Kathleen Heaney: Hello and welcome to Kathleen Can Do It, the DIY podcast, celebrating the fun and fails of doing it yourself. I'm Kathleen Heaney.

Kathleen Martin: And I'm Kathleen Martin. And we're just two Kathleens who are really into wallpaper.

Kathleen Heaney: And in this episode we are discussing everything that you need to know about putting up peel and stick wallpaper in your home.

Kathleen Martin: So exciting.

Kathleen Heaney: I just finished a huge multi-month project in my bedroom putting up peel and stick wallpaper, and I'm here to give you the nitty-gritty, the things I would do differently if I had to do it again and why I am really liking the wallpaper in my bedroom right now.

Kathleen Martin: Your bedroom looks amazing.

Kathleen Heaney: Thank you.

Kathleen Martin: So I've only used it once. It was fine when I put it up. It was a very small section of wall in my old apartment. Very bad when it came down. Ripped the whole wall down.

Kathleen Heaney: I've heard that a lot from people who've used peel and stick and they're like, "Oh, and then I peeled it off and the wall behind it was totally and completely destroyed." I know all the steps that you need to take to protect your walls because I feel like a lot of people don't do the prep work that they need to do. I know, Kathleen, you're looking at like...

Kathleen Martin: I did no steps. Bought wallpaper, put wallpaper up.

Kathleen Heaney: It is not a weekend process. You need to start thinking weeks in advance about what room you want to work in, what kind of wallpaper you want to use, and then there are a bunch of steps that take up to a month that you need to do before you can actually put the wallpaper up. But we will get into that. I know I'm a little bit anal about getting every single step right.

Kathleen Martin: Yeah. That overwhelms me and I don't know if I can do that. I just will ignore them.

Kathleen Heaney: I'm here to walk you through the process so you never have any of those issues ever again. Step number one, Kathleen, and I'm going to talk about how to choose peel and stick wallpaper after I go over how to prep your surfaces, okay? So let's say for now, let's role play a little bit.

Kathleen Martin: Ooh.

Kathleen Heaney: So dirty. You've chosen your peel and stick wallpaper and let's say it's going to go in a place that's not humid. It's going to go in your living room.

Kathleen Martin: Okay.

Kathleen Heaney: You need to, and this is almost more important than the actual application of the wallpaper, you have to prep your surfaces.

Kathleen Martin: Okay?

Kathleen Heaney: I know you just, Kathleen, you can't see this gentle listeners, but Kathleen just rolled her eyes at me and that means that you need to inspect your walls. You got to give them a sand.

Kathleen Martin: Okay.

Kathleen Heaney: I would say use like a 220 grit. That's what I used in my bedroom. You have to sand them down to take away all of those little imperfections that happen when you're painting. No matter how careful you are when you're painting, especially if you're using a roller brush, little fibers from that roller brush are inevitably going to get into your paint. That is something I haven't perfected yet, and I know that there are steps to take to prevent that from happening.

Kathleen Martin: I'm the person that will roll over cobwebs, roll over filth.

Kathleen Heaney: No.

Kathleen Martin: Just keep it moving.

Kathleen Heaney: No.

Kathleen Martin: I just push that right into the wall.

Kathleen Heaney: No.

Kathleen Martin: No prep.

Kathleen Heaney: Kathleen. No, no, no. Oh my God no. My mom's friend calls cobwebs Irish lace.

Kathleen Martin: Aww, that's so cute.

Kathleen Heaney: You and I are two Irish girls, so it's applicable to us. I mean to you, not to me. I mean, I have them but I won't paint over them.

Kathleen Martin: I typically leave the spiders in my home.

Kathleen Heaney: Sometimes it's just dust that gathers in the corners. It's not really spiders.

Kathleen Martin: True.

Kathleen Heaney: Spiders are good insects. They truly are.

Kathleen Martin: I don't kill any bugs.

Kathleen Heaney: Really? Oh my God, you're a better person than I am.

Kathleen Martin: Trap and release in a cup. Bring it outside. It's probably like "It's too cold out here now I die anyway."

Kathleen Heaney: I was recently someplace where there were ants and I killed an ant and then all the other ants came to have a funeral for it.

Kathleen Martin: Oh no. They were like carrying the body back?

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah. Yeah. I walked away for an hour and I came back and I was like, "Okay, I should probably pick up this carcass now." And they were all praying at its bedside. Okay. Back to wallpaper. Sand your wall, top to bottom, 220 grit. You got to really smooth it out. If there are any holes in the wall from pictures or whatever, you got to spackle that joint compound, whatever, cracks, fill that in, okay? Spackle and joint compound take only 24 hours to fully cure. Wait those 24 hours. And I'm telling you every single time step that I'm giving makes a difference in how your peel and stick wallpaper is going to adhere to your wall okay?

Kathleen Martin: Makes sense.

Kathleen Heaney: So then you got to vacuum your wall, you got to dust your wall, you got to wipe it down, and then depending on how much spackle or joint compound or whatever you used, you should probably do a special primer-

Kathleen Martin: Oh my God.

