this vanity was originally white . To update the powder room and coordinate with the new wallpaper , the vanity cabinet was painted this rich green . When hanging wallpaper , some paste will get onto the woodwork or cabinetry . Usually, it’s a simple matter to wipe this paste off with a damp rag (we like microfiber cloths ).But as you can see, even gentle wiping with a damp cloth has taken some of the new paint with it. This is usually because the new paint was applied without having properly prepped the original surface. The original paint has a gloss / sheen , which makes it attractive , as well as resistant to dirt and stains . But new coatings (be they paint , latex paint , wallpaper paste , etc. ) won’t adhere tightly to a glossy surface . So it’s imperative that the original surface be prepped correctly , before the new paint is applied . This means de-glossing . Deglossing can be done by sanding the surface to scruff it up, which will give a bit of “tooth” to the surface for the new coating to stick to. Or you can buy a chemical de-glosser from a good paint store like Sherwin-Williams or big box store like Home Depot . This is simply wiped on with a cloth . You can also use what’s called a bonding primer , which is formulated to adhere to just about anything , and then provides a surface that paint or other coatings can grab a hold of and stick to . Once the original surface is properly de-glossed and primed and prepped , the new paint can be applied . Once that dries and cures , you can put stress on the surface, such as rubbing or wiping , without fear of the new paint peeling off . Another weird thing is that the green color came off on my microfiber rag . I’ve had this happen with water-based / water-borne paints – but not with the old-fashioned oil-based paints . Not a big deal. Not enough of the color wiped off to cause any lack of color on the painted surface of the vanity . install
I usually insist on prepping the walls for wallpaper. But we had a time crunch here, and the homeowner asked her paint contractor to strip the old wallpaper and smooth the walls. He did a good enough job of skim-floating and sanding the walls smooth. Unfortunately, he neglected to wipe residual dust off the walls. The problem is that nothing sticks to dust. Not paint, not primer, and not wallpaper. Over time, stress, humidity, and other factors can cause the wallpaper to expand and contract, which puts tension on the seams. This tension tugs at the seams , and if the wall surface underneath is unstable ( dusty ), the layers can pull apart ( delaminate ), and you end up with failing seams. So I wiped down every square inch of wall, using a sponge and bucket of water. I rinsed the sponge frequently, to prevent build up of dust on the sponge. Here’s drywall dust wiped off in just a few swipes. In the background, you can see tracks of my damp sponge along the wall. These damp areas will need to dry thoroughly before I can apply my wallpaper primer. A heat gun helps speed that process along. One fear that I have is because, as you see in the photo, the contractor spray painted the woodwork, and in so doing, got a lot of overspray onto the wall. This can be painted over without much problem. But, as mentioned above, putting wallpaper over this can open a can of worms. Even with a good wallpaper primer underneath, the drying / shrinking wallpaper can put stress on the seams. If the wall underneath is dusty, the layers may let loose of one another and result in a popped seam .
I wanted to position this pattern so that the stripe ran right up along the right side of the door frame. That would be more visually pleasing than having half-sections of those angular motifs. The stripe did run along the outer edge of the wallpaper strip, so I could have easily butted the edge along the door molding. But that would have put a vertical seam running right up over the corner of the door. My experience has shown that this area gets a lot of stress, especially in the case of shifting foundations and walls. So I really avoid letting a seam fall there.My solution was to take a strip and move the seam over – easy to do with this striped pattern. We had very little paper for this job, so before cutting anything I made sure that reducing the width of this strip by one section of diagonal motifs would still allow me to reach the corner on the far right (not shown). So I measured down a little more than the height of wall above the the door and kept that intact and full-width. The rest of the length of that strip I cut along the strip in the design, all the way down to the floor. Here that strip is in place. Leaving the top portion a little long ensured that I had enough to cover this area, and then all I did was trim off the extra 1″ or so, just as you normally would trim around a door frame. The best part is that we now have the paper reaching across that “danger zone” above the top right corner of the door, with no seam to split open or gap should the wall shift.Here’s a close-up of the irregular strip as it falls alongside the door molding. Here’s the left corner of that door. I did some tricks to get that strip straight along the edge of the door frame, too. No pics, but, in a nutshell, I cut vertically along the lines in the design over the door, to cut the sections apart. Then I overlapped the sections about 1/4″, with the vertical stripe disguising the overlap. This made each section of diagonal motifs narrower. Once I had narrowed the whole area by removing about an inch, I had pulled the full-height strip on the left over to the right far enough that the tan line lined up along the door frame, and above the door it butted up with the left edge of the last section of diagonal motifs. Note that this is a very easy pattern to play tricks with, because, although there is a pattern match, it really doesn’t matter much if you ignore it. Also, the lines are not perfectly straight, but a bit squiggly, and that makes it much more forgiving. In fact, because we were really short on paper, the only way to get the room done was to mis-match the design in most places. The homeowner was OK with that. In fact, she (and he) were delighted with how the room turned out. This very popular pattern is called Feather and is by Serena & Lily . Just about everything they make, I love hanging. (not so fond of their non-woven / paste-the-wall option) This comes in many colors, and you can purchase directly from them on-line. wallpaper installer houston
