How to mix wallpaper paste

How many times have you mixed up wallpaper paste to put up that new wallpaper you just bought and end up mixing something that resembles lumpy porridge, jelly or water. The reason for this is you must have mixed it wrong.

So how do you mix wallpaper paste? Firstly you will need to gather the tools you require. You will need :

• A clean bucket
• Something to stir the paste such as a stick
• A sachet of wallpaper paste

Mixing the wallpaper paste

Take your clean bucket and fill it with water, the amount of water will depend on the type of wallpaper you are going to be hanging and how many rolls you are going to hang. It’s always easier to mix an entire sachet rather than trying to mix half as it’s not easy to get the ratio right, unless like me, you have mixed up gallons of the stuff!

Here is a guide to how much water to use and how many rolls you can expect to do with one standard sachet of paste.

Take the bucket of water and give it a good stir (not with the wife’s wooded spoon from the kitchen), next cut the top off the sachet of paste an tip it all in, now stir again one way then the other, do a figure of eight, do this for around 20-30 seconds.

Once the paste chips are all dissolved leave to stand for a further 90 seconds then give it a final stir before using.

Once mixed, paste will last for a few days in the bucket so you can come back to it cover it to stop anything dropping into it and come back to finish the job another day.

If you need to know how many rolls of wallpaper to buy, why not use our wallpaper calculator.

Wallpapering around an arch or round window

Wallpapering can be tricky for many people but they are willing to have a go, but wallpapering around an arch or a round window often confuses people and puts them off tackling the job and can be too much for the casual DIYer. Knowing how to tackle it is the key and then the job isn’t so hard after all.

If you search our blog for wallpapering you will find several tips on wallpapering techniques from how to wallpaper around a door and window reveal, to how to wallpaper a fire breast wall.

Wallpapering an archway

Archways are often used as a way of joining two room together and to add interest to a room, they can be single door width or double or span an entire rooms width, whichever you have the principle of wallpapering the archway is the same.

If you know how to wallpaper a straight wall your halfway there. You would start to wallpaper as you normally would, from a corner. Once you come to the arch you hang the sheet on the face of the arch and then cut the paper that isn’t on the wall toward the corner edge of the arch, do this in small strips of around 1-2 centimetres and stick these to the underside of the arch.
Continue wallpapering the face of the arch and cutting strips and sticking to the underside of the arch until you have completed the arch, now you need to trim the pieces that go under the arch so that they are all an even length, this is done as the strips of paper under the arch will show through the infill paper when it dries so make them as neat as you can.

Continue reading How to wallpaper an arch or round window

How to get paint to adhere to edges of woodwork

An odd title maybe but this is a great tip to get paint to stick to the edges of wood such as fascia boards and skirting boards.

You may of noticed when you paint square edged trim such as skirting boards or exterior fascia boards that the paint doesn’t cover so well on the edges, this is simply because there isn’t much of a surface for the paint to adhere too.

So how do I get paint to stay on the edges of woodwork?

Simply you need to make the area larger for the paint to stick too, this is simply done by using sandpaper and rounding the edges off so giving a gentle curve, you will find the paint adheres much better to a curve than a sharp square point.

Fascia boards

This tip is especially important for exterior fascia boards, have you notice how your fascia boards always start to peel at the bottom edge? This is because the paint film is thinnest here and over time the weather gets in and the damp starts to lift the paint off and even worse your fascia starts to rot.