Kathleen Heaney: ... for your peel and stick wallpaper.

Kathleen Martin: You've already lost me, but I see the value.

Kathleen Heaney: I didn't do a primer because less than a year before I put my wallpaper up, I had already gone over all the walls in my bedroom, filling in the cracks, sanding everything, and then I put on a couple of coats of Benjamin Moore, their flattest finish in their Regal line, which is one of their higher quality paints.

Kathleen Martin: Made for princesses.

Kathleen Heaney: No, no, I'm trying, Kathleen.

Kathleen Martin: Regal.

Kathleen Heaney: Oh, I'm so dense. No, I have this thing where you cannot buy the cheapest paint.

Kathleen Martin: Right, right, right.

Kathleen Heaney: Anyway, that's what I thought you were digging into me for.

Kathleen Martin: No.

Kathleen Heaney: You have to put up some sort of primer if you use a lot of spackle or a lot of joint compound to fill in cracks and stuff, because you cannot put peel and stick wallpaper directly on a whole lot of raw spackle or raw joint compound because it will not stick. Because that stuff turns into powder after it cures.

Kathleen Martin: Okay, that makes sense.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: Yeah. And sometimes when you paint over it, you can see that spot.

Kathleen Heaney: At the very least, take some primer and do a couple of coats over wherever you spackled or whatever, just so your wallpaper sticks to that fully well knowing that you're going to have to repaint the wall completely once you take down your peel and stick wallpaper. A lot of people will use Roman Pro 935. That's the name of a brand that does a really high quality wall primer before wallpaper. If you have any sort of high quality satin or flat finish paint sitting around your house that is just waiting to be used, just use that. Don't go out and spend the extra money, especially if it's a small wall that you're doing. Semi-gloss is a no-go. I really would say the flattest, flattest, flattest finish that you can get, and that is how your wallpaper is going to best stick to your wall.

Kathleen Martin: But it needs to be the right color.

Kathleen Heaney: This is another thing to think about. Wallpapers, peel and stick, especially, because they come with a sticky backing, they're not as thick as regular wallpaper that you use paste with, and so a lot of times if you have a dark color on your wall and you're thinking that you're going to take the easy way out and instead of painting the wall white, you're just going to slap some wallpaper on there. That is a big nuh-uh because peel and stick wallpaper, if you have a dark color paint on that wall, it's going to bleed through your wallpaper.

Kathleen Martin: I never knew that. But not actually bleed, you just mean be visible.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah. You're going to be able to see it behind. I have, when I moved into my apartment, there's light gray everywhere. It's not my favorite color, but I'm very slow to repaint it, and I have this peel and stick wallpaper from Hygge & West that I want to put in my powder room and Hygge & West is a very high quality company. They make great wallpapers. Even still, I can see this light gray paint behind the white backing of the wallpaper, so I have to do a primer in my powder room before I put up the peel and stick wallpaper in there.

Kathleen Martin: Yeah. I noticed that. So you have the little sample up and you can see a lot of texture.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah, you can.

Kathleen Martin: I guess I've never thought about that because I've only done the peel and stick once. Depending on how thick it is and the quality of the paper, you can see a lot of wall texture when you don't want to.

Kathleen Heaney: All of those little bumps and whatever, they come right through peel and stick wallpaper, that's why sanding is so important. And there's one more step that I need to add to this.

Kathleen Martin: Okay.

Kathleen Heaney: If you're priming, you have to wait 30 days before you put up your wallpaper.

Kathleen Martin: Get out of here. I can barely wait the hour if I'm putting up a 3M hook. I'm like, and that's probably why all my 3M hooks fall down.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah, you do.

Kathleen Martin: And they're like prep with alcohol, wait an hour. How about I stick it on and put 30 pounds on immediately. To wait 30 days, I would say there is a 2% chance I could do that.

Kathleen Heaney: Latex paint takes 30 days to fully cure.

Kathleen Martin: Or what?

Kathleen Heaney: Up until those 30 days, Kathleen, even if a latex paint feels dry to the touch on your wall, it's releasing what they call VOCs.

Kathleen Martin: VOC.

Kathleen Heaney: VOCs are gases. A lot of paints these days, it's like no VOCs. It's a very popular thing to have if you're buying, if you're into organic, keeping your home chemical free. No VOC paints are getting more and more popular. But most paints they release VOCs and VOCs are gases. And so if you slap on... You're smiling at me like, Kathleen.

Kathleen Martin: Because if you don't wait, your wall paint is just farting into your wallpaper and going to make it come off.

Kathleen Heaney: It is. It is. No. I mean it's a funny analogy, but essentially you could potentially get pockets of air of gas-

Kathleen Martin: Oh, man.

Kathleen Heaney: ... underneath your wallpaper. And even if you can't see it outright, you don't see a huge bubble, it's there and it makes your wallpaper less effective over time.

