Hello AT,
I like my apartment in general. It has a good layout and hardwood floors, but the white walls are driving me crazy.
My lease says I am not allowed to paint, and I heard mention somewhere, once upon a time, that there is such a thing as temporary wall paper. Do you know of this, or anything like it that will save me from an off-white existence?
Living in Vanilla, Jeni
We don't know about temporary wallpaper and would love it if someone enlightened us all on this one.
What we usually do in this case is A. paint anyway in a nice off-white that the landlord won't freak out about or notice, or B. hang fabric from the top of your wall or walls. This can be very dramatic and is easy to do. You can find affordable fabric at Joe's Fabric Warehouse or Harry Zarin's Warehouse and then either staplegun or nail it into the wall with a long, thin strip of wood at the top, tucked inside. It will also make your room much quieter. (Thanks, Jeni!) MGR
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Comments (5)
you don't have to do a whole wall all at once... you can take a swatch from the fabric and and starch-stick that up first to see if you like the look. Light-medium weight fabrics will adhere best... heavy upholstery fabrics will come off under their own weight.
to get the decal look from some of the websites listed above, you could cut out sections of the pattern on your fabric and starch-stick those.
a box of regular cornstarch from the grocery store works just fine for this. mix some starch with some water until you get a liquidy-glue consistency. if you don't like the finished product, peel it off and try different starch/water proportions.
if you do cover a whole wall, remember there will be some fabric shrinkage, so leave a little overhang to trim off when you're done. the starch method should work on top of oil-based paint, but will probably not work on top of existing wallpaper. you can paint over wall paper but only if you prime the walls first (regular paint is not primer, and if you paint directly onto wallpaper, the walls will have bubbles, and the paper underneath will start to peel... it's awful to look at and nearly impossible to remove). once you've primed and painted over the existing wallpaper, then you can safely use starch-water to temporarily adhere fabric.
IMPORTANT: don't use a fabric that is "fluffy" like angora - fluffy fabrics act like torches and burn easily. Do treat fabrics with flame-retardant products if you plan on just stapling/hanging them to cover walls. If you're adhering your fabric with starch, you don't need to worry about flame-retardant treatments because air can't get between the wall and the adhered fabric, so it's no different than wallpaper as far as flammability is concerned.
to test to see if your fabric is colorfast, rub the fabric hard 20 times with a white piece of cloth (old handkerchief?). then examine the white cloth to see if any color transferred onto it. this is actually the test that textile companies use, but they have a machine to do it automatically.
Does anyone know if you can do this with PAPER? Not wallpaper, just regular paper? I've been thinking about mod podging a decoupage project to one of my walls, but it seems awfully permanent. I'd much rather use starch!
IMPORTANT FOR NEW YORKERS! Will this starch method attract cockroaches to nibble your wall? thx
Can you do this with lace??