.  To activate the paste , all you need to do is dip it in water , run it through a water tray , or spritz the back with a squirt bottle (uneven and kills your wrist) .  Their paste is quite adequate.  But I do like to have a little extra assurance, so I will roll on a little of my Roman 780 wallpaper paste onto the back. 

Then I take a sponge and drip clean water from a bucket onto the back of the paper .  Next I use a paint roller to spread the mixture of water and paste around the back .  This both activates the pre-paste, and also spreads around a little extra adhesive . 

Next, the paper gets folded pasted-side-to-pasted-side ( called booking ), then rolled or folded loosely.  I like to dip the ends of the rolled strip into a bucket of water – just 1/8” or so, to prevent them from drying out while booking.  Then the strip is placed in a plastic trash bag to prevent it from drying out during the booking period – a few minutes.  I use this time to paste and book my next strip . 

Spoonflower Pre-Pasted Smooth is a little different from most papers, because it’s designed to be overlapped at the seams.  Here I am lining up a seam.  This overlap does show as a ½” wide ridge along the entire length of each strip.  With busy patterns, it’s not very visible. 

Even with sparse designs like this one, once it’s dry and flat, you don’t notice.  Here’s the overlapped seam looking toward the light, which is leaving a very minor shadow.  And the overlap can be a good thing.  For starters, most wallpapers shrink a little when the paste dries, so you can end up with slight gaps at the seams.  Overlapping eliminates that.  Also, if a wall is unstable underneath, due to incompatible layers of paint , or dusty walls, or other, the tension of these drying strips of paper can cause the layers inside the wall to come apart / delaminate – and that will result in paper that comes away from the wall, taking layers of paint and etc. along with them.  This usually cannot be repaired or “ glued back down .”     (Do a Search here to learn more)  So overlapping the seams disperses the tension caused by the drying paper, and eliminates any seam from landing on the wall (because the sheets are overlapped ), so no popped seams .

Here is the seam looking away from the light.

Because Spoonflower Smooth Pre Pasted is thin paper and water-activated , it absorbs a lot of moisture from the water.  So the material can’t help but expand .  This can result in bubbles on the wall.  Also, when air pockets develop, there is nowhere for the air to escape, so, again, bubbles and blisters. 

If there are huge bubbles, it may be worth taking a brush or plastic smoother and chasing them out.  Or using a pin or razor blade to poke tiny holes to let the air out. 

But, really, if you can just relax and let nature take its course, as the paper dries, these bubbles will dry flat and disappear.  Trust me. 

Another thing that can happen is wrinkles .  These tend to form in the same place on every strip , and coordinate with how the paper was booked and rolled after pasting . 

The worst of these can be chased out with a plastic smoother.  But there are dangers to over-using the smoother tools.  Doing so can stretch the wallpaper and cause it to warp, which means the pattern might not match up perfectly on the next strip.  Or it might cause wrinkles that can’t be brushed out.  Again – if you can just sit tight and let the paper dry naturally, the creases and folds will disappear. 

I did some experimenting and found that booking and then rolling the strip up like a newspaper resulted in more wrinkles.

It worked better to paste, book, and then fold gently and loosely. 

Then into the plastic bag to sit for a few minutes .

Spoonflower PrePasted Removeable Smooth .  I like this stuff. 
Removeable means that it’s designed to strip off the wall easily and with no/minimal damage to your wall when you redecorate down the road. 
I suspect this is made by York , as it’s very similar to their SureStrip line .  Good stuff. 

The order comes with a mock-up of the strips / rolls you’ve purchased.

Install instructions

Promo info from Spoonflower .

