PAPER the house
Harris is on hand to help you wallpaper the walls to welcome colour, texture and personality into your interiors
When it comes to decorating a room, the walls offer the biggest blank canvas to stretch your creative talent. While your first thought to inject colour and personality may be paint, wallpaper offers an extremely broad range of patterns, textures and colours to set the tone for your space. Transform a humdrum hallway into an elegant entrance with stripes, take alcoves out of the shadows with a botanical print or add some period charm to a bedroom with a heritage design. Once you’ve picked your papers, put your DIY skills into good use with Harris’ extensive range of decorating tools to give your walls the wow factor.
PREPARATION IS KEY
The first step in any wallpapering project is protection and preparation. With water and wet paste likely to cause mess, protect your floors (especially carpet) with a Seriously Good Dust Sheet. If your floors are laminate or tiled, fix the sheet in place with Essentials Making Tape. If you’re papering onto new plaster then you’ll need to use a wall sealer to seal the porous surface of the wall, which will improve the adhesion of the wallpaper paste, too. Plus, it will aid the slide of the wallpaper when you’re matching the pattern or hanging it in an awkward area.
PRIME THE WALLS
Give the walls a light sand with Seriously Good Sandpaper then wash them with diluted sugar soap and a Seriously Good Microfibre Cloth. Once dry, consider lining the walls with lining paper. Hanging lining paper will prevent new wallpaper from shrinking when hung, which may lead to gaps between the lengths of paper, as well as helping to disguise any stains or small imperfections on the wall. Unscrew any fixings or nails with the Seriously Good Multi Tool. If wallpapering onto plaster, plasterboard or wood, apply a universal primer on the wall the day before, made to the manufacturer’s instructions.
GETTING THE HANG OF IT
When hanging wallpaper vertically, use the Seriously Good Plumb Bob to find the true straight line. Fix the string to the top of the wall and allow the bob to swing freely; when it stops, the point of the bob is precisely below the point at which the string is fixed above. Mark the line in pencil to give you a true vertical starting point for the wallpaper.