Ensuring Smoothing Compound Will Adhere to Glossy Surface

This wall has a texture on it that will look bad under the new wallpaper, and it will also interfere with adhesion.  So the wall needs to be skim-coated / skim-floated to smooth it.  But the current paint on the wall is glossy, as you can see on the right side of the photo.  The smoothing compound is sticky stuff, but it (like many coatings) cannot be trusted to adhere to a shiny surface.  I say it’s like the toy Colorforms … the new material will kinda stick – but not really stick .
But if the surface is dull , or matt finish , the new coating will be able to grab ahold and adhere .
To make this wall surface dull , I’m rolling on a primer that will dry with a flat / matt finish . 

There are various primers out there that will adhere to a glossy surface and then dry flat.  But I’m using my trusty wallpaper primer , Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime .  Yes, this is a wallpaper primer .  But it also checks all the boxes … it sticks to just about anything , it dries quickly, especially with a fan blowing on it, and it dries with a matt finish that wallpaper paste – and smoothing compound  – will adhere to.  At $70 or more per gallon , yes, this stuff is expensive .  But it works , it’s low odor ,  it’s already on my truck , and it saves having to carry around an assortment of of primers and materials.  

Here’s my smoothing compound.  Sheetrock brand Plus 3 joint compound used for working with drywall .  Note that quick-dry formulas , nor spackling compound , are not suitable and won’t hold up under wallpaper .  You can search here for my other posts to see more about the smoothing process for textured walls . 

Spray Can Texture

I’m getting ready to skim-float this accent wall in a master bedroom , to smooth the textured wall .  The texture on the wall looks a little odd to me.  Also, it is more concentrated in the center of the wall , and less so as you get close to corners and window moldings .
This is leading me to think that this texture didn’t come with the house .  When homes are built and texture is wanted, the painters or drywall guys come in with spray equipment and shoot the joint compound onto the wall.  This gives a pretty uniform coverage , and also coats every surface, up into corners and molding.
Not sure, but I think this one I’m working with might be the after-market kind that you can buy in a spray can from Home Depot .  It does seem pretty uniform, too.  
You can do a search here to read more about the skim-floating / skim-coating process , and smoothing textured walls , to provide a smooth and attractive surface for the new wallpaper . 

More Peel & Stick Hate

so-called peel and stick wallpaper is not nearly what the vendors’ websites make it out to be. It is neither easy to install , nor easy to remove . Nor does it hold up very long. I won’t hang it, neither will most of my colleagues across the country. Even our British counterparts have asked us to not let it slip across the pond!
I won’t work with it, but one of the clients I visited yesterday did attempt to DIY try it on her own, with quite unsatisfactory results. She was kind enough to let me take photos .
Here you can easily see wrinkles next to the door molding .

gap at seam over door, warps along side door.

hard to see, but there are large wrinkles. Plus notice on the right, paper is not adhering to the wall.

seams shrink and gap.

P&S material is not even trying to adhere to the wall.

A lot of these failures are due to the homeowners’ lack of knowledge and experience with peel & stick , and with wallpaper in general. For instance, the textured walls should have been smoothed / skim-coated / skim-floated before applying the material . Wallpaper wants to adhere to a smooth surface – not to the “highs and lows” of a textured wall .
Next, most P&S instructions call for application on a semi-gloss paint , which needs to cure for 6-8 weeks.
Also, read the fine print, and you’ll learn that P&S is meant as a temporary wallpaper …. you can plan on it starting to fail in less than a year. That’s where you get the failure to stick to the wall , and shrinking at the seams . Of course, here you can see that that happened within a few weeks / days.
In this case, the material will be easily removable from the wall. But in most cases, if you’ve installed it on a smooth , primed wall, well, when stripped off, it will take the paint along with it. Leaving you with a nasty , pock-marked mess to have to repair. Click the link to my page on the right, about why to stay away from P&S.

Palm Leaf Accent Wall

Finished living room accent wall. This was a looong wall – 24′ wide. It took 14 strips of wallpaper!

Before. I’m getting ready to skim-float the textured wall to smooth it, then apply a wallpaper primer .

Ready to hang, with my “A” and “B” strips lined up in the order they will be hung.
This is a paste-the-wall product, and I like to roll them backwards so the surface doesn’t bop into the paste as I position the strips on the wall. I secure with elastic head bands from the dollar store.

First strip starts in the center of the wall, both to balance the pattern. But also because the ceiling line is way not level and the pattern will go off-track at the ceiling, this will minimize the tracking by spreading it outward 12′ each way from the center. If I start at one corner, the tracking would be a lot more noticeable by the time it crossed the whole 24′ of wall.

Close up.

This is simply called Palm Leaves and is by Cole & Son , a good brand. It’s a non-woven material and is designed to strip off the wall easily and with minimal damage when you redecorate. It’s also a little more durable and stain-resistant than paper wallpapers. It was very nice to work with.
The home is in the Westbury area of Houston.
The couple has mid-century modern furnishings, and this wall looks fantastic as a backdrop !