Kathleen Martin: Yeah. Makes sense.

Kathleen Heaney: Okay. That's the end of step one. You've prepped your surfaces. Step two, you prepped everything. You waited 30 days and now you need to, it's day of or the day before, now you need to clean your wall before you put your peel and stick wallpaper on. I know again, Kathleen, you're laughing at me.

Kathleen Martin: This is blowing my mind because it's absolutely what I would not do. So I'm learning.

Kathleen Heaney: So this is what I did. I take a Swiffer, I dust my wall, then I vacuum my wall. I have a wet/dry vac that I use for my DIY projects. I vacuum the wall to even get up the little fibers that my Swiffer left behind, and then I clean my wall with a multipurpose cleaner.

Kathleen Martin: Okay.

Kathleen Heaney: A lot of people will use isopropyl alcohol that they've watered down because any type of alcohol will really get off anything greasy that's left behind. And since it's alcohol based, it dries very quickly. I think that I use Fantastic or something, but people will do 70% isopropyl alcohol, 30% water, use that mixture on the wall and clean the wall that way. It's best to use a lint-free cloth. You can buy them. Or an old t-shirt that doesn't have a lot of lint on it. I used paper towels because after I cleaned my wall with the multipurpose cleaner, I went back and vacuumed again.

Kathleen Martin: Oh my God.

Kathleen Heaney: And then my wall was finally ready to put on my wallpaper.

Kathleen Martin: Thank God.

Kathleen Heaney: When you're picking wallpaper, I would say the number one piece of advice I can give you is order samples.

Kathleen Martin: Right.

Kathleen Heaney: Because I have ordered so many samples over the course of my, I don't know, my home ownership life or just living in my own apartments and stuff, and I ordered some from Etsy, some from Amazon, some directly from the companies. The best luck that I have had is ordering directly from companies. I got one sample from Etsy. The pictures looked great on their Etsy profile. It was made by a company overseas. It was the flimsiest piece of paper and the printing was really shoddy. They used a low quality printer to just print on any random vinyl. And had I ordered multiple rolls of that without ordering a sample, it would've been a huge waste of money.

Kathleen Martin: Thank God you got the sample.

Kathleen Heaney: The company that I used for my bedroom is a company called Tempaper.

Kathleen Martin: Yeah.

Kathleen Heaney: I've used Tempaper products before. Then I reached out to them. I was like, "Hey, let's work together." So I just want to be transparent about that. They sent me the wallpaper for free. But it is a product that I fully, fully stand behind. Samples. You have to let those samples live on your wall because, at least for a week, because you will be able to see a difference in the quality between the cheap stuff and the more expensive stuff because you'll stick samples on there and the cheap stuff sometimes will crinkle or the edges will peel off from the corners. So if you do that, any big time problems that you'll have with this wallpaper, since it is such a big project that you're taking on, it's worth it to test the products out ahead of time.

Kathleen Martin: That's something I also never do. I'm like, "Why don't I test? Why don't I sample?" I just do something and go.

Kathleen Heaney: And like wedding dresses, you might end up liking something that you thought that you weren't going to like.

Kathleen Martin: So true. Mine was completely opposite.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah, mine too.

Kathleen Martin: Always is, right? I don't know why.

Kathleen Heaney: That covers steps number two and three, cleaning the wall and picking the product. Step number four is once your product actually arrives, you have to take it out of the box and let it acclimate to your home. When you're installing new hardwood floors, the same thing happens. The wood gets delivered to your home. You have to bring, can't put the wood in the garage. That happened to my mom once. They delivered it, put everything in the garage and then her general contractor was like, "How dare they. It needs to come into the house to get acclimated."

Kathleen Martin: My sister had a cabinet that warped in the garage.

Kathleen Heaney: You have to bring the wallpaper into the room, into your home, wherever you're going to use it, and then you got to let it sit for three days to let it acclimate.

Kathleen Martin: So much waiting.

Kathleen Heaney: It sounds really tedious, but it makes a difference. By the way. Important. Always order two more rolls than you think you need. And always take note of the dye lot because God forbid the two extra roles that you ordered somehow work out that they're not enough and you need to order more. If they don't come from the same dye lot as your original order, it could look like an entirely different wallpaper. Maybe the same pattern, but definitely different colors.

Kathleen Martin: I had a friend who had a complete horror story with this.

Kathleen Heaney: Oh, do tell.

Kathleen Martin: So they went through the extreme physical effort of wallpapering the ceiling, my arms ache thinking about it.

Kathleen Heaney: I've always wanted to do that, but I'm not there yet.

Kathleen Martin: Me either. Got to the end was only, I don't know, six or seven feet short, ordered more, different dye lot, the two new rolls did not match at all. Same pattern, but the color was way off.

Kathleen Heaney: Oh no.

Kathleen Martin: And it stood out like a sore thumb. The paper was really expensive. Basically it ruined the project and they couldn't get it solved. Couldn't get the dye lot corrected. The brand was basically like, "You just have to redo it all."

