The Importance of Prepping – Wallpaper

We often encounter customers that are requesting a quote to have wallpaper hung that their walls are already smooth and ready for wallpaper.  Installing wallpaper on poorly prepped walls can magnify flaws on your walls.  “Smooth” to an untrained eye will appear very rough once the wallpaper is hung and dry.  Prepping is the single most important step of the entire project and when completely properly, will allow you to show off your wallpaper much better.  From a practical point, if your walls are not prepped correctly, it can decrease the ability of the wallpaper to stick to the walls.

Every one of our Wallpaper installed starts with properly prepping the surface.
During this first step, our crew will need to repair any dents, nicks, holes and scratches that have accumulated on your drywalls over the years.  We use top quality drywall compound to fill in those gaps.  Once the drywall compound has dried, the first round of light sanding follows.  These last 2 steps of adding drywall compound and sanding your walls happens several times and the number of times repeated depends on your walls and the repairs needed.  We pay very close attention to this and is very crucial that this is completed correctly and make sure the finished product (your walls) remain smooth to the touch and are absent of any noticeable damage.

Repairing Larger Cracks and Fissures on your walls
Drywall compounds and fillers with a metal spatula works fine for repairing smaller wall blemishes, but if you’ve got a larger crack or hole in the wall, we’ll need to do a little bit more while prepping for wallpaper. Remember, your wallpaper is going to shrink and pull on the wall as it dries, ensuring the cracks have been properly addressed is very important in your wallpaper installation.. Therefore, simply filling large cracks and holes with compound isn’t going to cut it. Depending on the extent of the damage, we might need to apply some joint tape and then apply the compound and repeat the sanding/ drywall compound several times until the damage is unnoticeable.

Final Results/ Time to install your Wallpaper
Once our prepping is completed, we can successfully install the wallpaper of your choice.  Contact us if you’d like to see a sample of our in-stock designs or need assistance in picking out your next wallpaper design.