The contractor removed the wallpaper at the top and right side. Here I have begun pulling off the top layer of paper, to the left of center in the photo.
This shows how wallpaper can be stripped off a wall simply and without damage to the underlying surface. The keys are 1.) water and 2.) patience. Oh, and proper wall prep by the original installer.
First and foremost, don’t start yanking and trying to force the paper off the wall dry.
What you do is use a putty knife to lift an edge of the paper and gently pull off the top, inked layer. It should separate and leave the backing on the wall. In this photo, that’s the white paper. Kinda hard to see, because the wall is also white.
Once the top layer is off, you use a sponge dipped in a bucket of water to soak that backing layer. The idea is to reactivate the paste. Once the paste has wetted a bit, it will loosen and you can then gently pull it off the wall.
In most cases, it will strip off the wall easily, as you see in the photo.
It helps immensely if the wall has been properly primed before the paper went up. In this case, the original installer’s (me!) primer (Roman Ultra Prime Pro 977) held up to the stress of tugging the paper off the wall, and also prevented the water from penetrating through to the original surface.
For more detailed instructions and tips, click the link on the right.
New drywall. I draped strips of protective dropcloth paper over the top of the wainscoting, to protect from splatters from my primer.Notice the “raised ink” and the hand-painted look.
Recent updates reflect respect for the original feel of this 1920 bungalow in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston. There will be a claw-foot tub, as well as a very cool authentic vintage pedestal sink that the homeowner found on the side of the road, discarded from another older bungalow just a few blocks away. !!
Vintage-look beaded board paneling was added, along with hexagonal floor tile, both in a warm, muddy green that compliments the greens in the wallpaper.
The homeowner has a stunningly beautiful garden, and sought a wallpaper pattern that would bring the feel of nature indoors.
The top photo shows the walls as the contractor left them, in what we call a “Level 4” condition. This is optimal for wallpaper installation. No texture for me to get rid of, and no paint or PVA-based primers under the wallpaper. All I had to do was roll on my wallpaper-specific primer, Romans Pro 977, Ultra Prime.
The wallpaper is called Garden Party and is by York, in the Waverly collection (yes, reviving classic designs from the 1990’s!), and in their SureStrip line – one of my favorite products. It is pre-pasted, goes up nicely, hugs tight and thin to the wall, and performs wonderfully over the years, even under (mildly) humid conditions – such as a bathroom in an old house with poor ventilation.
The interior designer for this job is Stacie Cokinos, of Cokinos Design. She works mostly on new builds and whole-house remodels, and mostly in the Heights / Garden Oaks neighborhoods.
I guess that Serena & Lily is starting to print on non-woven substrates. I am not a fan (see yesterday’s post).
Besides being very stiff and uncooperative, this material is very translucent. As you see in the photo, the leaves of the second layer of wallpaper are clearly visible through the top layer.
This means that it’s likely that color imperfections on the wall will show through. New Sheetrock, for example, with its grey drywall interspersed with bands of white joint compound. Or hanging this product on a dark painted wall will result in a “dirty” cast underneath the paper, and will not yield the bright, crisp white look that S&L is known for.
As a primer, I like Roman’s Pro 977 Ultra Prime, which is a white-pigmented primer, and an ideal choice under thin, see-through material like this. But it is not a heavily-pigmented primer, so there is still the worry that the finished walls will not look as bright as they should.
I do hope that S&L will improve this product. There are tons of nice non-wovens available, so let’s hope they do some research and come up with a better substrate.
Although I can’t tell if these are wildflowers or weeds, I really like this pattern. The homeowner does, too!
The original wallpaper in this hall bathroom was dark and dated back to the ’90’s. It had held up well, though. But the homeowner was ready for something new and fresh.
The original wallpaper was hung when the house was new, and was placed directly on the drywall with no primer. That bode badly, but – once I went to work on it, it stripped off relatively easily, and with no damage to the wall. It DID take most of a day, though, to strip both the large sink room and the large potty room.
Then I primed with Roman’s Pro 977 Ultra Prime, specifically formulated for wallpaper.
This is by Designer Wallpapers, and is a heavier non-woven material. It can be hung via the paste-the-wall method – but that works better on single accent walls. For this bathroom, with it’s corners and vanity and doors, I chose to paste the paper, which makes it more flexible, and easier to work into tight areas.