Grasscloth Engineering and Logistics – Technical Details Post

Grasscloth is a natural material that cannot be matched from strip to strip, so all the seams will be visible . In addition, there is usually a slight but noticeable color difference between strips / panels (called shading or paneling ) . So it’s important to plot the layout of the strips to give the most visually pleasing overall look. Usually this means balancing the width of strips so they are all equal , at least on the same wall . We call this engineering .
This wall presented particular challenges , due to the widths of the elements. Grasscloth comes 36″ wide . You can use your straightedge and a sharp razor blade and trim it down to any width you want.
The width of both the large wall spaces to the right and left of the bank of windows was 34.” The width of each window was about 35.” The width of the two spaces in between the windows was 7.”
So you’d think I could trim my panels on either side of the windows, and then over the windows, to about 34″-36″ – give or take a few inches (or fractions thereof).
But that would leave me with two 7″ wide strips between these 35″ panels. Although the look would be uniform and mirror-image from the center outward, moving from right to left you’d have: 35,” 35″, 7,” 35,” 7,” 35,” 35,” … those 7″ breaks were just not going to look right.
One option was to determine the width of the wall (189″) and make each strip an equal width. This worked out to six strips, each at 31.5″ Not good, because this would mean a seam down either far side. And since those sides were 34″ wide, that would mean a 31.5″ wide strip and a strip 2.5″ wide. Not attractive at all, and it would use up an extra strip of wallpaper.
This six strips @ 31.5″ wide scenario might also land with a seam smack in the middle of those 7″ wide interludes in between the windows. Not attractive at all.
So I decided to make the two outer strips 35″ wide. That left 119″ of wall space above the windows to be covered with wallpaper. Do some math and you get four panels of 29.75″ wide. This gave a balanced and uniform look to the area over the windows, and also prevented seams from landing between the windows.
Moving right to left, I cut and hung the full length outer strip first. Then I cut and hung the strip over the window on the right. Then I measured to find the centerpoint of the window in the middle. Turns out it was a bit less than 29.75″ away. So I trimmed that next over-window strip accordingly.
Once that was in place, I measured from that center point above the middle window out to where my left full-height panel would fall, 35″ out from the wall. Took the resulting measurement and divided by 2. Lo and behold, each of the next two panels over the window was going to be a bit wider than 30.” No problem. No one (but a paperhanger or maybe an engineer) is going to notice a 1/4″ or even a full 1″ difference in widths between this strips over the windows.
Another thing to point out … it’s important that I took measurements before cutting these strips for this second left-hand section. Because, since grasscloth comes at 36″ (and walls can be wonky), if my strips had been narrower (say, 28″), that last full-height panel on the left might have ended up needing to be 37″ wide – and that wouldn’t work because it only comes 36″ wide – plus you need at least 1/8″ to wrap around the corner.
Luckily I had the flexibility to be able to trim the panels over the windows to any width needed, to accommodate all this.
If you’ve followed all this so far, let me also toss in that we also need to figure how to get paper in between those windows. More on that below.
In this scenario, I’m moving from right to left.

Area beneath the windows needs to be treated in the same way, and preferably with widths that match what’s going on above the windows. In addition, it’s tricky because after you move across 12′ of wall space, the strips above and below the windows are going to twist and torque out of shape, so that last full-length panel on the far left might not butt up perfectly with the last strip under the windows.

The grasscloth is black , and my wallpaper primer is white . It’s common for teeny gaps to appear at the seams . In this case, it’s likely that white wall would peek out from those gaps. So I like to stripe under where the seams will fall with dark (diluted) paint . This takes measuring , plotting , and also a heat gun to get the paint to dry before the wallpaper hits it, to avoid staining. You can do a Search here to read more about this technique .
Now let’s talk about getting wallpaper in between those windows.
As you can see in the photo, if I hang a 30″ wide strip, a whole lot of paper is going to be cut off and thrown away. Also, a whole lot of sticky, pasted paper is going to bump against that window molding and maybe even the window glass. A lot to clean up! And unwieldy, to boot.
My solution was to stop the wallpaper just a little below the tops of the windows. Then I would patch in a 7″ wide strip in between the windows. This is trickier than it sounds, because, if it were a paper wallpaper, I could simply cut along a design motif and overlay the 7″ wide piece. But grasscloth is thick and overlaps don’t look good. Also grass has no design elements , and the reeds of grass don’t necessarily fall perfectly horizontal , and even if you cut everything perfectly true to square , if the window molding is a teeny bit off-plumb , then your edges won’t butt up perfectly.
So that’s a good reason for striping the black paint under where the butt join will occur.

