Precipitous

Early this morning I got to thinking, maybe I can do this wallpaper hanging by myself.  I got the long strips of horizontal blankstock on the wall successfully, why not the vertical wallpaper?  And if I wait till next week when my friend Hannah* might be able to assist, the latest batch of wheat paste will probably go bad, even if I do have it in Tupperware in the refrigerator.  I’ve wasted too much money already letting wheat paste go bad; I can’t afford to squander any more.

So after a long day of teaching and working at the Big Blue Box Store (and after only slightly more sleep than I’ve been making time for the past week or so), I launched in and tried it.

I think it came out fairly well.  Not professional grade yet, but aligned, on the wall, with no tears or rips or bubbles to poke.  I hung three sheets in all; well, two full-length ones and one split in two above and below the righthand north window.

Some of the seams are excellent, if I say so myself.  You really have to look for them to find them.  Others I tented a little too much, and though the strips don’t actually overlap, today you can still see the line between them and feel the protrusion.  The most worrisome is the one at the bottom of the wall where I have a slight gap.  It couldn’t be helped, not by me at my present level of ability: It’s a function of the curve of the brick and plaster wall.  A pro would be able to stretch the paper just the right way to close that up.  Me, I’m hoping the baseboard covers most or all of it.

The biggest problem is keeping the edges of the strips wet enough with paste so the seams get stuck down.  Or maybe I’m waiting too long to roll them?  I looked up Robert Kelly’s report on seam cycles and he says 11 to 12 minutes for a Britpulp machine print like my “Savernake.”  But is that from the time you begin to apply the paste or from the time you get the abutting strip on the wall?

I could email him and ask, I suppose . . .

I’m glad I recut to adjust the pattern.  Now the heaviest elements will be balanced, top to bottom.  The way I had it at first would have spelled aesthetic disaster.

As for the color, I think it will be all right.  I really do.  Lying on the table or juxtaposed next to the pinky-manila-toned blankstock, the strips look very green.  But together, as a field on the wall, it eases out and goes more brown and neutral.

Beige?  Heaven forbid!

Still Waiting

It’s Sunday night, and no dining room wallpaper is up.

Yes, Lizzie* came over yesterday.  But I didn’t get around to sizing the blankstock will mid-afternoon.  And whether it’s because I overthinned the paste or because it’s supposed to do that, the size bubbled the liner off the wall in several places.  Watch Kate run around with a paste pot poking paste up behind loose seams!  See her slit long bubbles with an X-Acto knife and dab paste into them!

In the end, after we’d had pizza and talked and she’d gone home, the liner dried and the bubbles went down smooth of their own accord.  Of course then I was spending hours on the Internet trying to find out if they re-adhere as they dry.  And trying to find photos of wallpaper literally falling off of walls, to determine what caused it.

It will be all right, won’t it?  I mean, that blankstock is definitely Up, isn’t it?

Before supper Lizzie helped me find the center point between the two north windows and mark the vertical line I’ll butt the first strip of “Savernake” up against.  Of course when I went back to check it later I found one or the other of us had let the straightedge slip and the cross point was marked 3/16" too far to the left.  Either that, or the windows are so far out of square it throws everything off.

Will I notice it if that’s the case?  I want that strip to be centered as possible, since I usually sit at the end of the table opposite that wall.  The way my previous-owners-two-back papered the room, starting at the southeast corner and working around so the seams fell where they might, the pattern sat five or six inches off center for ages.

No more.  Not if I can help it.

I considered flying solo with the Morris paper this evening.  But a distant cousin is letting me log in to Ancestry.com on his password so I can contribute to our mutual family tree, and well, when you’re breaking down long-standing brick walls, it’s easy to avoid papering the plaster-on-brick walls you stare at every day.

Especially when you’re still a little scared.

