what you will find under your wallpaper

When removing wallpaper, you never know what you might find underneath. This is typically true of older houses but can also apply to newer houses.

I’ll use one of my jobs as a case study. The job was a spare bedroom, a simple remove old wallpaper, paint the ceiling and woodwork and then re-paper, but like the title of this post says, you never know ‘what you will find under your wallpaper’.

Removing Wallpaper

I removed the wallpaper top layer and soaked the under layer, all was going well and as expected. Then I removed the paper around the windows. These were not original windows and had been renewed with uPVC windows.

It was here that I found the broken away plasted that had left a deep hole. I have come across this problem many times so wasn’t surprised.

Luckily I always carry a fast setting filler so I could fill the deep hole to just below the surface, and finish of with a fine filler. This was done within half a day so I wasn’t help up, I then waited until the next day to hang the wallpaper and could complete the work on time at no extra cost.

As you never know what you may find under the old wallpaper, it is best to expect the unexpected, sometimes it maybe just lots of holes, other times it may involve blown plaster or loose render and plaster around replaced windows and doors.

You may be lucky and only find the dates of when the room was decorated over the years written on the wall, don’t forget to add yours!

Colour Trends For 2018

Dulux Colour Futures™ from AkzoNobel have for the 15th year come up with what they think the upcoming colour trends for 2018 will be, they have selected a range of colours they think will be in trend throughout 2018, this year it consists of a beautiful warm pink, chosen by the colour specialists at Dulux Global Aesthetic Centre.

What is the trend Colour For 2018

The colour of the year 2018 is…… 10YR 28/072 (also known as Heart Wood).

“Calm or cosy, energetic or relaxed – the feel of your home can be transformed by Heart Wood in different ways. Dive deeper into Dulux Colour of the Year’s four complementary colour palettes for 2018 to find the mood and style that suits you.”

Quote from Dulux website.

You can see more of this years colour schemes here:

See more of this years colour of the year and colour schemes.

Paint Calculator

If you would like to use the colour of the year (10YR 28/072) or any other colour you need to buy and need to work out how much you need to buy, use our FREE Paint Calculator.

My review of the Paint Soap brush cleaner

I recently followed a company on Twitter (@PaintSoap) and I was asked if I wanted to try some of their product. Me, not being one to turn down the opportunity of trying out products I said yes. Paint Soap is based in the USA but were happy to send me some samples to the UK. They currently do not sell in the UK but they are hoping to start selling in the UK by the end of 2017.

About a week later a package arrived with the samples of Paint Soap for me to try. I was keen to give it a go and used it a couple of times on my next job. I liked the idea of being able to leave the brush to ‘clean itself’ as it soaked in the product, leaving me time to carry on with what I needed too.

After a few minutes of soaking I returned with anticipation to see how well the paint soap did, I removed the brush from the Paint Soap and rinsed it out, it was clean, and used a lot less water than I normally would have.

So what do I think of Paint Soap?

Paint Soap worked well and I like the idea of what is stands for, it saves time, saves money and your brushes, it is also eco friendly and the residue that is left can be disposed of safely as it is non toxic.

This product will only work on water based paints, such as emulsions, so no oil based products, and will not clean out dried paint as it reacts with the wet paint. So you can’t leave your brushes to dry out before cleaning them, but that goes with all paint tools.

So this product can save you, and your client water if you wash brushes out on the job. It can save you time as you can leave brushes to soak whilst carrying on with your work. And it cleans out the paint from your brushes easily and effortlessly.

My video review of me using Paint Soap

To see the rest of my videos, visit my channel on YouTube.