Kathleen Heaney: No. That is worst case scenario. I'm terrified of that happening to me.

Kathleen Martin: Me too.

Kathleen Heaney: Another thing that I have to mention. When you're putting up this wallpaper in the room, you cannot be skimping on your energy bill that week. The room has got to be like 70 degrees. If it's winter, you got to heat your house to have it in the 70s like temperate. Kathleen, you now have turned your head off mic, and you're looking at me like you absolutely cannot believe that these words are coming out of my mouth.

Kathleen Martin: Okay. When I did my wallpaper, you want to know the steps? Went to Target, randomly saw wallpaper, said, "Hey, this could be cute." Brought wallpaper home, did nothing to the wall, put it up and said, "Great."

Kathleen Heaney: You didn't even wipe the wall down?

Kathleen Martin: I did nothing and then ripped my whole wall off. So it could be why.

Kathleen Heaney: There you go. There you go, Kathleen. I bet, I bet you had a semi-gloss on that wall.

Kathleen Martin: I don't, it was a rental though. I don't... It was also plaster. I don't know if that makes a difference.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: But I spent hours spackling the whole wall to get my security deposit back.

Kathleen Heaney: Well, probably what happened was the person who lived there before you did the same thing, spent hours spackling the wall, and then maybe only put one or two coats of paint up, and not the right type of paint, and then that's why your wallpaper ripped everything down.

Kathleen Martin: Oh, that actually makes a lot of sense because the plaster had a lot of cracks, so every time the rentals switch, they probably just put a lot of spackle.

Kathleen Heaney: A lot of joint compound. And then if you don't do enough codes of paint, your wallpaper is going to rip that right off.

Kathleen Martin: I never knew why that happened. That makes sense. Okay.

Kathleen Heaney: Think about a price sticker on a shirt as opposed to a price sticker on something plastic. It's always so much harder to get it off the plastic surface than it is to get it off a shirt. And that's because the shirt is sort of like a mat. It's the same difference between a flat finish paint and a gloss finished paint.

Kathleen Martin: Huh.

Kathleen Heaney: It's going to be easier to get that wallpaper off of that flat finish paint than it is that gloss finish paint.

Kathleen Martin: Wow. That was a great analogy.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah, right? That it makes sense, right?

Kathleen Martin: Yeah. That makes sense.

Kathleen Heaney: Going back. 70 degrees. It's got to be warm enough where the glue, the stickiness on the back of the peel and stick wallpaper can be activated because if it's too cold, it's not going to stick. Does that make sense?

Kathleen Martin: Yeah.

Kathleen Heaney: And just your body heat and you putting it up and running your hand over it and stuff like that, it's going to get nice and warm and then it's going to stick to your wall.

Kathleen Martin: Okay.

Kathleen Heaney: Now I'm going to link in our show notes and on our website, this kit that I got from Amazon. It's a wallpaper smoothing toolkit. Because you can't just put this stuff up with your hands, you do need a whole bunch of tools to help you. You need a level, you need an Exacto knife, you need what they call a wallpaper smoother, sort of like a squeegee. And I prefer the ones with felt on the tip as opposed to just the hard plastic ones because it's much easier, it's much more forgiving on your paper, and you don't risk ripping the paper.

Kathleen Martin: Right. That makes sense.

Kathleen Heaney: But the number one most important thing that you need to put up wallpaper correctly is a laser level.

Kathleen Martin: I was wondering if you're going to say that because yeah, that can really make or break.

Kathleen Heaney: It depends on the type of wallpaper that you order, but generally wallpaper is going to come in panels that are 27 to 30 inches wide. And the best advice I can offer you, and this is something that I got cocky about, I used my laser level, I put up my first panel, I used my laser level again, I put up my second panel, and then I said to myself, my first two panels were really straight. I think I have it from here.

Kathleen Martin: I'm good. Laser level, sit down.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah. I don't need you laser level. I can do this without you. And slowly but surely, Kathleen, and I want to say I put up in my bedroom, I don't know, at least 25 panels.

Kathleen Martin: Oh my God.

Kathleen Heaney: I'm not talking about rolls, panels because one role will give you multiple panels. That might even be a conservative estimate.

Kathleen Martin: Wow.

Kathleen Heaney: 25 panels in my bedroom. And slowly but surely, panel three was probably pretty straight. But then panel four becomes just ever so slightly askew. And then panel five becomes ever so slightly askew. And it starts to get really frustrating. That's why if you use your laser level to make sure that every panel is perfectly straight, you will save yourself so much [inaudible 00:19:40].

Kathleen Martin: Right.

Kathleen Heaney: We also got to talk about corners.

Kathleen Martin: Okay.

Kathleen Heaney: Wrapping wallpaper into corners, wrapping them around corners, it is a nightmare. I actually did a live peel and stick wallpaper tutorial on Facebook Live. No. On YouTube live.

Kathleen Martin: Yeah.

