How To Wallpaper
If you are planning to redecorate a room with paint or wallpaper, you should plan to do more than choose colors. The better prepared you are, the more smoothly the job will go.
For each hour you will spend painting or wallpapering, it will take about three hours of prep time to prepare the room and the walls for the new coat of paint or the new wallpaper.
If you live in an older home, the first thing you should do is to verify whether there is lead based paint under the current paint or wallpaper surface. If you are not sure, you have a sample tested by calling the Department of Health in your community.
If you are going to wallpaper your room, you will have to choose between pre-pasted and unpasted wallpaper. To paper a room with prepasted wallpaper you just have to soak the paper in water to activate the paste.
When you use unpasted paper, you will buy adhesive and apply it to the back of the paper before you put the paper on the wall.
Prepasted paper is easier to apply but these papers can often stretch or shrink and leave gaps after the paper dries, so be sure you measure correctly.
Vinyl and vinyl-coated wallpapers are the most commonly used papers because they provide the most durability and they are water-resistant.
Specialty papers, or textured wallpapers are great for accent or in room where you may not need to wash the wall surface often.
You can choose from mylars and foils, which have a thin metal coating and will scratch and tear easily, paintable wallpaper that allows you to creative paint and design over the paper, textured grasscloths, which provide interesting patterns and textures using natural fiber, flocked paper with a raised fiber pattern, and papers that are embossed with relief or 3D patterns.
A paper that is ‘strippable’ will easily pull away from the wall in one piece. A paper that is ‘peelable’ will come off in layers and you will probably have to take a damp cloth to the undercoat to loosen the adhesive so you can peel off the remainder of the paper.
Plain wallpaper with no pattern to match is easier for a novice to apply.
If you choose a pattern, you can choose a small repeating pattern and still find it pretty easy to match the paper and cut down on waste.
Horizontally matched paper has a repeating match on each column of paper and is fairly easy to match, as well. Complex, large, obvious patterns will be more difficult to match and will frustrate the novice.
To buy the right amount of paper, you must measure the length of your walls, add the totals together and then multiply the total by the wall height, then subtract the total space of the windows and doors in the room. You should count on wasting about 15% of your paper, so be sure you buy enough.
Even if you can get the same pattern later, the color may not be quite the same, so don’t take any chances.
When you find wallpaper you like, check to see whether it comes in single, double or triple rolls and then buy according to the square footage estimates provided by the manufacturer on the roll label.
Before you begin to hang your paper, you should be sure that your walls are clean and smooth. Strip old paper if you have to do so and sand the walls if necessary. Fill cracks and holes in the walls if the walls are scarred or cracked.
If you are putting up paper in a newly renovated room with fresh drywall, put a primer (sealer) on the walls (using the same base color as the paper).
Many people use wallpaper ‘sizing’ on the walls before they add the paper to make the surface stickier so the wallpaper will adhere more easily. But that is your option. It is not NECESSARY!
Before you start papering, open each roll of the paper you bought and check to be sure that the patterns and colors are matched. Do not throw away the labels. You may need to buy a matching paper later if you have a problem.
Gather your supplies (tape measure, level, large sturdy scissors, a paint tray and roller, a water tray, a seam roller, a wide smoothing brush, a broadknife, a razor knife, sponges, bucket and water.
Erect a table or some saw horses with a piece of plywood, so you can use it to roll and paste the paper.
Pick the spot where you will start your paper job. You may want to start at the center or focal point of the room (the wall you see when you first walk into the room) to be sure that the wallpaper is centered and in the correct position.
Use a tape measure to find the center point on that wall and use a pencil to lightly mark a plumb line (using a level) from the ceiling to the floor so that you know where to begin.
Next, use a pencil to mark a point
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that represents the width of one sheet of wallpaper from the center to both sides (with the center of the sheet on the center line you marked on the wall).
Then mark off the width of the paper from that centerline to both corners and draw plumb lines through each mark lightly with a pencil. If that layout results in less than 6” at the corners, you may want to measure half the width of the paper in both directions from the center, instead of a full sheet width.
Then mark the size of the strips you will use to get you to the corners so that you have something more than 6” of paper to work with going into each corner.
To cut your paper, measure from the top of the trim along your floor line (if you have trim at the floor line) u to the ceiling and from the bottom of any molding at the base of the ceiling (if you have any molding.
Add a total of 6” to that figure for trimming the pieces so you have plenty of room to get the cut right.
Measure the paper at that length and cut it with scissors. Since you have the extra 6” for trimming once the paper is mounted, you don’t have to worry about precision when you are cutting the piece to hang.
If you are using prepasted wallpaper, follow the instructions to activate the paste on the back of the paper. Whether you are using pasted or unpasted wallpaper, don’t activate the paste or place adhesive on all the sheets of wallpaper at once.
Do each piece, one at a time. If you are pasting an unpasted paper, you can simply pour the paste into your paint tray and use a paint roller to spread it on the back of the paper before you put the paper on the wall.
Follow the manufacturer’s instructions to ‘book’ your wallpaper. This process involves folding the pasted paper and allowing it to set so that the paper is saturated with the paste before you hang it.
If your paper does not require ‘booking’ you can skip this step and proceed to hang the paper. Again, check your manufacturer’s instructions to see whether to book your paper and how to do so.
Using a ladder or a scaffold you can now hang your first sheet. Because the sheets are long and difficult to manage without getting them tangled or stuck together, you may want to leave the bottom end of the paper booked until you get the top of the piece positioned at the ceiling line.
Leave a few inches at the top and bottom to trim the sheet after you get it in place.
Once the top is even, you can peel off the bottom half of the paper and brush that in place on the wall.
Then go over the entire sheet with the brush to remove air bubbles and wrinkles. If the paper is wrinkled and you need to raise it off the wall, you can do so without problems with the adhesive, as long as you do it right away.
Before you hang the next sheet, use your wet sponge to wipe away any excess paste. Read your manufacturer’s instructions BEFORE you start your project to get their recommendations on using sponges, rags etc.
Not all paper is sponge friendly!
When you hang the second sheet, be sure the edge of the sheet fits flush against the edge of the first sheet so that there are no gaps. Do NOT overlap the sheets or you will have bulges and wrinkles or folds.
Use a seam roller to roll over the seam between the two sheets so that the edges of both sheets are firmly adhered to the wall.
Do not roll over the seam more than once. It will push the paste out through the seam and leave little adhesive in the seam to keep the edges of the paper secured to the wall. Over time, those seams will then begin to peel. Do not press too hard on the seam roller.
Gentle pressure is key!
You can place all your sheets on the wall before you trim them across the entire width of the wall, or you can trim them one at a time. It is usually more efficient to do all of the sheets at the same time after you have finished the entire wall.
Whether you choose to trim each sheet as you hang it or do them all at once, you will be using a broadknife (4” to 6” knife used for drywall joint compound) to crease the paper where the wall meets the ceiling joint.
Next you will position the broadknife in the crease at one end of the paper and run your blade along the edge of the broadknife using it as a guide to make short cuts that are the length of the broadknife.
Move the broadknife to the next spot on the paper and position it in the same way and continue cutting until you reach the end of that sheet or the corner of the room (if you are cutting all the sheets at once).
Then wipe the area with a clean sponge to remove any excess paste or adhesive. Then move on to the next wall until your room is completed.
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