Kill Point Over Door, Ridge, More

After you’ve hung wallpaper on all the walls in a room, the point where your last strip meets up with the first strip is called the kill point . This virtually always ends up in a pattern mis-match. That’s why you engineer to place it in an inconspicuous place, such as behind a door.
This powder room, though, had no hidden corner or handy door. That meant that I would have a pattern mis-match a full 5′ high, to the left of the toilet you see here. I prefer to have the pattern match in a corner like this. As you can see – it does. I will explain how I accomplished that.

I decided to place the kill point over the door. Even though this space is 2′ high and a mis-match might be noticeable, not many people are looking up over the door, so it’s a better choice than in a 5′ or 9′ long corner.
The dark smudges on the wall in the photo are where I’ve spread paint, to prevent white walls from peeking out, should the dark wallpaper shrink as the paste dries.

Here I’ve positioned the strip on the left. This leaves a gap of about 3″. Once I match the new strip up to the piece on the right, its pattern will not match perfectly with the strip on the left.

Now I’ve positioned both strips, and the one on the right is overlapping the one on the left.
Here’s an idea of what the pattern mis-match will look like. To be honest, it’s not all that bad, with this busy pattern and being up over the door. Still, I thought I could make it look better.
I’m going to do a double cut , which is our installers’ fancy term for a splice. I’m going to cut through the two strips, splicing them together, cutting along the vertical foliage elements, to minimize cut-off motifs and to disguise the splice.

When double cutting on the wall, it’s really important that you slice through the two layers of wallpaper only , and not cut into the primer or wall surface beneath. This is because, if the wall surface becomes scored or compromised, when the wallpaper paste dries and the paper shrinks and pulls taught, it can put tension on the wall surface. If the surface is not intact, it can give way and actually come apart ( delaminate ), resulting in wallpaper that comes away from the wall – and there’s nothing beneath it to paste it back to.
I’ve blogged about this before, so do a Search here to learn more. It’s important!
Anyway, to protect the wall beneath where I will make my splice cut, I’ve placed three layers of scrap wallpaper, to pad the wall. I figure I can cut through the two top layers, but not all five.
Note that three layers of non-woven material have some thickness, and can “throw off” the splice cut and prevent the top two strips from fitting together perfectly. In this case, the paper is flexible enough that I’m not worried about that particular scenario.

The strips are in place, and I’m ready to make my cut. I prefer to use a single-edged razor blade held in my fingers, rather than a blade-holder. What’s most important is that the blade be brand new and spankin’ sharp!

Here I’ve made my cut and am removing excess paper from the right side of the top strip. Look carefully and you can see how my razor blade followed the contours of the vertical foliage design elements.

Here I’ve removed the excess paper from the left edge of the bottom strip. You can see they are poised to fit together nicely.

Before fitting the two strips back together, though, I’m examining the wall surface. Check the photo carefully, and you’ll see that I did, after all, score into the primer. 😦 The surface below is skim-coat that was used to smooth a textured wall – and another potential layer that may come apart when exposed to tension from the drying wallpaper.
Shoulda used a Boggess Strip. https://www.steveboggesspaperhanging.com/lexanpage.htm

One way to prevent the wall from delaminating is to put something over the compromised area, to distribute the tension of the drying paper and take it away from the cut wall. Here I’ve taken a scrap of wallpaper, which is a tough non-woven material, and carefully peeled the printed surface from the white substrate (no pic of that process). Now I have a thin material that I can use to pad the wall.
I’m using the black printed side facing out, in case the spliced strips shrink a little – anything peeping out will be black and not noticeable.

Here is the bit of paper in place, spanning across the cut on the wall.

Now I’ve smoothed the two top strips back into place. Since my double cut followed along the vertical foliage elements as much as possible, and because I cut around the gold flowers to keep them full and round, the pattern looks like it matches up just about perfectly.
But wait! … What’s that lump / ridge under the wallpaper, the full height of the seam? That’s my seam padding! Doesn’t look great.
I’m really surprised at this. The non-woven wallpaper material is thick. But that’s why I pulled the top and bottom layers apart, to make my patch piece thinner. I guess not thin enough. Once dried, this ridge is going to be obvious.
But, to be honest, this is up over a door where no one’s going to be spending much time looking. In addition, once I get my 100 watt light bulb out of there and replace the homeowners’ original, small light fixture, this bump under the wallpaper will be pretty much indiscernable.

Still, that lump was buggin’ me. Another invention from my colleague Steve Bogges to the rescue! Pictured is his seam tape , which was made specifically for this type situation. This is very thin – yet strong – paper tape that is used to bridge cut areas like this, and prevent tension from drying wallpaper from tugging at unstable walls.
The tape has a pre-pasted side (the gloss you see), and feathered edges, to make it less noticeable under wallpaper.

Hard to see, but here I’ve placed the seam tape over the cut wall areas

Now the two top strips have been smoothed back into place. Amazingly, no bump from the seam tape beneath shows. And the pattern mis-match is barely visible, too.
Win-win!
All that’s left to do is to wipe paste off the surface of the wallpaper. This overlapping and splicing does mean that wallpaper paste will get on the surface of the strip underneath. Actually, there is a way to prevent that, and it also involves products from Steve Boggess …
But … that’s a blog post for another day …

This pattern is called Peonies and is by Rifle Paper.