This home is in Katy (far west Houston). I hung paper in their entry a few years back, and was tickled when the homeowner called me to do some more rooms (additional posts to follow).
She also used the same gal to help her select and purchase her perfect paper – Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby, my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.
Most wallpapers can be hung with standard wallpaper pastes. But some papers are more delicate or have special characteristics (silk, vintage, non-woven, prone to curling seams,) and thus call for special pastes.
When certain pastes are used, non-woven wallpapers like this one can display “blushing” or “staining,” which look like wet spots that never dry.
This manufacturer, Rebel Walls, has included a box of paste that is specially formulated to work with non-woven material. It is a powdered potato starch-based paste that is mixed with water on-site, allowed to set up, then mixed again, and then it’s ready to use.
To be honest, I probably wouldn’t use this paste. With the propensity of non-wovens to blush and stain, the less moisture you introduce, the better. So I would opt for a pre-mixed clear paste, such as Roman’s 838 or SureStik 780. But beware – some other types of clear pre-mixed pastes will stain (880, 234) and probably clay pastes will, too.
The owner of this newish home in the Woodland Heights (Houston) had her handyman remove the powder room mirror and its surrounding built-in wooden frame. Mirrors are often adhered to the wall with mastic, a tar-like substance. When the mirror comes off, some of the tar residue invariably remains.
In the top photo, you can see where removing the mirror took the blobs of mastic along with it, as well as round sections of the drywall. But there are small smudges of tar still remaining on the wall.
The problem is that tar (among a lot of other substances) will bleed through wallpaper (as well as paint, and a lot of other materials).
There are stain blockers like my beloved KILZ Original Oil Based, BIN shellac based, or others, that are designed to block these stains. But I don’t trust them. For water, rust, blood, wood sap, etc., yes. But for oil-based substances like tar, I want more assurance. The best way to prevent bleed-through is not to cover the stain, but to remove it.
So I take a Stanley knife and cut into the drywall and then peel up the top layer of drywall, taking along the offending tar residue.
So now the dangerous tar is gone. But you’re left with torn drywall. This is bad for several reasons. For one thing, you have an uneven surface that will look bad under the new wallpaper (or paint). And since the top, protective layer of drywall is gone, any moisture (such as from wallpaper paste or from latex paint) will penetrate into the torn paper layer – which will swell and cause bubbling.
All of which looks pretty bad under wallpaper or paint.
So I used the product Gardz to seal the torn drywall. It is formulated to soak into the paper; then it dries hard and acts as a sealer and moisture-blocker. It won’t block stains, but it will prevent moisture from penetrating the paper and causing bubbling.
Once that was dry, I skim-floated over the entire area with joint compound. It looks rough in the photo, but once it’s dry, I’ll sand it smooth. Then I’ll give it another coat of the penetrating sealer Gardz. See last photo. Once that is dry, I’ll cover it with a coat of Roman’s Ultra Prime Pro 977 wallpaper primer, when I prime the other walls in this powder room.
All of these various products do take a while to dry, especially the joint compound as thick as I applied it. So I went to this job site a few days before the install date, to do the initial prep, so it would have plenty of time to dry before I come back for the final prep and wallpaper hang.
Today I was priming the backs of some bar cabinets. My preferred primer, Roman’s Ultra Prime Pro 977, which usually sticks to anything, was beading up and sweating off of the Formica surface. Even if it dried, it would leave beads and bumps under the wallpaper. I had to take a paper towel and wipe it all off.
Luckily, I had some Zinsser 123 in my van. This stuff sticks to just about anything. It rolled on with no problems.
It’s OK to hang wallpaper over 123, but I prefer to hang on a product made specifically for wallpaper. So, once the 123 was dry (it dries quickly, and for good measure, I set a fan blowing on it), I rolled on a coat of Ultra Prime.
This is all very timely, because I was looking at that can of 123 just the other day, which was bought exactly a year ago and which I virtually never use, and was about to toss it out. I’m glad I kept it.
A primer is imperative for a good wallpaper installation – and I mean a primer designed to be used under wallpaper, not a generic primer or a paint primer.
A good primer will
seal porous surfaces
mitigate a glossy surface (paper won’t stick to gloss)
allow for “slip” and repositioning while installing the paper
provide “tooth” for the adhesive to grab ahold of
withstand the torque created when wallpaper dries and pulls taught,
preventing “popped seams”
protect the surface, making future removal of the paper easier while
preventing damage to the wall
Ultra Prime Pro 977 by Roman’s is my preferred primer.
