Tucking Wallpaper Behind Pedestal Sink

Pedestal sinks (and toilets ) are tricky to hang wallpaper around and behind .  Over-working or manipulating the paper to fit and then trim around curves like this can cause tears , creases , or burnishing , among other issues .  Also, if there’s a cut edge along the top of the sink / vanity , if water splashes , it can be wicked up by that cut edge , sucked up into the wallpaper, which can cause curling at the seams and / or delaminating of the paper .  So , instead of being trimmed / cut along the top, best if the wallpaper can go behind the sink / backsplash.

Here’s the 1/4″ or so gap that I’m going to work the wallpaper into.

 Rather than trying to wrestle a 9′ strip of 27″ wide wallpaper down the wall and around this sink , it made sense to cut the strip horizontally at a point just below the top of the sink . I’ll piece the bottom section in shortly.

Sometimes, pedestal sinks are adhered to the wall with caulk , and cannot be moved.  But today I got lucky.  I was able to go under the sink and loosen the bolts , one on either side, ( see photo ) holding it to the wall .  This is not easy – you’ve got to have small hands , good eyes , good light ,  a plumber’s wrench , a box wrench , or a pliers – whatever works!  And not undo too much, because you don’t want to dislodge the  system ( toggle bolt ) that’s holding the bolt in place.
After all that, loosening this bolt gave me about a whole ¼”  area of play .   Still, I was able to carefully and slowly work the wallpaper behind and around the sink , without significant creasing or damage .  See second photo .

The pattern is called Cornflower and is by Rifle Paper , a brand by York , one of my favorite manufacturers. Rifle Paper is usually a user-friendly non-woven material , also called paste-the-wall …. although can sometimes surprise you with traditional paper wallpaper instead of N-W .

After 30 Years – Time for an Update!

The home in the West U . area of Houston was built in 1994. And – yes – the wallpaper screams ’90’s ! Oh, and … it’s PINK ! The homeowners are doing lots of other facelifts, and this powder room ‘s time has come.

The new wallpaper is also nature / floral themed, but it’s a crisper, more fun look.
It was really nice not having the toilet or sink in the room – made the installation much easier. And less damage to the paper due to not having to manipulate the somewhat delicate (crease-prone) material around a pedestal sink.

Pattern nicely centered on the sink wall. Light sconces will go where you see the holes on either side.

The pattern is called Wildwood and is by Rifle Paper (made by York ).

This is a non-woven material , also called paste the wall . It’s durable , stain-resistant , holds up under humidity , and will strip off the wall easily and in one piece when you redecorate later. Perhaps another 30 years? : ) 🙂

Paint Doesn’t Stick to Plastic

You are looking a the plastic escutcheon / decorative cover to hide plumbing pipes under this pedestal sink.
Someone painted it the same color as the wall, and with the same wall paint.

Only problem is, most paints won’t stick to plastic. Plastic is too slick.
That’s why now the paint is peeling off with just the slightest tug or tension. It’s peeling away like a snake shedding his skin.

There are some solutions for this. For starters, the plastic could have been sanded, to give the paint some “tooth” and something to grab ahold of. There are also primers that will adhere to plastic and prepare it to take the paint.
Even simpler, there are paints formulated to stick to plastic. Krylon makes some, and I’ve used it on my outdoor lawn chairs; it’s held up nicely for about 20 years.

It’s A Misconception That A Liner Will Smooth A Textured Wall

A theory has been circulating for decades that a liner will disguise texture or imperfections in a wall. A liner is a special paper applied to the walls before the actual decorative wallpaper goes up. It has its purpose – but smoothing walls is not one of them. At least, not in my opinion.

Here you see an area where a pedestal sink has been removed. In so doing, part of the drywall was torn away (the reddish brown area) and the wall surface is left uneven.

I’m using liner in this room for another reason. Here it has been applied over the damaged area. As you can see, the uneven texture of the wall shows right through (we say that it telegraphs ). Once the liner is good and dry, it will shrink and pull even tighter to the wall, and the ridges underneath will be even more visible.
And once the wallpaper goes up, all this will telegraph through the new wallpaper, as well.