Getting Smoothing Compound to Dry – Fast

Digital Image

Many homes here in Houston have textured walls.  The texture will show through wallpaper and look bad, and it also prevents good adherence to the wall (because the paper wants to stick to a smooth, flat surface, not to the tops of bumps on the wall).  So I smooth the wall by troweling on a smoothing compound (drywall joint compound), which is similar to plaster.

Once it’s dry, it can be sanded smooth, then sealed and primed, and then it’s ready for wallpaper.

The trick is getting the compound to dry as quickly as possible.  Here I have three fans blowing full force on the wall.  These really speed things up.

Helpful, too, is having a ceiling fan.  And very important is having the air conditioning cranked down cold, and the house fan set from “Auto” to “On,” meaning that it will be constantly circulating that dry, air-conditioned air through the room.  It’s pulling moisture out of the wall and pulling humidity out of the air, and helping the wall to dry.

Stubborn spots can be hit with the heat gun.

Water-Colorful and Fun Flowers on a Bedroom Accent Wall

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

It was hard getting a full-wall shot of this wallpaper install, because the wall was so darned tall – nearly 12 feet high! But you get the idea.

Originally, the wall was painted navy blue, like the other three walls in this master bedroom. The wall also had a flat-screen TV plastered in the middle of it. The husband, of course, loved the huge TV. But the wife persevered, and got him to agree to have this colorful and playful wallpaper cover the wall. Now, as to whether or not that TV will go back up on the wall remains to be seen ….

I smoothed the textured wall, which you can see on the right side of the first photo. The next day I hung the paper. The paper is by York, in the SureStrip line. It is a pre-pasted product, on a thin non-woven backing, and is designed to strip off the wall (relatively) easily when you want to redecorate. It is a lovely product to work with, clings tightly to the wall, seams are nearly invisible, and should hold up nicely for many years.

This is a 1955 home with mid-century modern flare, in the Spring Branch neighborhood of Houston, and the clients were a busy family with school-age children.

From Pimply to Smooth

Digital Image

Digital Image

Today I prepped two accent walls, to be ready for wallpaper tomorrow. The first step was getting rid of this fairly heavy stipple texture.

To do that, I take a putty knife and knock off the highest bumps, then trowel on joint compound, which is something like plaster. Once it’s dry, I sand it smooth, vacuum up the dust, wipe dust off the wall with a damp sponge, and then apply a penetrating primer to seal it and prepare the wall to accept wallpaper.

The second photo shows how nice and smooth the wall is. And, not to toot my own horn, but I am much better at it than most painters or handymen, so no need to hire one of them to smooth the walls – I will most likely have to redo at least part of it anyway. 🙂

Why do the walls need to be smoothed? First of all, the bumps showing under the paper just look bad. Slipshod and uncaring. Second of all, if the wall is textured, then the wallpaper can only adhere to the tops of the bumps, which is not very secure at all. When the wall is nice and smooth, and properly primed, there is a sound surface for the paper to come in contact with and hold tightly.

Priming a Newly Smoothed Wall

Digital Image

My previous post talked about smoothing a textured wall, so that the new wallpaper would have an intact surface to hold on to, and so that ugly bumps would not show under the new paper. I did the same thing today, in a large powder room with 10′ high ceilings, in a new home off Fannin, south of Loop 610 in Houston.

Once the walls were sanded and wiped free of dust with a damp sponge (rinsed frequently) (a crucial step, because any dust left on the wall can, when paint or primer or wallpaper is applied, delaminate, which means to pull away from the wall, which results in curling or loose seams on the wallpaper).

Anyway, once the walls were wiped and then dried, I rolled on a primer. While I use different primers for different situations, when I have newly floated walls, as in this case, I like to use Gardz (see photo). Gardz is thin and watery and soaks into porous surfaces, such as the thirsty joint compound in this newly smoothed wall. Then it dries very hard and solid, binding everything together, and doing a super job sealing the surface.

It also lends a wonderful surface for wallpaper to adhere to.

In the photo, the areas that are white are unprimed, and where the Gardz has been applied but has not yet dired, you see grey. When the Gardz dries, it will be clear. The surface will look a little irregular, because you see white areas where the join compound is thicker, and the paint color where the joint compound is just thin enough to skim over the high points of the textured wall.

Dont Hang Wallpaper Over Textured Walls – Here’s Proof That It Looks Horrible

The previous installer did not bother to smooth the walls before hanging the wallpaper. The texture shows under the paper, and it looks horrible.

In addition, the bumps prevent the paper from sitting securely on the wall, so some of the seams are popping open (2nd photo).

Generally, textured walls cannot simply be scraped smooth. They must be scraped and then “skim floated” with joint compound, then sanded, wiped free of dust, and then primed.

This give an absolutely smooth surface for the paper to hold on to, and that looks much better, too.