Paste Stains on Wallpaper and Woodwork

This wallpaper has been up for nearly 30 years. Over time, ” shadows ” of wallpaper paste have begun to show.

The stains are most common at the seams. During installation, it’s typical for paste to ooze out at the seams, and for the installer to wipe the paste off with a damp sponge or cloth. If he doesn’t get it all, then, over time, the paste can manifest, as you see here. There are also darker blotches to the right of the seam.

Paste caught in the lightly textured surface, and probably spread around by the installer’s wiping.

Seam opening up, probably due to humidity and / or improper wall prep.

Stains showing over a window. I don’t believe the room looked like this when the installation was completed years ago. I believe that time and humidity and other factors caused the paste to darken and show itself on the surface. I also have a hunch that clay-based paste was used. I don’t like that stuff, particularly for this reason.

One sad thing is that this room didn’t have to look like this. Note this section “before.”

Here is the same section “after.” All I did was wipe with clean water and a sponge and the stains came off easily.

Here are stains from paste that was not completely wiped off the woodwork.

Here is the same woodwork after I wiped for just a half a minute with a damp cloth.

I hate that the homeowner lived for 30 years with gradually worsening staining like this. I guess that if someone had gotten industrious, he could have taken a bucket of clean water (refreshed frequently) and a rag, and spent an afternoon washing down the walls and woodwork, and a few spots on the ceiling.

Even better would be if the original installer had ” worked clean ” – meaning, working carefully so as not to get any paste on the surface of the paper in the first place. And being more fastidious in removing any paste that did get onto the wallpaper or woodwork.