Here’s the liner paper I used today. It’s a fairly thick, stiff, non-woven material, so has more ” bridging ” power than other types of liner paper. Still, as you see above, it’s not enough to smooth textured or uneven wall surfaces.
The only way to properly and thoroughly smooth a textured wall, IMO , is to skim-float it and then sand it smooth, and then apply a wallpaper primer. Please do a Search here (upper right corner) to find previous posts on this process.

Patching a Hole Around a Pipe

You’re looking at a water supply line underneath a pedestal sink in a powder room.
This hole is a little wide, and offers the wallpaper nothing to adhere to. In addition, there is no escutcheon (decorative plate) to hide the hole.

I took some special paper and cut a ” collar ” to fit around the pipe and also cover the hole.

I dipped the “collar” into Gardz . This is cool stuff. It soaks in to porous surfaces, adheres to surfaces, and dries hard.

Here is the patch in place. Once it’s dry, I’ll skim-float with joint compound (” mud “) and then sand smooth.
The finished product will be a smooth, intact surface for the wallpaper to adhere to, with only a tiny gap around the plumbing.

Trick to Make Getting Around Pedestal Sink Easier

Hanging wallpaper in powder rooms often means working around a pedestal sink. It’s sooo much easier if the sink is not in the room. But that means the homeowner has to pay a plumber to come remove the sink, and then come back and replace it after the paper is up. This risks damaging the new paper, causes damage to the wall that I will have to repair. And costs several hundreds of dollars. So I usually get the paper up with the sink in place.

That means you have to wrestle a 9′ strip of paper over the sink, then down the narrow space on either side (on the right in this photo), and then underneath it. This opens the possibility of creasing the paper, tearing it, or other damage.
I’ve developed a trick to make it easier.

I’ll cut the paper horizontally a few inches below the top of the sink.

When possible, I cut along design elements, to help disguise the cut.

Here I’ve hung the paper above the sink and down the right side. Now I have to get the paper on the lower wall portion.

But it’s a lot easier because the sink is out of the way. Here I am getting ready to position this bottom section.

All in place. Next I will do the same with the area to the left of the sink. Things don’t always meet up perfectly at the seam, so you may end up with a gap or overlap or a pattern mis-match. But it will be behind the stand / base of the sink, so not noticeable.

This pattern is by Milton & King. It’s a non-wove material, which is a lot stronger and tear-resistant than a paper wallpaper.

Popular Rifle Paper Peacocks in Powder Room

Primed walls in west Houston powder room.

Boy, people sure love this Peacock pattern by Rifle Paper (made by York). I’ve hung it a buncha times, and so far always in the dark colorways.

How unexpected, dramatic and fun in a tiny room!

This is a non-woven wallpaper material and a paste-the-wall installation method – although I prefer to paste the material, which certainly works better in a room with things to cut around and tuck paper behind like a toilet and pedestal sink.

Sneaky Trick for Working Around Pedestal Sinks

These new-fangled non-woven wallpapers have their advantages. But they have disadvantages, too. One is that many are prone to creasing, even with just the littlest stress on the surface (such as when booking (folding) the material). Look very closely at the top photo to see my pencil pointing at a slightly damaged area.

Papering around obstacles like this pedestal sink require a lot of folding and cutting and manipulating, and it’s a pretty sure bet that creases will appear.

Well, I thought up a trick that reduces stress and overworking on the paper, and eliminates most of the potential for creases.

Instead of trying to wrap a full strip of wallpaper over, around, and under the pedestal sink, I brought the paper to just a few inches below the top of the sink, and then cut it horizontally, leaving the bottom section to be hung later. To minimize visibility of this horizontal cut, I made sure to make my cuts follow the black lines in the design.

Once the shorter strip over the sink was up, instead of filling in the remaining part of the strip in its place under the sink, instead I hung the full-height strip to the right. It was important to hang this full-width strip before I positioned the pieces under the sink, because wallpaper will often twist out of plumb and out of shape, which makes it hard to butt up future strips, and which throws off the pattern match, too. The larger the piece, the more stability it has, so this full-height-and-full-width-strip hung nice and straight.

