Wallpapers
Wallpapers
Can you remember the last time you walked into a home that really put your head on a swivel? I mean a house where every room seemed to have a look and feel all its own. I would be willing to wager a pint of the finest mocha chip ice cream that one or more of those rooms had wallpaper on the walls. The more model homes I tour, the more I realize builders and decorators sometimes forget the ambiance and flavor wallpaper can add to otherwise flat and painted walls.
Are you wallpaper-selection challenged?
Wallpaper is available in so many patterns and styles that you are sure to find something that really gets you excited. But some people, such as myself, are wallpaper-selection challenged. I look at patterns in wallpaper books and think some are too busy or the pattern is far too big. Fortunately, my lovely wife Kathy has the gift and talent to pick papers that are not only gorgeous, but the scale of the print and pattern is perfect for the room.
Take for example our entrance hall. I built a Queen Anne Victorian style home and Kathy found a large print paper that matches the time period to a tee. The actual pattern is so large, it didn't even fit on the sample page of the pattern book. But the wallpaper manufacturer had a large photograph of a finished room within the book to show what the pattern looked like on the wall. I would have never picked the pattern. But on the wall, the print is simply breathtaking. Guests who come into our home for the first time are always complimenting this wallpaper. When was the last time you got a compliment on your painted walls?
If you feel you can't make a great choice for your own home, ask for help. Many wallpaper stores have employees who have vast amounts of experience selecting papers. Some even have photo galleries of completed jobs in your area. If they don't have the photos, the professional wallpaper hangers who install the paper almost always carry with them a photo album of premiere papers and jobs they have completed.
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Will hanging wallpaper ruin your walls?
All too often people back away from wallpaper because they feel it will ruin the walls or will be impossible to strip or modify at a later date. This is all true if the proper preparation steps are ignored by the builder and installer. The single-most important step to follow when installing wallpaper is to paint the walls with a special primer-sealer before the paper is installed.
Many wallpapers have strong adhesives applied at the factory. These adhesives can actually penetrate cheap wall paint and grab onto the paper surface of the drywall. The special primer-sealers made for wallpaper do not allow this to happen. Failure to apply the special primer sealer causes thousands of people to suffer each year when they strip wallpaper from walls that were not sealed correctly. As the people strip the wallpaper, large pieces of the drywall facing paper also come off. The special primer-sealers are affordable and can be applied as the base coat to a wall before regular paint is applied. Be sure to do this in all rooms you think might get wallpapered in the future. If you want to wait and apply the sealer the day before you wallpaper, that is fine.
A vast majority of wallpapers come pre-pasted from the factory. The instructions often outline ways to dip the paper in a container of water to activate the paste. I have found that brushing on a clear wallpaper paste activator is a far better method. The activators ensure that wallpaper paste stays on the wallpaper instead of being left behind in the dipping container. I have also discovered that the activators, when used in conjunction with the special primer-sealers, increase the amount of time you can move and adjust the wallpaper once it is applied to the wall.
To make sure your wallpaper is as smooth as a piece of glass once applied to the wall, be sure your builder scrapes down the walls to remove any small pieces of debris that got stuck in the paint or primer-sealer. To ensure the wallpaper is bubble-free, book the wallpaper. Booking paper simply means to fold the paper so the back of the paper touches up against itself. Let the paper sit for five or ten minutes before applying it to the wall. This waiting period allows the paper to expand. If you apply the paper to the wall before it expands, bubbles can and do form under the paper as it grows on the wall.
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