Banged Edges – Makes Wallpaper Unusable

Shame on the UPS / FedEx guy for hurling this carton of wallpaper from one end of the truck down to the ground. (“allegedly” 🙂 ) However it happened, the ends of three of the five bolts of wallpaper were banged up, dented, and damaged.

Often, with paper, these damaged edges will flatten out on the wall once the paste is dried. But this “Woods” pattern by Cole & Son is printed on a thick, spongy non-woven material. It will not flatten out like a paper will. These dents and dings are likely to show on the wall. That’s a dent and a ding every 6″ or so, all the way down the wall – a full 9 1/2 feet.

In this case, a full 10′ strip from each bolt was unusable. The homeowner could have reordered more paper, but that would have caused a delay in getting the room done, a domino-effect with scheduling other contractors, more labor costs, more paper and shipping costs, etc.

I did a lot of plotting and measuring and calculating. In the end, I had to pull a lot of tricks out of my hat, but I was be able to finish the room without any banged edges in any visible areas.

Banged Edges – Trimming Them Off to Make the Paper Useable

Designer Wallpaper AB 70702

Yes, once again, the warehouse failed to wrap and protect the ends of the rolls of wallpaper, UPS had fun tossing the package around, and the result was banged edges. Yes, these can show and look bad on the wall.

This pattern did have a match, meaning that the pattern on the left side of a strip continued onto the right side of the next strip. But with this mottley pattern, especially on short strips over the doors and soffets, a slight mis-match was not noticeable.

So what I did was to take my straight edge and a sharp razor and trim 1/4″ or so off the end of the strip, to get rid of the bashed areas. When this cut edge was placed against the next strip, the pattern matched pretty darned well.

I only trimmed off the right side of the paper. If I had trimmed off both the right and left sides of the strips, then more of the pattern would have been removed, and the mismatch would have been more noticeable.

The finished bathroom looked great!

Wallpaper Hanger Houston