Same thing for the sections under the windows. I measured and positioned the strips so that the top edge (which I had trimmed to be perfectly horizontal) fell between the narrowest part of the windowsill molding, for less visibility.
I admit, instead of butting the two pieces, here I did overlap the 7″ wide strip about 1/4″ onto the piece under the window, right at that narrow junction. It’s only about 3″ wide, and I figured no one is going to be examining it that closely, anyway. This saved me about a half an hour of measuring, trimming, testing, repeat, repeat.
This is my second window interlude, and by this time I had realized that it’s hard to trim stiff grasscloth around intricate moldings precisely . So I used paint to fill in the edges around the window molding, just in case there might be any gaps between the grasscloth and the molding, so you would see black instead of the white molding paint. I did this with a small sponge; if I had used an artist’s brush it would have been a bit neater and tighter to the conforms of the molding. But sometimes you’ve gotta relax and realize that no one’s going to be scrutinizing the insides of moldings below shin-level.

Area over windows finished, with drapes back in place.
Turns out this particular grasscloth is so uniform in color (quite unusual, I will add), that you can’t really see the panels , nor their equal widths , anyway. I’m still glad I took the time to do all this math and trimming.

Area below the windows, done. That last seam on the left bears some explanation, too. Moving across the top of the windows, I measured that that last strip – the full-length strip – would need to be exactly 35″ wide. It butted up nicely to the last strip above the windows.
But, due to twisting , shifting , expansion , unlevel and unplumb walls and ceilings , and other factors, there is a really good chance that that last 35″ wide strip would not butt up perfectly with the last 30″ wide strip under the window . So I planned to splice these last two strips together.
Yeah, the drapes are hanging there, I coulda overlapped the two strips about 1/2″ and the drapes would have covered it. With a thin wallpaper, I probably would have done this. But grasscloth is thick, and an overlap would be visible , and also the adhesive / paste can’t be trusted to adhere as well to grass as it would to paper .
So I plotted for a splice. Instead of trimming my last strip under the window to 30″ (read above), I trimmed it to 32″ wide. That way, when I hung the last full-length strip to the left, which was 35″ wide, it overlapped the piece under the window by a few inches. Then I did a double cut and spliced the two pieces. See below for details about that technique.

Grasscloth is 36″ wide, and this wall area is wider than that. So two strips were needed. This means you’re going to have a seam, and since grasscloth seams are always visible, it looks best to plot to have the seam fall down the center. It uses more wallpaper to do this, but it looks much better than having, for example, a 36″ wide strip next to an 8″ wide strip.
As mentioned above, in case you get thin gaps at the seams, a dark stripe of diluted craft paint under where the seam will fall, will prevent white wall from showing through.

Rounded / bull-nosed edges and corners have been popular in new construction for at least 10 years. I wish they’d go away. They’re very difficult to trim around, and hard for the paper to conform to and adhere to.
It’s very hard to trim around that rounded edge, because the paper is hanging over and blocking your view, because grasscloth is thick and stiff and your fingers can’t feel through it, and because the edges aren’t necessarily true and plumb so a laser level or other level won’t help you much.

I use this little gadget as a trim guide. It’s actually a small section of the same corner bead material that drywallers use when they assemble these walls. Cut to about 1″ long and notched in different places where you might trim along the edge of the wall.
It’s intended that you place your trimming knife in one of the notches and slide the gizmo along the edge and make your cut. I find that awkward and also inaccurate. So I prefer to use the notches as a guide and mark where I plan to trim with a pencil. Since this wallpaper is black, I used this marking pencil from my home sewing kit instead. Chalk might work, but I was afraid it might now wipe off completely.
The pink pencil line was barely visible, but it was enough for me to use a scissors to trim along the grasscloth. I like this better than using a razor blade as I can see better, and also less chance of scoring into the primer or wall. Which raises its own set of issues – do a search here to find previous posts.

Inside view of the trim guide.

Finished arch. Note the four panels of equal width above the arch. And two flanking full-height panels also the same widths.
I was lucky that there was no pattern to match, so I was able to butt my two flanking strips right up to the edge of the bull-nosed corner. No trimming needed! Then I measured the remaining width between these two strips (the area over the arch), divided by four, and cut four strips of equal widths.
I hung the two on the left, and then one on the far right. This left one strip still to be positioned to the right of center. So the pieces are going to meet over the arch, rather than the last strip falling in a corner.
Same as the last strip under the window (discussed above), it’s really difficult to get your last piece to fit in here perfectly. I’ve done it, but it takes a lot of measuring, trimming, testing, retrimming, and often starting all over again.
So I did a double-cut / splice.