This is an under-the-stairs cloffice ( closet turned home office ). Wallpaper needs to go along the wall on the right. Over the top of the shelf alcove on the right, over the top of the shelf on the left, down the center, into the niche above the desk area on the left, and then down and under into the knee / kick area under the desk on the left. Easily accomplished with paint. But tricky with wallpaper – which can twist, crease, tear, buckle, etc. Not to mention paste getting slopped onto all that nice newly-painted woodwork. The part above the desk is not so horribly tricky, but this portion under the desk is, mostly due to the narrow transition point.Another issue is that the strip of wallpaper is set to extend to the right about 5″ over the shelf alcove. This means that paste will be getting onto the woodwork, as well as adding weight and stress to the whole strip. Since the wallpaper comes in a rectangular strip, a whole lot of the top section is going to overlap onto that sloped ceiling area, getting paste on that, too.To make all that easier and cleaner, here I have roughed in some cuts, measuring and templating ahead of time, to reduce the amount of paper that will overlap onto the shelf woodwork and the ceiling. Once this strip is pasted, I’ll use my blue plastic tape on the pasted side of the paper, to keep paste from getting on to the navy blue paint. No photo of that, but you can Search on ” blue tape ” to see previous posts about that cool stuff.As mentioned above, it was going to be really difficult to manipulate the wallpaper down the wall and then down and under the desk area without damaging the paper. So I decided to eliminate stress on the paper by cutting the strip into two sections – one for above the desk and one for under it. I used my straightedge and a razor blade and cut along a horizontal element of the design. Here I have the top section in place. No need to wrestle a 24″ wide strip down that narrow area and then down and underneath the desk. Here I’m about to position the bottom piece.Here it is in place.All finished! No stress on the paper, no creases or tears. And no swearing during the installation! This wallpaper pattern is called Florida Toile and is by Katie Kime in their very popular Cities Toile collection .
This kind homeowner had the sink / vanity in this powder room removed. This makes it a LOT easier and faster for me to to get the wallpaper up, and with less stress on the paper and fewer relief cuts . Removing a sink that’s attached to the wall often damages the surface. Here you can see how the workman used spackle compound to cover the torn drywall and other damage.
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Close-up. This isn’t a very smooth surface, and the wallpaper will have a hard time grabbing ahold and adhering. It’s also way too porous and crumbly to support wallpaper. In the top photo, you see where I have applied smoothing compound on the upper portion of the wall. I’m working my way down. Once it’s dry, I will sand and prime it, and it will be nice and smooth. Here’s a shot of the fresh smoothing compound, before sanding.Some people use a drywall taping knife or a broad knife to apply the plaster-like substance. I prefer the trowel you see in the photo, because it gives me more control and precision. The 2″ flexible putty knife is for getting into smaller areas. The 3″ stiff ” Hyde ” putty knife is for knocking off high points or bumps on the wall before applying the smoothing compound. This process is called skim-floating or skim-coating . I like to use the Plus 3 lightweight joint compound made by Sheetrock . We just refer to it as mud . Find it in the drywall aisle. The Plus 3 spreads on easily enough, sands easily , and the dust falls to the floor where it can be vacuumed up easily – as opposed to getting air-borne and drifting all over the place. This box, which is approximately one cubic foot , weights 32 pounds . Ugh. Try carrying that across a parking lot and then up to the third floor of a townhome! I like to transfer the material to a 5-gallon bucket. This is what it looks like in the bottom of the bucket. Easy to scoop out. When I’m finished, I use a wet hand to smooth down the surface, wipe residue off the sides of the bucket, then place a thick sheet of plastic over the surface to keep air from drying it out. Then, of course, I put the lid onto the bucket.
Prior to prepping for wallpaper, I’ve removed a hanging shelf. It had stuck to the paint, and pulling the shelf off the wall also took some of the paint along with it.
This is a bad sign. If paint will release from the wall so easily, it’s an indicator of an unstable surface underneath, that the paint is not able to bond to.
That also bodes poorly for any coatings applied on top of it, such as my smoothing compound, primer, and wallpaper.
The most worrisome of these is wallpaper. Because unlike other substances, wallpaper expands when it gets wet with paste, and then as the paste dries, the paper shrinks a tad and puts stress / torque on the wall. If the underlying surface is unstable, these layers can actually pull apart, resulting in a ” popped ” seam.
This is not a ” loose ” seam and cannot be simply glued back together. It’s layers deep inside the wall coming apart / delaminating from each other, and virtually impossible to really repair.