But different situations call for different primers. When hanging on a thirsty surface like new drywall or a textured wall that has been skim-floated, I will use Gardz by Zinsser. Other primers could be called for in other situations.
This homeowner was just trying to update her hall bathroom. She chose a new countertop, new tile, and new wallpaper. Unfortunately, some of the workmen who showed up for the job were less than stellar. I won’t say anything about the tile guys or the painters, but in the top photo, you can see how the “I can hang wallpaper” guy prepped the wall… which he proclaimed as “wallpaper-ready.”
I took down the light fixture, removed the remaining old wallpaper, and skim-floated the surface. Because the ridges in the original guy’s float job were so thick, I went there a few days early to get an initial layer of smoothing compound spread on the wall, so it would have time to dry. Then when I came back, I skim-floated the entire room. Because this second coat was thinner, it dried in a few hours (with fans, a space heater (to pull humidity from the air), and the home’s A/C unit cranking dry air through the room.)
I sanded smooth, vacuumed and wiped off the dust, and applied a coat of Gardz, which is my preferred primer for newly smoothed walls.
Mysterious tan dots worked their way through the smoothing compound and the Gardz. I didn’t know what they came from (mold, oil, tobacco, soft drink or food the workers splashed on the walls?), but I knew they would eventually bleed through the new wallpaper. So I rolled on BIN, a shellac-based stain-blocker made by Rust Oleum, to seal the wall.
This effectively sealed the stain, and the wall was nice and white after that.
A week later, I came back to hang the wallpaper. First I applied a coat of Roman’s Pro 977 Ultra Prime, a primer made specifically for wallpaper. For some reason, this product didn’t stick well to the BIN – which is surprising, because one reason I use this primer is because it sticks to anything, even glossy surfaces (the BIN was not particularly glossy). Look closely or enlarge the third photo, and you will see it sliding and dripping down the wall. Well, no fear. I brushed out the worst of the drips, and as the primer dried, it tightened up and clung flat and tight to the wall.
With the wall finally smooth and appropriately primed, I was ready to get that paper up on the wall. This was an old fashioned pulp paper, which the British companies were making before most of them switched to non-woven materials. I was looking forward to working with an authentic pulp paper, because it’s been a while since I’ve come across one.
But this one didn’t behave as most of them do… It was thicker and stiffer, which made trimming and intricate detail work difficult, and increased the potential for creasing (for instance, while fitting the paper into a corner at a ceiling line). And it sucked up paste and dried out way sooner than I could get a strip to the wall. So I ended up using a spray bottle to add extra moisture to the back of the paper while I was applying the paste. This did help a lot.
Some of the edges had been banged up during shipping, so some of the seams looked a little weathered. And the edges had not been cut perfectly straight at the factory, so we had a bit of what we call “gaps and overlaps.”
Still, the finished room looks great. With its sweet flowers and calming colors, the pattern reminds me of the Laura Ashley era. The blue really pops against the white woodwork and tile in the room, and the red roses are nothing short of romantic.
Such a happy turn-around, for a bathroom that started out full of trials and tribulations.
I’m not sure what the brand name is, but the label says “English Florals.” The homeowner found it on-line (free shipping!), and the cost was low – about $60 for a double roll bolt. The home is on the north side of Houston.
The walls in this dining room in a historic house in the Houston Heights had received many coats of paint over its 100 years. The latest was a coat of what appeared to be flat latex paint. Since this is not a suitable surface for wallpaper, I applied a wallpaper-specific primer.
I was surprised to see that, a few minutes after I rolled on my water-based wallpaper primer, blisters appeared.
I thought they would disappear as the primer dried, but they did not.
Obviously, the moisture in the primer was soaking into some of the layers below it, and causing something to expand and “off-gas”, which created the bubbles.
I switched from my wallpaper primer to a penetrating sealer called Gardz (also water-based) – and the same thing happened. (The Gardz dried so glossy that I feared the wallpaper would not stick to it, so I went back to my original Ultra Prime by Roman’s.)
Once the primer was good and dry, I used a stiff putty knife to knock off the high points of the blisters. The areas were not perfectly smooth, but they were OK for use under this particular wallpaper.
I’m doing some research, and am hoping to gain insight as to why this blistering happened, so I’ll know how to prevent it in the future.
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