Preparing Your Walls for Wallpaper

Preparation includes everything from clearing out the room, measuring the room to prepping and repairing the walls and deciding which wallpaper you want to use.

The first thing would be to clear everything out of the room. This makes measuring, prepping and papering a lot easier.

After you have cleared the room of everything, you will need to measure the room that you want papered. This will ensure that you purchase plenty of wallpaper and other materials to do the walls.

If you haven’t already done so, you should decide if you want to cover your walls completely with one pattern, or use a split pattern. Split patterns can be done with plain wallpaper on the top or bottom and a decorative one on the remaining section or by using paint and wallpaper. You may also opt for a plain textured wallpaper that can be painted and apply it to one half the wall while choosing a nice patterned wallpaper to use on the remainder.

Now measure the walls. For this step you will need to consider if there are pattern repeats in the paper you have chosen. If you have not already chosen a paper, you will want to calculate based on needing extra paper.

You will measure across the floor from one wall to the other. Measure the room from front to back and then side to side. You will multiply these two lengths together to get the area of the ceiling. I know it sounds like it would be floor area but it’s not. Next you will measure the walls from top to bottom and the longest wall horizontally. Do not adjust for doors, windows or other obstacles like fireplaces. You will need extra paper to make up for trim and waste, plus if there is a repeating pattern you will need extra to compensate for that. You do this by adding the size of the repeat pattern to the height of the room.

You will generally need 1 roll of paper to every 6 square feet of surface area. A standard roll of wallpaper is approximately 20.5 inches by 11 yards equaling 6 �¼ square yards per roll. The �¼ yard will be used for trimming and waste. If you are not using a standard roll you will need to recalculate accordingly.

Now that you know how much wallpaper and other materials you will need you can begin the process of preparing the walls. This is perhaps the most time consuming part of the project, especially if your walls are in bad need of repairs and contain lots of holes.

If your walls are already papered you will want to remove the old paper. You can purchase or rent steam strippers which make the removal of old wallpaper relatively easy or you can use the water method.

It’s also a good idea to break the surface of the old paper before you try and remove it. To do this you can get a spiker or a scorer. You simply run these over the walls to break the surface of the paper to create tiny holes that allow water or steam to seep in.

If you chose to use a steam stripper be sure to wear gloves, goggles and a dust mask during this process. Remember, steam is hot. Depending on how heavy the paper is that you’re removing it may take 30 seconds or more for the steam to loosen the paper. After steaming, run your scraper under the paper to remove it. Right now just concentrate on removing the bulk of the paper; you can go back for small patches later.

You can also try stripping the old paper with the water method. Measure hot water into a bucket and add the amount of stripper needed and mix thoroughly. Using a large brush you will paint this mixture onto the old paper working from the top down. Only do a few square yards at a time so you don’t get ahead of yourself. Working too far ahead could allow the stripper to dry out before you reach that area.

Let the paper soak up the solution for a few minutes and then use your scraper to scrape the paper off the walls. Again you’re going for the bulk of the paper and can do the small left over patches later.

When using the water method you will want to clean the paper up as you go and not let it sit on the floor or your drop cloth. The old paper could dry and end up stuck to your floor or cloth.

After you get all the old paper removed from the walls you’ll go around checking for cracks and holes. These will need to be repaired before you go any further.

Materials you will need for this step in the project are a stiff brush, putty knife, filler putty, broad knife, hammer, a nail punch and some sand paper.

The nail punch will be used to tap nails into the wall that are too difficult to remove. You can tap the nails to set just below the surface and fill the tiny indentation with filler.

If you find larger holes or cracks, you will take a stiff brush and clean out the damaged area and then dampen that area with a bit of water. This will help the filler adhere to the surface. It also makes the filler drying time longer so less shrinking will occur.
You can apply filler to small areas with a putty knife or if you have large areas with many small holes and cracks you may decide a broad knife is a better tool.

Spread the filler in and around the holes and cracks and work it in good. Next take the broad knife and scrape any excess filler off and dispose of it.

If you have very large holes or cracks in the corners of the room it may be necessary to fill these in with a material like newspaper before using the filler itself. Simply take thin strips of newspaper and poke it into the holes or cracks. It also gives the filler a base to adhere to.

After you’ve gone around the entire room and completed all the filling and repairing, it will need time to dry. Use this time to do any clean up from the project and then take yourself a nice break too.

Once the filler and patchwork has dried you will go around the room sanding it all down smooth. This is another one of those time consuming steps but a necessary one for a quality-finished product.

If your walls have been previously painted with high gloss paint, you will need to sand the paint to give them a rough surface. This will provide extra adhesion on painted surfaces.

The final step in preparing the walls will be to clean and seal them. You will cover stains with stain blockers to prevent them from penetrating through the new paper and then apply a coat of quality sealer to all the walls.

This process has probably taken a good part of the day if not longer. Stand back and pat yourself on the back for a job well done. The fun part starts tomorrow with the paper work.