Precarious

Please consider the usual apology for long silence made.  Let me announce rather the wallpapering of the dining room is moving forward.  (Pause for trumpets, or at least a kazoo). After literal years of contemplation, hesitation, and self-doubt; of picking at the old stuff and planning for the new; of stripping and scrubbing, prepping and priming, the walls as of early this (Friday) morning are finally lined with blankstock, sized, and ready for paper.

A big part of the hold-up has been getting extra pairs of hands to help.  My friend Janet* from England aided me with hanging the stairhall paper (the Morris “Blackthorn” green) in the spring of 2012.  My local friend Frieda* contributed mightily to my getting the living room paper (the Morris “Owen Jones” red) up the subsequent fall.  But Janet's far away in Essex and Frieda's current work schedule sucks away nearly all her time, and there's something that shrivels up in me when I think of asking just anybody to help me with the house.

But a couple weeks ago a church friend I'm calling Lizzie* expressed herself willing to lend a hand.  Or two.  We were planning for her to come help put up blankstock the third Saturday in September-- until I got an emergency call to come work that day at the Big Blue Box Store.

We tried again last Monday the 29th.  Together got five strips of blankstock up.  Railroaded.  Yaaaayyyy for us!

I won’t go into the convolutions that put us through; suffice it that I learned or was reminded of enough hanging technique that I was able over the next three days to hang the rest of it myself– even the 12' strips at the tops of the west and south walls.  Without bubbles, wrinkles, or disasters.  Unbelievable, but true.

Lizzie is coming again tomorrow afternnon (later today?) to help me hang the actual paper, the very William Morris & Co. “Savernake” No. WR8480/5, and you know what?  I’m scared.

Not scared of any part she might play in it, but of all the things that could go wrong, now I know that the stakes are so high.  Didn’t I title one of my previous blog posts on the subject “On the Verge”?  Yeah.  On the verge, and hoping to God I don’t fall off.

What’s all this trepidation about?

Well, first, I dread I’ll get it all done and I won’t like it.  I’m still kicking, kicking, kicking myself for not buying the paper back in 2004 when it was a) a lot cheaper, and b) produced in the creamy tone I really wanted.  Having looked and looked it’s this Morris pattern or nothing, and the pale celery tone with the brownish figure isn’t bad for a dining room, and as greens go it’s the sort I like, but for a whole room it’s not really me.

I’m telling myself it will be all right once the drapes are up and the chairs reupholstered.  I hope I’m right, but my gut tells me No.

And I’m scared I’ll run out of full strips of paper before I’m through.  I was an idiot when I started cutting the strips for tomorrow and a) didn’t look hard enough at the pattern and correctly choose the cornice line, and b) when I wrote down the correct measurement of 8'-7" (including margin top and bottom) but for four whole strips I assiduously made the cut at 8'-5".  Maybe the all-nighters I pulled hanging blankstock are catching up on me?  Aaaggghhh!

The measuring error was a blessing of a perverse kind.  It forced me to start over and recut.  If I hadn’t, the pattern imbalance would have been noticeable, very.  But by the time I discovered it I had only six and two-thirds whole double rolls left.  Eyeballing the walls I conclude I need twenty full strips to cover them without horizontal seams.  Twenty is exactly what I can get out of what I have left.

So what if I muck one of those full strips up?  What if due to corner cuts I need one more?

Yeah, I know.  Do a horizontal double-cut and splice in a piece at the bottom of the wall in a corner and stick the bookcase in front of it.  But my pride suffers agonies at the thought.


And then I’m spooked by the paper itself.  That stuff was running 18 quid a double roll back in 2003, around $33 at the time.  I got it for £27; about $45 each, in 2009.  You know what it’s going for now?  Before shipping?  A bleeding $98 a double roll!  Mon Dieu, at that price it’s practically sacred!  At that price I should have auctioned it off on eBay and paid my mortgage the next month and a half!

But I didn’t. Almost half of it is cut, and the rest will have to follow.  And for better or worse, scared as I am of mucking up the job, it has to be hung.

I still need to size the blankstock.  But that can wait till daylight.  I stay up any later I’ll just add to my mistakes.