This is baseboard in a corner of a room where I will be installing wallpaper . The blue is my dropcloth .Wow. Look at the paint splatters on the baseboard . Maybe the paint was thin , or the painter was working too fast, causing paint to fly off the roller cover . This could have been prevented by placing wide blue painters tape above the molding , or by covering the baseboards with strips of dropcloth or plastic . Do a search here to see my previous posts about my technique .Later, the room décor changed, and the grey paint was covered with pink paint. Here you see where the painter let his brush swipe paint onto the top surface of the baseboard. He did the same thing with the underside of the crown molding at the ceiling , too. This is one of my pet peeves. Looks so bad. They do it because it’s easier than “ cutting a clean line .” To do it right, all it takes is a good angled trim brush and a steady hand , and patience . Or, use blue tape or even a trim guide to keep paint off the woodwork . I’ll probably take some white craft paint to color over this, before hanging the wallpaper .
You’re looking up at the bottom edge of crown molding , where the painter let his brush cover the surface with flat orange wall paint. Gee, to me, beautiful molding is elegant and elevates the appearance of the whole room. It would look so much nicer to have that edge painted white like the rest of the molding. A painter who’s either too lazy or unskilled to ” cut a clean line ” between the wall and the woodwork .
Originally, these walls were sorta heavily textured, and painted a drab brown-tan. Here I’ve finished skim-floating the walls to smooth them, and applied my wallpaper primer. Ready for paper!Flowering tree branches are a popular trend right now, and many companies are making their own versions of it. Pattern is nicely centered on the sink wall. The white background really perks the room up, and the light touches of metallic gold in the leaves helps bounce light around this small room. Close-up. This material has a slight raised ink texture to it. I love the look and feel. That scribble at the top reads Florence Broadhurst . She was an Australian artist / painter. This line of wallpaper patterns are based on her art and designs. The pattern is called Branches and the manufacturer is York Wallcoverings, one of my favorite brands. Pearland is a southern subdivision of Houston.
Continuing from yesterday’s post … The smoothing compound has dried and I’m ready to sand it smooth. This photo gives an idea of what needs to be sanded down. Some areas, such as around electrical outlets, are more irregular and have more raised areas to be sanded down.Before I get to the sanding, a 3″ stiff putty knife comes in handy for scraping down high areas.For decades, contractors wrapped sandpaper around a wooden block and used that to sand walls. Then, about 25 years ago, some genius invented these sanding sponges. They’re soft, flexible, easy-to-hold blocks covered with sanding fibers of various grits. They have angles that aid getting into various corners. I find that the edges can be a bit “pointy” and can gouge into the surface, so I often use a scissors to cut off the corners, as you see in all but the one on the far left. Held against the actual wall.Don’t forget a dust mask, to prevent inhaling the fine particles. And, yes, this is an N-95 … The same mask that protects us from ingesting the COVID 19 virus also protects the lungs of us home improvement contractors. Manufacturers have done a good job of creating joint compound whose dust settles to the floor, rather than going air-borne and sifting all around the room. Still, it’s best to take measures to keep dust out of the rest of the home. Here I’ve hung a sheet of painter’s plastic across the wall, to contain sanding dust. Once I’m done sanding, I’ll use my Shop Vac to clean up the mess, removing dust from both the floor and the walls. It’s crucial that all dust be removed from the wall. If not, it’s like flouring a cake pan – the wallpaper (or paint) will kinda stick – but not really stick. Vacuuming the wall will not remove all dust. The only way to remove all residual dust is to wipe it off the wall with a damp sponge.Look at how much dust has accumulated on the sponge after only a few swipes. The sponge needs to be rinsed clean frequently. Once I’m done, I’ll dump this bucket of dusty water down the toilet (not the sink). Swipes from the damp sponge will leave wet marks on the wall. These need to dry before moving to the priming step, so as not to trap moisture within the wall surface. Here I’m rolling on my favorite wallpaper primer, Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime. I have my paint store guys add just a bit of blue tint, to help me see where I’ve rolled it on. The short angled brush is for cutting the paint in around corners and edges. I’ve tacked strips of dropcloth along the top of the baseboards, to prevent splatters.Finished wall, nice and smooth, primed, and ready for wallpaper.
