Wallpapering Is One of The Simplest and Most Economic Aspects of Home Decoration

Wallpapering is one of the simplest and most economic aspects of home decoration. A lot can be done with wallpapers to add both elegance and simplicity to a room or hallway. Usually when a person decides to wallpaper a wall, they already have a general idea of what they are looking for in the finished product. A lot of people choose to use a different paper for the top two thirds of a wall than the lesser one third at the bottom. Both papers should compliment each other, and a chair rail or wallpaper border should be used to separate them. I've done lots of rooms for people where they want the two end walls papered and the side walls painted with a complimentary color to match the wall paper. The matching border for the wallpaper is applied to the tops of the painted side walls. There are lots of different things you can do with wallpaper as long as you are sure to color coordinate the paper with carpets and room furnishings. Years ago, wallpaper was made out of paper. These days it's nearly impossible to find paper wall coverings. The majority of wall coverings available are vinyl coated with a paper backing. Back in the old days they used to use paste made out of regular kitchen flour that was applied to the back of the paper with a paste brush. These days the majority of wall coverings available are pre-pasted with chemical pastes. Although vinyl is the most commonly used wall covering these days, felt and velour coverings are available as well as straw and bamboo. When people began using wallpaper in the old days, the paper seams were overlapped when applied to a wall, there was a two inch area at the right edge of the paper that allowed for overlapping before reaching the pattern. These days the paper is butted together, which makes pattern matching more difficult, and seams harder to get even. Although it is uncommon these days, you can still purchase "paper" wallpaper. It's not as expensive as vinyl, but it is much harder to work with. Wet paper is wet paper! When you soak the pre-pasted paper or apply paste to the un-pasted variety, it becomes extremely fragile. You must always handle it with special care. You have to be very careful opening up your booked sheet when you are ready to start. It's really easy to tear a chunk out of it with your fingers when you are holding it up to apply to a wall, and it's equally as fragile when you are smoothing it out with a brush. You can't move paper once it's on the wall, if it isn't lined up quite right for pattern matching, you have to remove it from the wall and re-apply it in the correct position. Be sure to use a soft bristle smoothing brush that's made especially for paper, as vinyl smoothing brushes have stiffer bristles. Never use a plastic scraper on "paper" wallpaper. Because Vinyl wallpaper is the most common, the paper hanging instructions in this course are mainly for vinyl. Follow the instructions in the section entitled "Hanging the Wallpaper" and use special care with the paper variety. The larger the pattern on the wallpaper, the harder it is to match up to the run of paper that has already been hung. The repeating size of the pattern is called the "drop. " A large pattern may have a 10 or 11 inch drop where a smaller floral pattern will only have a 2.5 inch drop. The lesser the drop, or smaller the pattern, the easier the paper is to match up. The problem with small patterns however, is that a lot of folks tend to think that they are too "busy" where larger patterns are more appealing and make a room look larger. The size of the pattern as opposed to the size of the room is something that you should consider when choosing a wall covering. Source: suite101.com