Saturday, April 30, 2016

Interior Walls: Wallpaper Liner

My interior has been sitting with an unevenly primed OSB surface for quite some time now.  Not the most gorgeous wall finish... but it wasn't finished; it was waiting. Waiting for the loft floors to be fastened down, waiting for the ceiling panels to go up, waiting for all manner of tasks along the way to be completed.

Now, after a whopping two days' hard labor (sarcasm--I hardly accomplish anything in two days anymore), the wait is over! Check out that much-smoother-than-OSB surface!

Walls post-priming, pre-papering
Back in December, I primed the walls with wallpaper primer, a thick, white, glue-like primer that is supposed to help with wallpaper adhesion. I think it worked. I didn't take any chances, though. Here's the process I used:

I used prepasted wallpaper liner. The adhesive is pre-applied and is supposed to be activated with water--think envelope seal--and applied to the wall as is. Most people in the reviews and blog posts recommended using wallpaper paste, however--apparently there isn't enough adhesive pre-applied to really make it stick.

However, I was not happy with how the first piece went on. It seemed loose around the edges and not all that smoothly adhered. So for all the rest, I spritzed the prepasted side with water...

(Some things to note: I used a clean work surface--although crud still got in and stuck to the paper!--and had to weigh the ends of the cut strips down until the paper was good and wet.)










... Then applied a good dollop of the paste and used a paint roller to spread it all around and mix it up with the water-activated pre-applied adhesive.














Then I folded the paper up accordion style (if you've ever applied wallpaper, you'll be familiar with this technique)...




And applied it horizontally, from the bottom up, to the wall. I used a blunt plastic scraper/spreader/smoother tool to smooth the paper against the wall--vastly more effective than my hands, especially when my hands started getting sticky from the paste!




The scraper in action...

After applying the paper over the window, I used my utility knife and just cut out around the edge.





Do you see that electrical outlet I'm about to run into in the picture to the left? I had a utility knife at the ready to cut an X in the paper over the outlet so it would lie flat, then cut out the wings of the X to complete the hole.






Did I skip a step? Yes--the cutting of the strips! It's very important to cut the ends of the paper square, since you butt each strip up against the previous one with no overlap and hopefully no gap. (In reality there are some gaps. Quite a few gaps. I'm hoping that a bunch of primer and a couple coats of paint will fill them in!)

I used a speedsquare to position a straightedge (a 24" level, in this case), and used a very sharp utility knife to make the cut. Wallpaper liner is pretty tough stuff; I would recommend changing the blade a few times over the course of the job, because a dull blade is pretty miserable to work with.






Here's a shot where you can compare the before and after appearance of the wall.









I didn't have enough paper to do the bathroom, which may be for the best (wallpaper in a bathroom seems like a recipe for peeling--although I will have an extractor fan!). I was already planning to use another wall covering for the end wall in the living room loft--something like wood planks--so that is unpapered, as well, as are a few inconspicuous spots here and there. The bedroom area, for example, I left unfinished because I'm probably going to cover the walls with fabric there.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with my results. The main goal was the mask the OSB texture and provide a paintable surface, and I believe that is what I have accomplished. I won't really find out until I paint it, though!

Credit goes to Laura and Jeremy from Go Tiny for the idea to use wallpaper liner over the OSB. I am so glad I ran across their blog before going with plywood or some other heavy, bulky wallcovering!

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