Kathleen Heaney: It was a disaster.

Kathleen Martin: I joined.

Kathleen Heaney: It was a learning experience for myself. I was live for nearly two hours, struggling to put up one panel-

Kathleen Martin: Oh no.

Kathleen Heaney: ... in a corner. I'm going to say this outright. If you hire a professional, that professional will be able to wrap your corner. You are not a professional. If you're listening to this, you're probably not a professional. I'm a professional DIYer, but I'm not a wallpaper professional.

Kathleen Martin: Right.

Kathleen Heaney: Do yourself a favor, cut the corners. Don't try and wrap a panel over a corner. Wrap it ever so slightly and then leave about an inch wrapped and then cut it and start again with a fresh panel and line up your pattern. It is the only way that you will keep your freaking sanity. It's like wrapping a present. When you got to do that fresh, clean cut on the, I'm so bad at wrapping presents.

Kathleen Martin: I am really bad at wrapping presents. And every time I'm like, why are you bad at this? You're artistic, you're skillful.

Kathleen Heaney: I think it's because maybe my brain is bad at geometry and I can never figure out where am I going to cut it and fold it in a way that makes the most beautiful gift experience for the receiver of that. And you're going to have access, and that's why I say you need to order more extra rolls than you think you need, because there are going to be instances where there are doors that you have to put your wallpaper around, or corners that you want to wrap, or windows, or something like that. Cut the panel that's on the wall on the corner with the Exacto knife, cut a new new panel, line it up as best you can and move on. Because the only person that's going to ever see the slightest inconsistency is you.

Kathleen Martin: I will say, I think this is a good spot to say, know your limitations-

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: ... and if you need to hire someone to install the wallpaper, that's fine. A part of DIY is knowing your strengths, having the vision, and realizing, I want this paper. You did all the research and you could do all the prep work, but if you know it's not worth however long, for me, sheetrock tried it. No, thank you.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: It's not worth me taking four months to do it when someone can do it in a weekend. So maybe you get as far as the prep and the idea and then you hire someone for a day and there's nothing wrong with that either.

Kathleen Heaney: Kathleen, you are so 100% right about that because I thought that I would have this done in a month, and I started this in October and I just finished at the top of February.

Kathleen Martin: It's hard. One of my favorite accounts, the Rainbow House, she has wallpaper Bob, wallpaper Bob comes and does her wallpaper really fast and efficiently, but she has the ideas.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah. It's like, what is your time worth?

Kathleen Martin: Right. We think about that a lot in my house.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah. I didn't have the budget to hire anybody-

Kathleen Martin: So me either.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah. So that's why I did it myself. And also I wanted the experience of knowing how to do it myself, not only for this podcast, but wallpaper is something that I just love in general and I want to put it up in other places in my house. So I made all of the mistakes. So I want to say by panel eight, I was like, part of this is behind my bed, F it. I don't care what it looks like at the bottom.

Kathleen Martin: Yeah.

Kathleen Heaney: Panel 12. I was like, "Oh crap. Here's another corner." Panel 14. I'm cutting around windows.

Kathleen Martin: How crooked is it at this point?

Kathleen Heaney: I'm glad that you asked me that.

Kathleen Martin: Because each time it's getting a little bit more What?

Kathleen Heaney: Askew.

Kathleen Martin: Yeah, askew.

Kathleen Heaney: You can't tell that it's crooked because another piece of essential advice that I want to offer you is that you're doing this for the first time ever, you need to order a print that is organic, not geometric. You have regular traditional wallpaper in your living room and it is very geometric. The wallpaper that I ordered is gorgeous. I'm obsessed with it. And I just got so incredibly lucky picking out more of an organic wallpaper than a geometric one. It is the, forget me not peel and stick wallpaper by Allison Olivia from Tempaper. By the way, Kathleen and I have picked out some of our favorite organic, beginner-friendly peel and stick wallpaper. They're right on our homepage. They're also in the show notes, so you can link over from there. And Tempaper did not sponsor this episode, but if you use our link to purchase wallpaper from Tempaper, we get a small kickback, which is nice because we do a podcast. So it's these blue, these gorgeous sort of cornflower, royal blue flowers. There's a lot of light and dark shades. And because it's an organic pattern, when I mess up, you can't really tell.

Kathleen Martin: Right. You don't have a vertical stripe that it's very obvious when it's crooked.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah. If you want black and white stripes or colored stripes or whatever in your home, I would say just paint that.

Kathleen Martin: Right.

Kathleen Heaney: Kathleen talked about this in her episode about stenciling, which was episode number eight. We released that on December 20th. So you can go back and re-listen to that. The most economical way to get a print up on your wall is to use a stencil. Wallpaper does cost a little bit more, but it's sort of going back to that, what is your time worth? Because if you don't want to spend all that time stenciling, then maybe it's worth to splurge a little bit more and get peel and stick wallpaper to get the same effect where you don't have to hand paint it yourself.