A double cut involves cutting each strip an inch or so wider than it should be, and overlapping the two. Then you take a straight edge and sharp razor blade and cut through both layers. This handy tool is a wonderful non-slip guide for this process. It was invented by an installer colleague in the Wallcovering Installers Association ( WIA ) and she has them fabricated in various lengths (along with other cool tools ) and sells them on-line. Contact me if you’re interested.
Anyway, it takes a lot of strength to cut through two layers of grasscloth, so somewhat difficult for lil’ ol’ me.
You also want to be sure to not cut / score into the wall, because the tension of drying wallpaper can tug at the wall and cause it to actually come apart, leaving an open seam that’s difficult to repair.
So you’ve got to put some padding under the wall where the cut will take place. I use special strips of polystyrene (hard but flexible plastic) to pad the wall. Also invented by a colleague in the WIA , who also sells other cool tools and supplies. Contact me if you’re interested.

This black grasscloth was printed on a white substrate. If the seams aren’t absolutely tight, there can be worries about the backing showing through to the front. So sometimes we’ll take a piece of chalk or pastel (never oil pastel or permanent markers because they bleed and stain ) and run it along the edge of the paper – from the back, and taking care to not get chalk on the surface.
I do this frequently with dark papers ( do a search here to see previous posts ) but opted not to do it with this grasscloth. It wasn’t necessary, and might have stained the porous reeds of the grass. It was beneficial, though, to have striped dark paint on the wall under the seams, as mentioned above.

Ugh. Grasscloth comes 36″ wide, and this section of wall is 38″ wide. It’s not visually pleasing, nor is it easy from an installation point of view, to have a 36″ wide strip next to a 2″ wide strip. Or to use scraps and put a 25″ wide strip next to a 13″ wide strip.
So best to plan two strips of equal widths. Two strips, each 19″ wide, with the seam down the middle.
Actually, the strip on the left was 19″ wide, but I trimmed the strip on the right to 21″, because I like the wallpaper to extend 2″ over the top of the door molding. This provides a more stable surface in case of shifting foundation or walls, and less likelihood (knock on wood) of the seam opening up should the house / drywall experience shifting.
Note that design “rules” caution against seams down the middle of spaces. But it would have been more visually distracting (and used up more paper) to have made three strips of each 12.75″ wide. And would have looked even dumber to have used scraps left from other walls and put together two strips of disparate widths.
So the homeowner and I discussed during our initial consultation , and she was happy with the center seam. Once it was all finished, this particular grasscloth was so even in tone that you barely see the seams, anyway. Win-win!
This did use up additional paper, though, as noted in a previous photo above.

Kill Point Over Door, Ridge, More

After you’ve hung wallpaper on all the walls in a room, the point where your last strip meets up with the first strip is called the kill point . This virtually always ends up in a pattern mis-match. That’s why you engineer to place it in an inconspicuous place, such as behind a door.
This powder room, though, had no hidden corner or handy door. That meant that I would have a pattern mis-match a full 5′ high, to the left of the toilet you see here. I prefer to have the pattern match in a corner like this. As you can see – it does. I will explain how I accomplished that.

I decided to place the kill point over the door. Even though this space is 2′ high and a mis-match might be noticeable, not many people are looking up over the door, so it’s a better choice than in a 5′ or 9′ long corner.
The dark smudges on the wall in the photo are where I’ve spread paint, to prevent white walls from peeking out, should the dark wallpaper shrink as the paste dries.

Here I’ve positioned the strip on the left. This leaves a gap of about 3″. Once I match the new strip up to the piece on the right, its pattern will not match perfectly with the strip on the left.

Now I’ve positioned both strips, and the one on the right is overlapping the one on the left.
Here’s an idea of what the pattern mis-match will look like. To be honest, it’s not all that bad, with this busy pattern and being up over the door. Still, I thought I could make it look better.
I’m going to do a double cut , which is our installers’ fancy term for a splice. I’m going to cut through the two strips, splicing them together, cutting along the vertical foliage elements, to minimize cut-off motifs and to disguise the splice.

