apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Firesafety>

If you hang fabric, either get it, or make it fire resistant ( there are kits for cottons, you soak the fabric etc...) or keep candles the #$%#$% away from the fabric. It can billow intothe candles.

It's not intrinsically dangerous, you just have to not be foolish.

You could also hang large lightweight painted foam board or frames on the walls.

Or you could get some really big pieces of art (I favor, and my family collects, giant advertising posters from the early 20th century in bright colors). A cheaper option would be to buy some really big stretched canvasses at an art store and paint them a solid color, and hang them like art on the wall (it's been done on Queer Eye to death, but it's still a useful solution, if done right).

I had a similar problem in my apartment (no painting allowed), but I desperately needed to brighten up the kitchen. Last year on the HGTV website, I read about using liquid laundry starch to adhere fabric to walls, and it won't the damage paint or plaster. I bought a bunch of Marimekko fabric on eBay (repeating circle patterns in bright colors) and got to work. When I move, I can just peel the fabric off the walls.

Amanda is right. The liquid starch is a great solution.

Liquid starch is basically what they use on that linen archival tape that framers use on prints and other art pieces. That stuff is reversible with water on a sponge, and laundry starch should work similarly. I would do a test first, just in case you have crappy walls or strange paint.

You could also buy stretchers and put together your own canvases with any fabric you'd like. I once made a screen by hinging three of them together.

try wall decals at blik...
www.whatisblik.com/index.html

My lease says no painting either. I still paint the walls, I just paint it back over when I'm done. The super doesn't mind since he's getting the apartment back freshly primed. My boyfriend does mind since he hates painting but oh well!

I have the same problem. The solution that I'm currently experimenting with is the Rasterbator, homokaasu.org/rasterbator/ . It allows you to create giant, rasterized images from any picture. A unique look and completely customizable.

I'm with those of you who recommend starch. I used it in my dining room to append sari fabric to the wall with great success. Best of all, I think the sari fabric will survive when I eventually peel it off. Good luck!

Somewhat "temporary" wallpaper actually exists --temporary because when you take it off, there's no residue or ripped bits and pieces. it comes off in one motion by coaxing the corner up with a fingernail then ripping it down in one piece. Waverly makes it and calls it Waverly4. There's scoop on their website www.waverly.com.

Does the laundtry starch work over wallpaper that's on the wall already. I'm in a apartment with nasty orange flowery wallpaper and I want to cover it all if possible w/o painting or striping

I'm wondering about the starch on wallpaper as well, I have ugly flowered wallpaper in my kitchen, and a hideous border in my bathroom, the kitchen wallpaper is made to be able to clean it easily, so it's a little slippery, will the starch still work??

I'm moving into a rental home and am going to try to do the fabric thing as well. I'm just worried that the color of the fabric will stain the walls. Does anyone know if there's a possibility of that happening?

I'd like to do the fabric/liquid starch thing, but
1. where do I buy liquid starch?
2. will it work on walls painted with an oil based paint?

The thing about temporary wallpaper (that I have found) is that it basically is like a sticker and if you have it say in the kitchen where there is steam and heat, then it can lose the stick.

I haven't tried it yet, but found this site on how to apply fabric to your walls using starch. It seems easy enough, and there is link to purchase that particular brand of starch if you don't where else to go.

http://www.linit.com/cgi-bin/display.pl?p=907041523

has anybody ever done this liquid starch and then taken the fabric off the walls? how do the walls look when they are done? sticky?

www.paperapartment.com

Temporary wallpaper you can draw on!

This stuff is sweet! :)

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.