Keep Paste Off Adjoining Wall

Here I’m moving right to left, fixin’ to have my last strip of wallpaper meet up with the first strip I hung (which you see on the left). Because the corners are never perfectly straight, and because wallpaper can stretch when it gets wet with paste , and for other reasons, it’s not possible to pre-trim the width of this last strip, because it won’t be the exact perfect width.
So you cut this strip 1/2″-1″ wider than the gap. That means that it’s going to wrap 1/2″ or so around that corner. So you’ll have to trim off the excess. In this way, you’ll be able to get a custom fit into that corner.
But, you’ll also get paste slopped onto that strip on the left. Some papers you can wipe the paste off easily. But others are more delicate and can be damaged or stained . Why take a chance?

Here is the strip that’s going to fill that gap. I’ve paste it . Next I’ve run a strip of thin blue plastic tape along the edge that will be overlapped onto the existing wallpaper in the corner. This will keep paste from coming in contact with the wall on the left. I also like to place this tape on the top of the strip, to protect the ceiling. Especially important when there is not crown molding and the paste will be bopping into the flat paint on the ceiling (difficult to wipe off).

You can do a Search here to see other posts where I have photos of the trimming taking place, and then removing the excess paper and the blue tape. Here you see the finished corner .
This blue tape is pretty useful. It’s also helpful when double-cutting ( splicing ). Another great feature of this blue tape is that it snaps apart quite easily, so you don’t need a scissors or blade to cut your pieces. It’s imported from Japan. (Those guys have a lot of cool wallpaper tools.)
It can be purchased here https://www.wallpapertoolstore.com/product/blue-cut-tape/
Some people use waxed paper cut into strips, or yellow caution tape, or painter’s plastic cut into strips. But nothing parallels the usefulness and quality of this blue cut tape .

A Wonderful Brand of Waxed Paper

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There are a number of uses for waxed paper when hanging wallpaper, mostly cut into 2″ strips for keeping paste off the ceiling or adjacent walls of wallpaper, or other porous surfaces. I found this brand at the dollar store, used it once, and loved it immediately!

Unlike the brand in the familiar red and blue box, this one does not disintegrate when it gets wet with paste, so it has a longer working time, and is easy to remove once the strip of wallpaper has been trimmed.

Vinyl Wallpaper and Un-Straight Walls

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OK, a lot of technical stuff coming up, and a little hard to follow, but I will do my best to explain. Here I am hanging a faux-leather, textured paper-backed solid vinyl wallpaper with no pattern to match. In the left side of the first photo, I have just come from left to right around an outside corner. When you wrap wallpaper around a corner, you can bet that the corner will not be straight or plumb and the wall may even be bowed. That means that you cannot expect the right edge of this strip of wallpaper to be straight, and that means that you cannot expect the next strip of wallpaper to butt up perfectly against it.

Since this paper has no pattern to match, the solution is simple, if not easy. I am going to overlap the next strip and splice it in with the previous strip. But you don’t want to just overlap and slice through both layers with a razor blade. Doing so could: 1.) get paste on the surface of the first strip, which, since it’s a textured paper, would be hard to wipe off, and, 2.) score the wall, and that means that when the paper dries, it shrinks and puts “torque” on the seam / surface – and that could cause the surface to pull away from the the subsurface – keep in mind that here we have Sheetrock, paint, new paint, and wallpaper primer, one on top of another, so there are several layers that can all pull apart from one another. To put is succinctly, the end result is a curled seam – which cannot be glued back down.

So, in the first photo, in preparation for the double cut (splice), I have put a “Boggess pad,” which is a long flexible strip of polystyrene plastic under the seam, to protect the wall. You see a bit of it peeking out on the right side of the photo, and you see the ridge it makes under the paper in the center of the photo.

On the right side of the second photo is the new strip of wallpaper, coming to meet the existing strip. Along the edge of this new strip of wallpaper is a strip of waxed paper, and you can see some of it sticking out on the left edge. This waxed paper will protect the existing strip of wallpaper from the paste that is on the new strip of wallpaper.

In the third photo, the metal tool with the pointy top on the left is a special straight edge that I use for cuts like this. I have already made the cut along its edge, and you can see both the cut and the waxed paper on the left side of the cut. You can see a little bit of the hump created by the polystyrene strip under the vinyl paper, on the right.

In the fourth photo, I have pulled the vinyl strip on the right back a little, so I can pull off the waxed paper from under it. The polystyrene strip is still against the wall, under the vinyl paper on the left. I am about to remove that, too.

All this has taken some time, and another factor playing in here is “open time,” which means how long the paste will stay wet and allow you to fiddle with all this.

In Photo 5, I am about to smooth the two edges of the seam back together.

In Photo 6, you see how perfectly the edges meet. A double cut (splice) really gives you the most perfect seams, because the two pieces of paper are truly melded together. It does take a lot of time and materials, though, and is not really called for except in certain situations.

This room turned out looking great, and the homeowners were pleased. The homeowner did ask me why my price was higher than the guy who had hung paper in another room. From what I saw, the other installer did a good job in that room.

But I’m wondering if he has knowledge of primers and layers of wall surfaces and torque and open time, and if he has waxed paper on his truck and knows when to use it, and if he has a special $125 trim guide and knows how to use it, and if he has ever heard of a Boggess strip or if he just cuts into the wall and hopes it all holds together.

Bottom line … sometimes special situations call for special tools and equipment and skills.
Not saying another guy couldn’t do it his way and have it turn out looking great.
Just saying I’m glad I have these gadgets to use, and the know-how to use them to keep the homeowner’s wallpaper clean and unwrinkled.

Keeping Paste Off the Ceiling

In the top photo, you are looking at the back of a strip of wallpaper that has been pasted and booked (folded pasted-side-to-pasted-side). I have unbooked a few inches to show the 2″ wide strip of waxed paper along the top. The top inch or so of wallpaper will be cut off a the ceiling line, and this strip of waxed paper will keep paste off the ceiling.

In the second photo, at the wall, I have placed the new strip on the left against the strip on the right, aligning the pattern. I have trimmed the excess from the top of the strip, but have not yet removed it. You can see the waxed paper sticking out to the right of the strip of wallpaper, both on the wall and on the ceiling. See how it’s keeping paste from getting on the ceiling?

It’s also keeping my paper from sticking to the wall! In the third photo, I am removing the piece of wallpaper I trimmed off at the ceiling line, and am also removing the remaining bit of waxed paper behind the wallpaper on the wall. There is enough paste left on the wallpaper to hold it against the wall, once I smooth it into place.

No need to wipe paste off the ceiling, no worries about paste residue staining the ceiling or causing the paint to crackle, no worries about getting water or paste residue on the face of the wallpaper.

This waxed paper technique can be used in other applications when hanging wallpaper – but those are tricks for another post!

Keepin’ It Clean with Wax Paper

The mottled brown wallpaper I am installing is going on an accent wall in a bedroom in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston. The other three walls are painted a strong gold color.

The back of the wallpaper has paste on it, and I don’t want to get paste smeared on the newly painted wall. Sure, I could wipe it off, but it’s better to not get paste on paint – especially flat paint – if possible, because it can leave a stain, or even cause the paint to crackle.

So I used the Waxed Paper Trick. After the paper was pasted, I took some narrow strips of waxed paper and ran them along the edge of the wallpaper that was to end at the painted wall. I trimmed in the corner as usual, then removed the remnant of wallpaper, along with the waxed paper.

Voilà! The wallpaper fit into the corner perfectly, and no paste got on the wall!