Pre-pasted wallpaper sounds like a timesaver when you decide to paper a room. If you've never wallpapered before, selecting pre-pasted rolls of paper are a good way to learn, but require a leap of faith on your part. What happens if the paper doesn't stick? What happens if you make a mistake and have to rehang a sheet that you have taken down? What happens if the piece is stubborn and the paste dries out before you get it on the wall? Fortunately, pre-pasted wallpaper is fairly failsafe. Manufacturers today offer a product that has paste correctly embedded in the product, unlike in past years. If you follow correct procedure and evenly wet the paper to activate the paste, pre-pasted wallpaper should properly adhere to the surface. You can even rewet small sections with a sponge if the backing seems to dry out. What To Do If The Built In Paste Doesn't Stick? Even if you do everything right, occasionally the glue embedded into wallpaper does not seem to stick on some wall surfaces, especially near seams. If you are adding a border to your room and are applying it over wallpaper, the border may not want to stay put. If you have not wet the back of the paper evenly or maybe you do not get it on the wall fast enough, you can have patches of paper that need more glue. When you have a problem, you can handle it two ways: 1. First, you can get a can of pre-mixed wallpaper adhesive (paste). Experts recommend that you thin down the product so it is the consistency vegetable juice before applying to your wall. Just apply the adhesive evenly with a clean paint roller. OR 2. You can use an activator instead of water. One word of caution: Pre-pasted wallpaper is generally strippable, so anytime you apply extra paste you run the risk that it will not strip off evenly. By evenly spreading the glue, you should reduce the likelihood of this problem though. Activator, A Better Solution Than Paste As an alternative to extra paste, you can choose to use an activator that eliminates the need for soaking the paper in water. There are a few advantages to this method: • If you have a pattern that requires matching, often a time-consuming job, the paper will stay ready to hang for a longer period of time with an activator. • Also, using activator may lead to less shrinkage, which can be the cause of seams separating. • Compared to wetting the paper with water, using an activator can be neater. • Compared to using extra paste, an activator will maintain the stripability of the paper when it's time to be re-decorate better. Applying pre-pasted wallpaper can be a fun, easy job that seldom requires extra adhesives, but having some extra paste or activator on hand is a good backup in case you have a problem.
Related Articles -
pre-pasted wallpaper, wallpaper, wallpaper paste, wallpaper activator, discount wallpaper, strippable wallpaper,
|