Papering round a corner

I'm decorating the hall and the external corner at the dog leg consists of a curve over most of it - but a right angle for the top foot or so, with a sort of concave filet between the two. Last time I papered this I use a sort of heavyweight paper with a very random pattern which could be overlapped without showing - this time it's a plain coloured vinyl but with a random relief pattern. What's the best way of approaching this?

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)
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Always a dog's dinner IME. Whenever I go into a house with that kind of wall, I look to see how the decorator handled it, and it's always the same story. Fiddle, fiddle. Vinyl is less forgiving than paper too.

Reply to
Stuart Noble

Could that top foot or so with the concave fillet be accentuated even more perhaps with something contrasting to turn it into more of a feature? like some sort of corbel?

John

Reply to
JTM

The way its done in my house is a minor miracle. Paper, not vinyl though. Seems to be an area of skill taught to apprentices etc. The paper looks like it has been stretched and perfectly matches up the embossed pattern. You'd think it had been sprayed on ! Maybe the few coats of emulsion helps to cover it though. I seem to remember reading a tutorial on the web somewhere that explained how to do it. I think you tear the edge around the pattern shape to disguise the join. Simon.

Reply to
sm_jamieson

There's a corbel right beside it - about a foot away.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Web search (or this ng) There's a very nice illustrated article on how to do them somewhere out there.

The technique was (AFAIR) to cut one piece short in the (rounded) middle and to cut the other into three strips. The centre strip wrapped round, so that the butt joint wasn't on the apex of the corner. The top and bottom strips went out to the arris of the square corner.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

My father in law was a professional decorator. On the upper concave part like yours he used to cut in a separate piece of paper, which he actually would tear the edges of the paper to match, that drop was also the first in the hall very carefully positioned to get the pattern in the best place for matching.

He was amazing to watch not only were the joins completely invisible after the paper had dried but the speed he worked was like watching someone do Origami, but with a 10ft length of wet paper.

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Reply to
Mark

That's pretty well what I've ended up doing. And then removed some of the vinyl from the backing paper where it's under the top layer to reduce any step. The results are ok. Ish. ;-)

I could watch a skilled craftsman for ages. It's a good way to learn, but can be frustrating when you can't achieve quite as good results - after all it probably took him several years apprenticeship to learn his trade.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

When I have done this in our hall and stairs, I cut the paper at the corner and used the leftover by dropping a line short of the width of the left over paper on the other wall and glued a plastic 90 degree strip of the right coloured plastic to the corner after. It stops the edge of the paper from getting caught and getting pulled off.

Dave

Reply to
Dave

You can do it this way, providing you tear the paper so that the upper layer is tapered to the edge of the tear to nothing.

Dave

Reply to
Dave

That's OK for paper but I don't think it works so well with vinyl.

A professional decorator (as in: done it all his working life, now at the top of his trade) decorated one of our rooms recently. It involved a very irregular rounded corner. The join went right on the corner. He pasted one piece on each side, roughly overlapped. Then he cut down the middle of the corner from top to bottom with a new blade. He removed the offcuts (which of course involved peeling back one side of the job). Then he smoothed it all down. Result: a perfect butt join, *completely* invisible. Even dragging a fingernail lightly across where the join is, it's undetectable.

Takes a bit of practice, though, I'd think. My guess is that you have to angle the blade slightly (away from the exposed edge) to get the sides to join perfectly on a curved surface.

Reply to
Mike Barnes

You don't need an especially sharp blade, so much as a smooth _non- sticky_ blade. One with a worn or chipped edge is obviously bad, but so is one that has been used for cutting roof felt or such and has "goop" stuck to the sides of it. Wet wallpaper cuts easily enough. So long as the blade can then slide smoothly through it without sticking, this "cut & butt" approach isn't all that hard.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

What about a good chef's knife that can be sharpened every few cuts ? Their weight alone is enough to cut a tomato, so the storey goes ! It is often cutting too deep and losing the edge on the plaster that is the issue. I think pros know the exact pressure to use to just cut the paper and no deeper. Simon.

Reply to
sm_jamieson

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