When double cutting on the wall, it’s really important that you slice through the two layers of wallpaper only , and not cut into the primer or wall surface beneath. This is because, if the wall surface becomes scored or compromised, when the wallpaper paste dries and the paper shrinks and pulls taught, it can put tension on the wall surface. If the surface is not intact, it can give way and actually come apart ( delaminate ), resulting in wallpaper that comes away from the wall – and there’s nothing beneath it to paste it back to.
I’ve blogged about this before, so do a Search here to learn more. It’s important!
Anyway, to protect the wall beneath where I will make my splice cut, I’ve placed three layers of scrap wallpaper, to pad the wall. I figure I can cut through the two top layers, but not all five.
Note that three layers of non-woven material have some thickness, and can “throw off” the splice cut and prevent the top two strips from fitting together perfectly. In this case, the paper is flexible enough that I’m not worried about that particular scenario.

The strips are in place, and I’m ready to make my cut. I prefer to use a single-edged razor blade held in my fingers, rather than a blade-holder. What’s most important is that the blade be brand new and spankin’ sharp!

Here I’ve made my cut and am removing excess paper from the right side of the top strip. Look carefully and you can see how my razor blade followed the contours of the vertical foliage design elements.

Here I’ve removed the excess paper from the left edge of the bottom strip. You can see they are poised to fit together nicely.

Before fitting the two strips back together, though, I’m examining the wall surface. Check the photo carefully, and you’ll see that I did, after all, score into the primer. 😦 The surface below is skim-coat that was used to smooth a textured wall – and another potential layer that may come apart when exposed to tension from the drying wallpaper.
Shoulda used a Boggess Strip. https://www.steveboggesspaperhanging.com/lexanpage.htm

One way to prevent the wall from delaminating is to put something over the compromised area, to distribute the tension of the drying paper and take it away from the cut wall. Here I’ve taken a scrap of wallpaper, which is a tough non-woven material, and carefully peeled the printed surface from the white substrate (no pic of that process). Now I have a thin material that I can use to pad the wall.
I’m using the black printed side facing out, in case the spliced strips shrink a little – anything peeping out will be black and not noticeable.

Here is the bit of paper in place, spanning across the cut on the wall.

Now I’ve smoothed the two top strips back into place. Since my double cut followed along the vertical foliage elements as much as possible, and because I cut around the gold flowers to keep them full and round, the pattern looks like it matches up just about perfectly.
But wait! … What’s that lump / ridge under the wallpaper, the full height of the seam? That’s my seam padding! Doesn’t look great.
I’m really surprised at this. The non-woven wallpaper material is thick. But that’s why I pulled the top and bottom layers apart, to make my patch piece thinner. I guess not thin enough. Once dried, this ridge is going to be obvious.
But, to be honest, this is up over a door where no one’s going to be spending much time looking. In addition, once I get my 100 watt light bulb out of there and replace the homeowners’ original, small light fixture, this bump under the wallpaper will be pretty much indiscernable.

Still, that lump was buggin’ me. Another invention from my colleague Steve Bogges to the rescue! Pictured is his seam tape , which was made specifically for this type situation. This is very thin – yet strong – paper tape that is used to bridge cut areas like this, and prevent tension from drying wallpaper from tugging at unstable walls.
The tape has a pre-pasted side (the gloss you see), and feathered edges, to make it less noticeable under wallpaper.

Hard to see, but here I’ve placed the seam tape over the cut wall areas

Now the two top strips have been smoothed back into place. Amazingly, no bump from the seam tape beneath shows. And the pattern mis-match is barely visible, too.
Win-win!
All that’s left to do is to wipe paste off the surface of the wallpaper. This overlapping and splicing does mean that wallpaper paste will get on the surface of the strip underneath. Actually, there is a way to prevent that, and it also involves products from Steve Boggess …
But … that’s a blog post for another day …

This pattern is called Peonies and is by Rifle Paper.

