Hanging A/B Wallpaper | Fall 2020 | ORC

We did it!! Week 5 of the One Room Challenge and we finally have one part of this project totally complete and it’s created such a HUGE impact! If you’ve been watching my Instagram Stories this week, you have seen all the other problems I’ve run into. Ugh. Having this part go smoothly has been a sanity saver. It didn’t just go smoothly though, it was the easiest wallpaper install I’ve ever done!

I have been in love with this Milton & King Cranes wallpaper ever since I saw it. You can see all 4 color options below. I love the bold, traditional Japanese design. I am very into the global, eclectic look. The Sora (blue) colorway created a nice flow from my entry space to my living room that houses the vintage blue couches. The other reason I love this colorway is because it has a lux, vintage feel. It really couldn’t be more perfect!

This specific design is done as an A/B wallpaper. So it comes as a two roll set. The over all design goes across both rolls. Since one roll is 24 in wide, the entire design is actually 48 in wide. I was able to measure and cut the first strip and the second strip lined up to the top perfectly. Which made it much easier to match up! A couple more reasons I went with this brand; their wallpapers don’t shrink with the paste, so no need to overlap the design, and they are durable and cleanable. You can wipe them down with a wet rag!

Look back on Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and Week 4.

This is my third time hanging wallpaper and, like I said above, it was the easiest I’ve ever installed even on 12 foot tall walls! I learned a few tricks that helped make it go much more smoothly this time. Let’s break down what I did and the tools I used. Below you can see the tools. I still have this giant jug of Roman Wallpaper Paste. It’s gotten me through 3 wallpaper jobs so far, and there is still some left. This time we used a roller and paint brush to apply the paste. The roller helped to get an even amount of paste on the wall with less drips. We used the paint brush to paste the corners and around the edges. A squeegee to smooth the paper. The long metal edge with the razor blade was to cut excess wallpaper along edges and corners. Then a rag to wipe up excess paste. Also, rinse the rag out every once in awhile to keep from smearing more paste.

First, you ALWAYS draw a level line to match your first strip of wallpaper to. Walls are almost never straight. So this line is crucial to making sure you don’t get your paper crooked. My wallpaper is 24 inches wide so we measured out 23.5 inches to give a 1/2 inch wiggle room. Which we needed since at the bottom the wall got 1/2 inch wider. Make sure to measure multiple areas of the wall to check for this. I watched THIS YouTube video to learn how to hang wallpaper. It will teach you the basics and how to get this line. Measure from ceiling to floor giving yourself a few extra inches to make sure you have enough paper to work with. Measure twice and cut once.

Once you get your first strip cut and ready to hang, you roll on the wallpaper paste. Start at the top. Since this wall was soo tall, we only pasted the first 6 feet to start. We lined up the paper to the penciled line and gave ourselves 1-2 inches extra at the ceiling. You will cut this off later. After we got the top half hung and straight, we were able to roll the paste on the bottom half. The bottom should have another 1-2 inches to cut off and the side should as well. PS this job is much easier to do with 2 people.

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I feel like I should point out why I started on the right side. I usually wallpaper going from left to right, but the right side of our doorway was almost exactly one roll wide about 24 inches. The left side was closer to 30 inches. If we started on the left we would’ve had waaaay more cuts to do. By starting on the right it made it so we only had 4 strips of paper to hang. 2 A strips and 2 B strips. I recommend measuring and mapping out your wall before starting to figure out which direction would give you the least amount of cuts.

The next 3 strips went up really easy. We matched up the pattern and cut them length wise. I cut out the door after getting the top section hung. That way I didn’t accidentally cut too much off. The squeegee was extremely helpful to get the paper to lay smooth and to get all the air pockets out. From all the different things I’ve tried this worked the best. Here is a link to an affordable one on Amazon.

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In the past I have always trimmed the tops, bottoms, and edges of the wallpaper right after I hung each piece. The wallpaper was still wet and was super difficult to cut smoothly. I would get minor tears or rips. This time I let it sit about an hour after it was all hung so the paste would dry before cutting it. HOLY SMOKES! That was the key! Why haven’t I thought of that sooner?? With a nice fresh razorblade and this metal tool seen below, it cut so smoothly. Like butter! Sorry for all the exclamations, but this was game changing. The only downside to this method was that its hard to tell if you got the edges fully pasted before you cut them. In some spots I had to add more paste. Since I had cut it to fit the corner perfectly it was tricky to get it up enough to get the paste under it. Still, I will do it this way every time from now on.

I am officially OBSESSED!!!

A huge thanks to Milton & King for gifting this wallpaper. It’s the highlight of the entry. I will love walking by this view every single day.

We still have lots left to do in this space. I’m hoping we can tackle a good chunk of it this weekend. We got the new door in and that will be a huge improvement to this view. Wish me luck and follow along on my Instagram to see what we are working on next!

Cheers,

Jenasie