Kathleen Martin: And it's going to be perfect. The pattern's going to be perfect.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: Stenciling is a little bit more irregular.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah. That's the pros and cons of stenciling versus wallpaper. But an organic wallpaper lets you make mistakes without having your eye drawn directly to those mistakes.

Kathleen Martin: Yeah, that's nice.

Kathleen Heaney: And since the wallpaper in my bedroom is floral, flowers are not symmetrical, and so I was able to sort of [inaudible 00:25:57] in some areas where I took scrap pieces and cut out flowers from those scrap pieces and pasted them over my mistakes. And you can't really tell that I've done that. That's, it's really a beautiful thing.

Kathleen Martin: You're the only one with any DIY-

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: ... you're the only one that's going to see the mistakes.

Kathleen Heaney: People are going to walk into that room and be wowed and no one is going to see the very small imperfections.

Kathleen Martin: I think something we have to talk about is where to start on the wallpaper, where in the room, because I think a lot of people would assume to start in the corner. What's your advice for that?

Kathleen Heaney: I would say start in the corner.

Kathleen Martin: Okay.

Kathleen Heaney: I started in the center of the room, and when I realized that I was not going to be a hero and wrap my corners, the same way that we talked about in episode eight with stenciling your wall, you want to stand in the room and figure out where the focal point is, and that's where you start your stencil. And so I did the same thing with this wallpaper that I put up in my bedroom, and I ended up regretting it because instead of having to very slightly wrap one corner, I had to wrap two corners because there was excess on both. I would start at the corner. If you're using an organic print, just start at the corner and do yourself a favor.

Kathleen Martin: Another tip, which is important and not something I would know unless I took a wallpaper class, which we'll talk about, is not starting the wallpaper at the top edge, not lining the top of the wallpaper up to the top of the ceiling.

Kathleen Heaney: Yes. When you order a roll of wallpaper, there's the edge, the first peel, the first part of the sticker that you peel off the backing. Don't put that right underneath your molding or on the edge where the ceiling meets the wall because there's nearly a 0% chance that your room is perfectly symmetrical and everything is level. It just doesn't happen that way. Also, in the printing process, those edges, sometimes there are minor mistakes. So you want to start probably a good 10 inches down from the top of your panel when you're putting up your first panel. And that gives you a little leeway as you line up your subsequent panels, depending on how level your ceiling and your wall are when they meet, it gives you a little bit of leeway and space to adjust for an uneven wall when you're cutting your paper.

Kathleen Martin: And factor that 10 inches into your overall calculation of wallpaper. And I can't even articulate this because I don't do research, Kathleen does research, but there's, what's it called, the drop or the pattern repeats.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah. The pattern repeats, yeah.

Kathleen Martin: And so depending on how it repeats, sometimes you have to adjust where the second one goes. And there is a lot of waste-

Kathleen Heaney: There's a lot of waste.

Kathleen Martin: ... play up and down to make the pattern line up. So I'm not good at calculations, but really do that math ahead of time so you're not in a pickle-

Kathleen Heaney: Yes.

Kathleen Martin: At the end.

Kathleen Heaney: So I'm in a pickle. Well, I was in a pickle rather. Right before I finished the project in my bedroom, I realized that I hadn't ordered enough because I ended up doing another little section of a wall above a door. And so for weeks, Kathleen, I was slowly going through my scraps and my puzzle pieces, cutting out pieces from my scraps and putting them on the wall-

Kathleen Martin: Oh my God.

Kathleen Heaney: ... to extend the length of my wallpaper. Here's the thing, you can't tell.

Kathleen Martin: Yeah.

Kathleen Heaney: You absolutely cannot tell that I did a whole wall of wallpaper from scraps-

Kathleen Martin: Wow.

Kathleen Heaney: ... that I cut out. It's not panels. And that is the beauty of an organic wallpaper.

Kathleen Martin: Yeah. That's cool.

Kathleen Heaney: And to give you a little bit of technique when you're actually putting it on the wall, you want that felt scraper, that smoother tool from the Amazon kit. And sometimes wallpaper, really good wallpaper companies will give you those tools when you order them. But if they don't, just use the kit that I used. The paper flattener with the felt, use that more so than your hand. Because your hand has oils on it and when I realized that I was using my hands too much, putting up this wallpaper, I started to see blue ink show up on my fingertips.

Kathleen Martin: Oh no. Wow. Okay. Yeah, that's a good tip.

Kathleen Heaney: And so I was constantly washing my hands throughout the entire process.

Kathleen Martin: Okay.

Kathleen Heaney: And once you have it on your wall, don't cut any of the excess until all of your panels are up, because you're going to take your paper flattening tool on the side, that's not the felt side on the plastic side, and you're going to guide your Exacto knife across the top of the wall where the ceiling and the wall meets, or the bottom where you're molding and your wall meet to cut it at the floorboard, and you're going to guide your Exacto knife so you get a nice clean cut. You don't want to cut all of the excess off of the panels individually.

