A quick tip for when your painting skirting boards, when decorating a room and you are having a new carpet fitted, but not for a few days after you have decorated, a quick tip is to cut the carpet around the room about three inches away from the skirting boards, removing the carpet, but leaving the gripper rods (mind your fingers on these) and the underlay. This will allow you to paint the skirting boards all the way to the bottom and not get bits of fluff or carpet on the new paintwork.

Also, by removing only a few inches of carpet from around the edge of the room you won’t be walking on cold concrete or floorboards whilst you wait for the new carpet to be fitted. Another advantage of removing the carpet and painting all the skirting to the floor is if the new carpet if a different thickness you wont end up with that horrible yellowish line where you haven’t painted.

Interior designer Françoise Murat : Wallpapering Article Featuring our Wallpaper Calculator

Today www.propertydecorating.co.uk was featured in the newsletter of Interior designer Françoise Murat in her feature on Wallpaper “Wallpaper – an amazing decorative wall covering”.

The newsletter can be read online at Françoise Murat’s website

And the full article including details of our wallpaper calculators and why I developed them for the website and as a resource for DIYer’s and Trademen alike can be read in the article :
http://www.francoisemurat.com/interior-design/231–wallpaper-amazing-decorative-wall-coverings.html

EDITED – 14/05/2010
Today we are also featured on Sarah Beeny’s website Tepilo where Françoise guest blogs about ‘A British approach to decoration: Wallpapers‘.

Françoise says in the blog:
“CALCULATING HOW MANY ROLLS YOU NEED….

The first question any client always asks me is: how much do I need to buy? How do I calculate what I need for such and such room? The answer? Adrian Rayfield of www.propertydecorating.co.uk has devised a fantastically easy tool – see what he says” https://www.tepilo.com/blog/2010/05/a-british-approach-to-decoration-wallpapers/

Calculator Links :

Wallpaper Calculator.

Ceiling Wallpaper Calculator.

Tile Calculator.

Paint Coverage Calculator.

How to strip wallpaper, and not take off half the wall with it!

At sometime or another wallpaper has to be removed from walls or ceilings, this could be due to many reasons but mostly because it’s faded, old and out-dated.

Knowing how to remove paper without taking off half the plaster with it is important and could save you a load of work and money.

Many people think they will simply go and hire a wallpaper stripper and an hour later all the wallpaper will be off, it’s not as simple as that.

You can save yourself money and not hire a wallpaper stripper just yet, you may not need one, firstly try the old fashioned method.

To start, gather the equipment needed.

You will need:

• Dustsheets – to cover the floor and furniture
• A scraper – to remove wallpaper
• A bucket – Filled with water
• A step ladder – Optional
• A paste brush or a large brush – To wet the wall

Firstly you need to remove the top layer of the wallpaper, with most papers you can remove the top layer as they are peelable, start in a corner by lifting the paper with your scraper and remove the top layer.

By removing the top layer you leave the backing paper behind, don’t be tempted to leave this on and either paint it or paper over it. The backing paper can bubble or lift as you paint or stick the new paper over it.

Continue reading How to strip wallpaper