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.
I have to cover 15″ width of wall with a strip of wallpaper that is 27″ wide. Working with that 27″ wide strip and pushing it into the corner, and getting paste all over the woodwork, and trying to not get creases in the paper … all very difficult.My solution is to trim the wallpaper to fit the corner. Here the strip has already been cut, pasted, and booked (folded pasted-side-to-pasted-side). I’ve determined that I want the new strip to be 15″ wide. This will allow enough to cover the wall space, plus the 1/2″ inside the little space between the wall and the door trim. Because wallpaper expands when it gets wet with paste, to get an accurate measurement, I’m trimming after the strip has been cut, pasted, and booked for a few minutes, and has expanded to its maximum. This is called wet trimming. Alternately, dry trimming is when you measure and trim an unpasted and unfolded strip. My straightedge is set at 15″ from the left edge of the wallpaper. I’ve used a single edge razor blade to make the cut. Here is the strip in position on the wall. I’m using a plastic trapezoid squeegee wallpaper smoother to push the right edge into the small space between the wall and the door molding. You can see how nicely the wallpaper wraps around the corner and tucks into that narrow space. The pattern is called Garden Party and is by Rifle Paper, which is made by York, one of my favorite companies.
See other recent post(s) for more info on this material and its install.
When ordering, from the materials offered, the homeowner chose this vinyl option, because she loved the slightly textured, “pebbled” surface. I would have much preferred she went with the more predictable and cooperative non-woven material.
The instructions said to paste the wall. Which is what I did. But I believe this material would have performed better if they had said to paste the product.
Pasting the product would have evened out moisture absorption from the paste, as well as expansion as the substrate wetted-out. That may well have eliminated the wrinkles you see in the photo.
It took a lot of patient work with both the smoothing brush and the plastic squeegee to work these wrinkles and bubbles out of the wallpaper. The resulting flat surface was not necessarily the Holy Grail … because often the far edge of the wallpaper will get distorted and / or warped / bowed.
It’s really difficult to hang a new, subsequent strip next to a strip with a warped edge. It’s hard to butt the seams, and plus additional strips get more and more warped. Eventually, you get to where the resulting wrinkles are so large that you cannot work them out.
This is one reason why you start hanging from the midpoint of the wall. This helps disperse any such wrinkles or other imperfections equally across both the right and the left sides of the wall.
I was lucky that I had only four panels and three seams on this install.
As mentioned above, a non-woven substrate would must surely have eliminated the wrinkle problem. Non-wovens are made of synthetic fibers (including fiberglass), so they do not expand when wetted by paste or water. So you can paste the wall and then apply the wallpaper, without worries about the paper stretching out of shape
When hanging wallpaper, you can end up with little wrinkles, for many reasons. Oftentimes, these will disappear as the paper dries. But there can be times when you want to be sure the wrinkles are gone before the paper gets a chance to dry.
Your first option for smoothing a paper against the wall is a smoothing brush, as shown in the first photo. I like a short-napped brush, although many installers use brushes with longer bristles. In this scenario, the bristles were too soft to remove the wrinkles from the wallpaper.
So I grabbed what I call a trapezoidial “squeegee” and used that to chase out those last little wrinkles. The squeegee worked fine for this purpose.
But you have to be careful, because it is not intended to smooth entire strips against a wall. If you try to use it for that, it can twist and stretch and distort the wallpaper, and you could end up with worse wrinkles and warps, and an edge that is off-plumb or even unstraight, so that the next strip will not butt up against it as it should.
This is a lively colorway of a popular pattern, called “Feathers,” by Serena & Lily, an on-line company. I hung it in a guest bedroom of an older bungalow in the Houston Heights.
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