” Shrinking ” a Strip to Make for a Good Corner

I’m hanging wallpaper moving from right to left. The wallpaper is 21″ wide. The width between my last strip (over the door) and the corner is 19″ wide. This means that my next strip is going to wrap around the corner by 2″.
This is not good. You never want to wrap wallpaper around an inside corner, especially a tiny amount like 2″. Corners are never straight, and thus the wrapped bit will be warped and un-straight. The next strip will never butt up correctly with it, leaving gaps and overlaps. You will also end up with a new strip that is not hanging plumb.
Also, wrapping around corners doesn’t allow for movement in the corner as the temperature changes in the room, or as the house shifts on its foundation.
The goal is to wrap the corner by about 1/16″ – 1/8″, and then overlap the new strip on top of that narrow wrap.

This is how I want my strip to land in the left corner.
Bottom line – if I want my next strip to wrap just 1/8″ around the corner on the left, then it’s going to overlap by 2″ onto the existing strip on the right. If that happens, we’ll lose 2″ of the pattern and have some eye-jarring cut-off pattern motifs.

So, somewhere, I need to “lose” 2″ of paper. Looking at the short seam above this window, I see where I can remove some paper without messing up the pattern too much.

I’ve removed the strip and used my straightedge and a razor blade to slice off 3/4″ of paper.
The blue plastic is there to keep paste off my table, and the shiny thing is a protective plastic strip I use to keep from cutting into the wooden table.

3/4″ removed.

Slid back together, you don’t much notice the very minor pattern mis-match created by the absence of the narrow strip.
This could work on a longer strip as well, depending on the pattern motifs.

Now the left corner is how I want it.

But the right edge of the strip is overlapping 1″ or more over the existing strip over the window. You can see there is a pattern mis-match, not to mention a bump where these two pieces overlap. So I’m going to do a double cut and splice these two strips together.

Splicing means you press hard to cut through both layers of wallpaper. Your blade will probably cut a bit deeper and dig into the wall, scoring the surface. This is bad, because an un-intact surface can give way when wallpaper paste dries and the material shrinks, tugging at the surface. This can actually cause layers of the wall to come apart ( delaminate ), which means the wallpaper will come up at the seam. Do a Search here to learn more.
To prevent this, I’m using a Boggess Strip (a clear, thin, flexible strip of polycarbonate Lexon plastic padding ) to put under where the splice will take place, to protect the wall. You can’t cut through this stuff!

The strip in place.

I’ve smoothed the left strip back into place overlapping the existing strip. Next I’ve used a short straightedge and a sharp (important) new (important) single edged razor blade to slice through both layers of wallpaper. Here I’m removing the top strip of excess cut-off paper.

Now I’ve pulled back part of the strip on the left so I can remove the excess wallpaper on the bottom. Note that the cut is a little uneven in areas, to cut around the leaves in the design.

Removing the Boggess Strip. This does put tension on your wall, so you’ve got to have a good wallpaper primer underneath, applied over a sound surface.

The two strips smoothed back together.

The view from below.

I used a pencil to touch up the edges of the leaves, to make them look more rounded and natural.

The polycarbonate strips are named after the inventor, Steve Boggess, a colleague and fellow member of the Wallcovering Installers Association. Get them here: https://www.steveboggesspaperhanging.com/lexanpage.htm

Eliminating a Vertical to Side-Step Poor Placement

Here we are, at the last corner of the room, in what we call the kill point. If I hung this last strip as the pattern normally fell, there would be a white vertical shelf support much closer to the one to the right of it than the pattern designer wanted it to be, presenting a crowded look. Also, a portion of the white vertical shelf support would end up falling down along the left side of that narrow space between the two door frames. I thought that area would look better if it held just books, and no white shelving.

So I decided to eliminate that white shelf support, from both the area above the door and the space next to the door molding. To do that, I took my next strip and used a scissors to cut off the left shelf support. I needed a 6″ wide piece, so I counted how many “books” got me to six inches, then cut off the paper vertically along the right edge of those books. I positioned the piece to fill the space over the door, overlapping the left edge of the new strip onto the right side of the previous strip (the side with the white vertical shelf support).

There were a few little pattern mis-matches, but nothing that anyone would complain about while gazing up from the floor 12′ below. 🙂

Next I cut a strip to fill the narrow space between the two door moldings. That part was easy – but trimming around the decorative woodwork on top of the doors, with precious little space to work (the tops of the door moldings had only 1/4″ gap between them) was tricky and time consuming.

The last photo shows it all finished. I think it looks better without the white vertical shelf support, and it was worth the time it took to make this work.