Next came the piece that fit under the sink. Actually, to make it easier to work around the pedestal and the plumbing poking out of the wall behind it, I slit this strip in two vertically, at the point where the wallpaper would encounter the pipes.

I was able to match the pattern to that on the wall to the left, and also to the strip on the right. Any resulting mis-match between the two strips under the sink, then, was hidden behind the pedestal.

Painters Aren’t Wallpaper Preppers – Bless Their Hearts

Someone else did some work in this powder room, and that included skim-floating and “prepping the walls for wallpaper.” The main part of the walls that you see when you walk into the room looked nice and smooth.

But on closer inspection, it’s clear that they did not bother to remove switch plate covers or the A/C vent, and didn’t know how to smooth the area along the top of the pedestal sink. Sorry, no pics.

And along the baseboard and crown molding, as well as behind the toilet, they did not get a smooth transition between the smoothing compound and the wall. Please see the photos. You notice where the smoothing compound is globbed on top of the baseboard in an irregular mess.

This is a problem, because these areas are exactly where the wallpaper will be trimmed, and asked to adhere tightly. The problem is, the paper needs a smooth, intact area to grab ahold of. These areas do not provide that.

I could chip off some of this stuff, but not all of it. So the homeowner will be left with jagged cuts at these areas, plus the possibility that the paper will not cling tightly to the irregular surface.

Again, folks: Wallpaper prep should be done by a paperhanger, not a painter or handyman or other kind of tradesman. They simply don’t understand what is required, and typically don’t have the patience or desire to do the detailed work correctly.

Art Deco Wallpaper in Magazine

The July 2019 issue of Better Homes & Gardens magazine has this page, highlighting a return to the Art Deco style in decorating. They show four different patterns that reflect this, and list the manufacturers.

A few words of aviso … Just because you see it in a magazine or read it on-line, doesn’t necessarily make it a good thing.

The first paper on the left is by Chasing Paper. This company makes the deceptively-described “removable wallpaper,” a new trend that is unfortunately luring many homeowners down the wish-I-had-never-heard-of-it path.

This “peel and stick” material is extremely difficult to work with. I mean, it’s hard enough to get Contact Paper smoothly onto your kitchen cabinet shelves … Imagine trying to wrestle a strip 2′ wide by 9′ long onto a wall, around a window, behind a toilet, and trim it around a pedestal sink. It is also not “removable.” … Oh, it will come off, all right. But it will take chunks of your paint and maybe drywall along with it.

One of my colleagues recently posted on our private Wallcovering Installers Association Facebook page of his experience with this particular brand, and he was very unhappy. I won’t hang peel & stick, and most of my friends won’t, either.

On to the next pattern above, the blue and white half-circle blocks. This is by Hygge & West. H & W has adorable patterns. But, bless their hearts, they have not put research into substrates, inks, compatibility, etc. My experience with their papers is that the ink swells when it gets wet with paste and then curls back, resulting in a tiny “pouch” in every spot where the ink crosses a seam. Do a search here to see my previous posts on that brand and their seams.

So many companies make lovely paper. I wish that H & W would network with them and find a better paper and ink combination for their products.

The last pattern in the photo is by Tempaper. Another company making peel & stick stuff … Enough said.

Back to the photo … the purple fan design in the middle of the page. Finally a hit! This is made by Bradbury & Bradbury, a company that specializes in vintage designs, especially Victorian and Art Nouveau. They have a wide variety of other styles, too, and are branching out even more in recent years, to include ’20’s, Atomic Age, and other eras.

Bradbury makes lovely paper. It’s a higher-end brand, and it requires some special trimming and pasting techniques. So it may not be DIY friendly – but it sure is beautiful. In fact, I have some hanging in my own master bathroom. 🙂 https://wallpaperlady.wordpress.com/2016/05/03/new-wallpaper-in-the-wallpaper-ladys-bathroom/