Kathleen Martin: So smart. And a tip that Kathleen and I learned together, because we took a wallpaper class together. Change out your Exacto blade. Don't rely on one.

Kathleen Heaney: Yes.

Kathleen Martin: As soon as it starts to drag, switch it out or you're going to get a really feathered edge.

Kathleen Heaney: Your blade is going to get really sticky too, especially with peel and stick wallpaper. You want a nice, clean, sticky free, sharp blade. I probably went through three of them doing all of the panels in my room.

Kathleen Martin: Can we talk about though, that peel and stick wallpaper is a B word? It's pretty darn hard. Even when you do everything right. Let's manage expectations.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to work with.

Kathleen Martin: It's hard to install. And I would say it's harder than traditional wallpaper.

Kathleen Heaney: But if you're a renter or if you don't want to commit, peel and stick is your best option.

Kathleen Martin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I feel like we should talk about how much of the backer you should pull off. What happens if it starts to wrinkle.

Kathleen Heaney: Okay.

Kathleen Martin: Things like that.

Kathleen Heaney: So if you're picking a quality wallpaper, you're going to be able to wrinkle it a little bit and then get it on the wall and smooth it out and you won't see wrinkle imperfections because wallpapering is not a delicate process. You're going to really beat the crap out of that wallpaper because it's, think about it's a long panel. If your ceilings are, I think regular ceilings are like eight feet tall. So you're up on a ladder, you have the full panel cut, 96 inches long, something like that, and you peel off the back off the top of it just a little bit, like you're not going to peel off the backing if the entire 96-inch panel.

Kathleen Martin: So important to not do that.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah. You're going to only take off the backing a little bit at a time as you smooth it down the wall. It's like when you're putting a band-aid on, you don't just slap a band-aid on your leg on that cut.

Kathleen Martin: Right, right.

Kathleen Heaney: You put down one edge, you make sure that there's no bubbles, there's no bumps, and then you smooth that band-aid out over the rest of your skin or wherever you're putting it. It's the same way with wallpaper.

Kathleen Martin: Right.

Kathleen Heaney: People who are wallpaper fanatics often will go, "Ugh," when you mention peel and stick wallpaper, because when you're putting up wallpaper with traditional glue, there's a lot more wiggle room for adjusting it to get it really straight. When you're doing peel and stick, it's a lot of peeling it back up, adjusting it, putting it down, peeling it back up, adjusting it, putting it down. Especially after you have your first panel up and then each subsequent panel after has to line up with the pattern of the panel next to it. It's a lot of unpeeling and peeling back down. And that is another reason why it's good to have a high quality peel and stick wallpaper.

Kathleen Martin: I would also say if you can find a wallpaper bestie, it really is easier with two people.

Kathleen Heaney: It is.

Kathleen Martin: Because they can be, if you're at the top, they can be helping you hold it aligned so that as you're unpeeling it-

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: ... they have the visual, especially if you're up on the ladder, which typically you would be.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: They have the visual at the bottom. Is it staying aligned? Because there's nothing worse than good, good, good, and then you realize you're at a very slight angle so by the time you get to the bottom, you have a two-inch gap. You're like, "Why?"

Kathleen Heaney: I know. And that's why, I did the whole thing myself, and that's why I did a lot of cutting out from the scraps and filling in some of those gaps where my stuff didn't line up. You truly cannot tell. When I covered the gaps with pieces of scrap, you absolutely cannot tell. I did it all myself. Honestly, I didn't want my husband's help because he would've just complained the whole time.

Kathleen Martin: Sometimes it's not worth it. So you have to pick somebody that's into it.

Kathleen Heaney: And depending on the size of the room, you might have to pay your friend.

Kathleen Martin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kathleen Heaney: And as you work that paper down the wall slowly unpeel the back as you're using your felt smoothing tool until you get to the bottom. So when you're at the bottom, that's when the last piece of backing comes off. Because if you just have that piece of peel and stick wallpaper flapping in the wind, all sorts of dust is going to get under there before you're able to get to the bottom and stick it onto the wall.

Kathleen Martin: It's like a piece of tape.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: If you've ever taken big piece of clear masking tape or whatever-

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah, yeah.

Kathleen Martin: ... it's going to stick to itself, then you're going to have a wrinkled mess. You're going to get very angry and you're going to crumple the whole thing up and give up for the day. So don't do that.

Kathleen Heaney: I did that with one of my panels. I was like, "Screw this.:

Kathleen Martin: You're trying to-

Kathleen Heaney: "Screw it."

Kathleen Martin: ... peel it from itself, and then your hands in there. Just a mess.

Kathleen Heaney: It gets folded up on top of each other.

Kathleen Martin: Yes.

Kathleen Heaney: And I was sick to my stomach over putting that very valuable panel in the trash. I had to toss one of my panels because I didn't have me to give me all of this wonderful advice before I did my project.

Kathleen Martin: Second time around's going to be a piece of cake.