So what causes this? Do a Search here to read my other posts on this topic. But causes can include incompatible surfaces, such as old oil-based paint covered with newer latex paint, gloss paint covered with new paint without proper prep / de-glossing, chalky or calcimine paint, or coatings applied to a dusty wall.
In all these cases, the top coatings won’t be able to adhere tightly, and can result in what you see here – the top layer(s) of paint pulling off the wall with just a little stress.
Even worse, in my world, is the potential of the surface beneath wallpaper seams coming away from the wall.
No boring beige or all-white walls in this home of a growing and active family in the Cypress / Jersey Village area of Houston. Throughout the home, the mom has added touches of blue, green, yellow, and pink, along with a heavy dose of mid-century modern furnishings and accessories. Time to pull the powder room into the mix! Originally, this room was wallpapered in a typical ’80’s pattern, complete with a border running below the ceiling. Did I say ’80’s ?! That wallpaper had been removed, and the walls were painted a dark tan. The room was very boring and boxy and uninspiring.But … add a little wallpaper and – nothing boring here! And the look definitely invokes the ’50’s, ’60’s, and ’70’s – can you say Flower Power ? Spoonflower sells several types of wallpaper. Definitely do NOT get their peel & stick (see my page to the right), and I’m not fond of their vinyl material. I do like their pre-pasted smooth , which is what my client chose. Spoonflower doesn’t come in standard dimension rolls. It comes in 24″ wide ” rolls ” of 1′, 3′, 9′, or 12′ lengths. So measuring and calculating is a little more complicated than for traditional wallpapers. (The mermaid kitchen towel on the right is also by Spoonflower – and they have wallpaper to match!)Strips of this material are designed to be overlapped at the seams. This is good, because it prevents gapping at the seams as the paste dries, and it also eliminates stress on the wall that could cause underlying surfaces to delaminate and come apart. Do a Search here to learn more. The downside is that this overlapped area does leave a ridge running the length of the seam. Most people don’t mind the look, especially with a busy pattern like this one. Pattern # 4330883 is called Party Posies. This material is custom-printed. The homeowner ordered 11 rolls, and here you can see how the manufacturer has numbered each of the rolls in sequence (5th roll of 11 total).
Re yesterday’s post … after I got the wall stabilized, I skim-floated the surface to smooth it. That dried overnight, and today I sanded it smooth, vacuumed up the dust and then wiped residual dust off the wall with a damp sponge, and then primed with good old Gardz. I feel pretty confident that that wall is secure enough to withstand the tension of drying wallpaper. But, just to be sure, I applied a liner. A liner is a special paper that goes on the wall under the decorative wallpaper. In this case, the purpose is to distribute tension so that no stress is placed directly on the wall. So it’s important that the seams of the liner and the decorative wallpaper do not line up or fall on top of each other. This way any tension is dispersed and distributed, and any inner surface that wants to delaminate will be held in place by the layers of paper over it. In this photo, the section to the left has the new white liner, and I am moving toward the right to finish this wall. t’s important that the liner be flat and that the seams lie down tightly, so no bumps or ridges show under the new wallpaper. I was really pleased with how these seams just melted away. There are all kinds of liner papers out there. This one is a stiff, somewhat thin non-woven option made in Germany. Using a liner does add to the cost of the installation, for both material and labor to hang it.
The width of the wall space to be covered with wallpaper is about 9″ wide. Yet the strip of wallpaper is 28″ wide. Maneuvering that wide strip of paper into this narrow space is going to be difficult, it’s going to get a lot of paste slobbered on the upper and lower cabinets, and is likely to put a lot of stress on the paper, and also create creases. My solution was to cut the next strip of wallpaper in two, making the next strip (the left side of the split strip) just 10″ wide – enough to let just 1″ pass under and into the cabinet area. Then I took the appropriate pattern match section from the right half of the split strip, and placed it under the cabinet. If you look closely, you can see the seam under the left edge of the cabinets.
This little trick made hanging this strip a whole lot easier, and it greatly reduced stress on the paper and the potential for creases or damage.
The red plastic tape is on the backside of the top of the wallpaper to keep paste off the cabinets.
Re my previous post … the strips on this 6-panel mural are intended to be overlapped, by about a full inch.
There are advantages to this. Since wallpaper shrinks as it dries, it an result in gaps at the seams. Overlapping the seams prevents that.
Wallpaper that is drying and shrinking is also tugging at the wall behind it, which puts stress on the surface. If that surface is unstable, this tension could cause the layers inside the wall to give way and pull apart, resulting in open seams and a delaminated sub-surface. Overlapping the paper redistributes and minimizes the tension, and it also eliminates an open area where the two sides of the seam could pull away from the wall.
A disadvantage of the overlap method is that you can see the cut edge of the paper (see photo), and you also end up with a 1″ wide ridge running under the paper the full length of each seam. In this case, with such a busy pattern, you are not going to see that ridge.
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