These bumps and dents and wrinkles WILL show through the new wallpaper. In addition, the patching compound is porous and not compatible with (won’t stick to) wallpaper primers. Surface is not smooth, gaps and irregular areas around edges at baseboard, countertop, and window molding. I had to fill in this gap, and stand there with a heat gun blowing on it for an hour, getting it to dry way into the depths of the gap. Another picture of the gap. Besides that it’s not smooth and thus bumps will show under the wallpaper, this “small” gap is an issue. Wallpaper needs something to adhere to, and especially so in corners and edges. If the surface is not solid, there is nothing for the wallpaper to hold on to, and so you can end up with curled edges and wallpaper “flapping in the breeze.” (Don’t mind the wrinkly fingers – they’re very adroit and adept.)They also got paint splatters / speckles all over the hardwood floors. C’mon, guys – just put down a dropcloth!
It irks me no end when some contractor pockets the homeowner’s money and assures her that the walls are “ready for wallpaper.” The poor homeowner trusts her “guy” and doesn’t see the real mess. Or the steps and money needed to fix it.
This was a small area (6′ wide x 2′ high backsplash to a butler’s pantry), but it took more than two hours to smooth it and then get it primed.
The first installer was inexperienced, and left gaps at the seams, wrinkles, creases, mis-matched pattern, and even tears. The homeowners had their painter strip off the wallpaper, patch the torn areas of the wall, prime, … and then they had to purchase a whole new mural. Oh, and next they called me! 🙂 The painter was unschooled on wallpaper, too, so he just grabbed something off the shelf at Sherwin-Williams that had “wallpaper” on the label, and rolled it on. That particular primer, Pro 935, is meant to be used in different sorts of situations, and was too glossy and too tacky. I covered it with my preferred Pro 977 Ultra Prime by Roman. Putting latex / water based paint over torn drywall will often cause the moisture from the paint to soak into the drywall paper and cause it to expand, which creates bubbles. These look bad under the new wallpaper. Here I have cut around one such bubble and removed the top layer. I will skim-float over this area, let it dry, sand it smooth, and then prime over it. A whole wall’s worth of mural fun rolled up into one cylinder. They provided powdered paste – which I did not use, mostly because these tend to be too wet and can lead to staining on these non-woven materials. I did, however, take the paste home with me, because every now and then you run into a delicate wallpaper that requires this stuff – which can be hard to source. I started hanging in the middle of the wall. Mostly because whoever measured forgot to add FOUR INCHES to both the height and the width. Instead, the manufacturer added only one scant inch at each side. This didn’t give much play at all, to accommodate trimming at the ceiling and floor, and walls / ceiling that went off plumb / level. This means that if the ceiling wasn’t level, it could start sloping either up or down, and that means the mural would start getting either cut off, or some white space might show at the top. By starting in the middle, I could split the difference between any irregularities, and, hopefully, over the 12′ width of the wall, now divided into two 6′ sections, any off-level sloping would be minimal enough that it wouldn’t visually impact the top or bottom of the design. I know that doesn’t make sense to a lot of you reading this, but I do have a number of paperhangers who follow my blog, and they do “get it” and hopefully will learn some new tricks. monkey, giraffe, flamingo, cockatiel Finished and ready for furniture – and a baby!For this non-woven product, I used the recommended paste-the-wall installation method. I can see why the other guy had difficulty. This was a very thin, but stiff, material. I got wrinkles, too. It took some time and some finesse to urge them out of the paper. This is another reason why I started in the center of the wall. If wallpaper starts warping or wrinkling, it usually will cause the outer edge (the edge not butted up against the previous strip) to expand and twist. As each subsequent strip goes up, the twisting and distortion becomes magnified. You can’t butt a straight edge of a new strip up against a strip that is bowed out of shape on the wall. Thus, by starting in the middle, I can minimize the number of bowed edges. Instead of four, there will be only two. And the amount of distortion will be less per panel. I will note that this usually does not happen with non-woven materials. A big chunk of mural was cut off by the door and lost to the trash pile. As the mural worked its way across the top of the door and down the right side, a different set of leaves, and a lot of blank area, was going to end up in that 6″ wide space between the door and the wall. I thought it would look cooler if the design of the foliage to the left of the door continued on to the right side of the door. So I saved the strip that got cut off by the door and then did some tweaking in various ways, and got that narrow strip placed to the right of the door. When you look at it, it appears that the leaves and fronds are passing from left to right uninterrupted through the doorway.
In the photo, you see where the painter let his paint roller bop against the top of the wall. There are other areas where they painted the ceiling, but let their brush run along the top 2″ of wallpaper.
So what’s the problem? My task for today is to strip off the wallpaper. But the paint on top of it makes it difficult (impossible) for water to penetrate the wallpaper. Water needs to be able to soak through, so it can saturate the material and reactivate the paste.
If water can’t pass through this barrier and soften the paste, it will be a long road to hoe to get that paper off the wall easily and without damage to the underlying surface.
The Wallpaper Lady's Blog 