Kathleen Heaney: Oh, I wish somebody would let me peel and stick their room now. Everything that I know, it would be done in 10 days, not 10 minutes.

Kathleen Martin: Kathleen, you have multiple rooms that you're planning on peel and sticking. You can do your own house.

Kathleen Heaney: You're right. You're right. You're right. Okay. Let's do our social shout out. Kathleen, since this person is somebody that you went to college with, you do the intro.

Kathleen Martin: Okay. So this is a favorite account of buy and a friend, Greystone on Waverly. She is wonderful. She does it all. She bought a castle.

Kathleen Heaney: She did. She bought a castle in Scranton, New Jersey. Oh, New York. Pennsylvania.

Kathleen Martin: Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. So it's this beautiful historic stone home. And she's really sticking with the character of the home in her decor. So basically every single room is wallpapered. Kathleen and I took a course with Tori at her house, so we saw it in person.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: Even better. And she taught us so much. She took a lot of fear from wallpaper out of me. I bought wallpaper that sat in my home for six months and I never installed it because I was afraid. And she taught us so much. She gardens and she has four kids and impeccable design at Greystone on Waverly. Her name is Tori.

Kathleen Heaney: Driving two hours to Scranton, Pennsylvania and taking that wallpaper course with her, Kathleen, changed my world. And that was feel is a really bold statement to make. But watching Tori whose Instagram I had just basically drooled over ever since you introduced me to it, watching Tori give us an in-person tutorial saying, "Hey, it's more durable than you think and you can absolutely do it. And here are all the tools that I use to wallpaper my castle with." Made it something that wasn't, like you said, feel unachievable.

Kathleen Martin: So she does these workshops.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah, she does workshops in person that you can go to her house or online and get essentially what's like almost private lessons from her.

Kathleen Martin: Yeah. She does power tools, moldings, design, just overall design, and the wallpaper, and gardening.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: She does. It also must follow. Sign up for her workshops. Even if you're not close, virtual, totally worth

Kathleen Heaney: It. Yeah. So worth it. One of my favorite things that she does is she paints all of the trim around her windows and her doors. And then she wallpaper around that. And it's just such a symphony of delicious pattern and color and it's just truly a sight to be seen.

Kathleen Martin: Really, really talented.

Kathleen Heaney: So let us know on Instagram, after you listen to this episode, the cheat sheet will be up, let us know if maybe we've changed your mind about wallpaper, about peel and stick wallpaper. We're going to do another episode where Kathleen does her steps about doing regular traditional wallpaper.

Kathleen Martin: No steps. Just put it up. Yay.

Kathleen Heaney: And I'm hoping that one day I'll feel comfortable enough in my wallpaper choice to do a traditional wallpaper with wallpaper glue. But long gone are the days where you have to soak your panels in the bathtub they used to do in the '60s and '70s.

Kathleen Martin: What?

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah. You used to have to soak your panels.

Kathleen Martin: Oh God.

Kathleen Heaney: And the glue was already on the panels or something like that. And then it was just like a big wet mess. Traditional wallpaper is not like that anymore. And as always, for all of this information and more head over to kathleencandoit.com and on our socials at Kathleen Can Do It.

Kathleen Martin: I asked Kathleen, I said, can we stop giving out our email address because only because when you email us, it's just us.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: Kathleen and I answering and you know how inboxes get, whoa. Better yet, join our Facebook group-

Kathleen Heaney: Yes.

Kathleen Martin: ... because then you get 350 other people giving you advice.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: You can link over to our group just by searching Kathleen Can Do It on Facebook, or if you want the exact URL, it's facebook.com/groups/kathleencandoit. You can leave us voicemail. No one ever does. Please do because we will play it on this podcast. It really pumps us up.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: Our number is (201) 378-3378.

Kathleen Heaney: Leave us a message there. Let us know what you're working on, your deepest, darkest desires when you're designing your house. I don't know.

Kathleen Martin: Then you get to hear yourself on the podcast. You'll be famous.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah. You know what? We are all in this together. DIY is a collaborative process and more so than anything else, this podcast is to inspire creativity and other people to create homes that they love. And connecting with other people makes that process a lot easier. So you can follow me, Kathleen Heaney at Kathleen Loves Color.

Kathleen Martin: You can follow me, Kathleen Martin at Create A Colorful Life. If you follow the pod, sometimes you'll see my personal stories on the podcast by accident.

Kathleen Heaney: Yeah.

Kathleen Martin: It'll just be Brian sleeping.

Kathleen Heaney: I know. You know what? Figuring out which account you're on when you run multiple Instagram accounts is truly a feat in its own. And wherever you listen to this podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe. When you do that, it helps other people find us. It helps us move up in the ranks and we are always so appreciative to get a nice comment.

Kathleen Martin: It makes my heart melt.

Kathleen Heaney: And don't forget, if Kathleen can do it, you can do it too.

Kathleen Martin: No prep for me. Heh, heh, heh.