How hard is it to hang grasscloth?

Question

wallpaper? My husband insists it goes in the bathroom ... i wouldprefer a semi gloss paint but after stripping and taking down the old paper he says it is too much work to sand the flaws in the wall for painitng purposes and that wallpaper will cover it up easier

Answer 1

WARNING WARNING WARNING As a man I know NOTHING about decorating but I thought I would put in my two cents worth.

MailorderMaven is right about the grasscloth but do you REALLY want to hang that in your bathroom? When we were looking for a new house about 8 years ago about the only time I remember seeing grasscloth in a house was when the decorating was sadly out of date and all we thought about was what a pain it was going to be to rip all of it down.

Fixing the walls can be alot of work depending on how much damage you have when you removed the old wallpaper. It's not hard to do but it is a messy job so I don't blame your husband for wanting to do it (been there, done that more times to count).

Another alternative to wallpaper would be to put a textured finish on the walls. It may be a good compromise between ease of installation but you'll still have a painted wall when your done. It's easy to do and you have lots of choices for what type of texture and how heavy you want it to be. You can also get a nice look use subtle mixtures of colors in a venetian plaster finish to give your walls some depth.

Other alternatives could also be wainscoting or textured wallpaper that you would then paint. If the walls are in really bad shape you could always just put a thin layer of sheetrock over the entire thing essentially starting with new walls.

I will now return to the Dallas-Philadelphia game and restore my manhood.

Answer 2

Grasscloth is pretty absorbent, so it might not be a good choice for the bathroom. But if you decide to use it, you need to use actual wallpaper paste... and it's important not to get any paste on the front surface. One important thing about grasscloth is that you need to hang the strips alternating top and bottom. Otherwise you get a striped effect.

If you are thinking about synthetic grasscloth, then all of the above is irrelevant! Synthetic grasscloth would be no problem.

Your husband is right... walls need to be smooth for semi-gloss or even satin.

Answer 3

Scobranc at least offered a chuckle...Kudos to him.

Both offer the valid suggestion that it isn't a wise choice.

I have done grass cloth and love it, but not in a bath. I might suggest you do a TEST; since the walls will be "Gnarly" anyway.

Live with this test through a week of baths and showers first.

Get a strip and STAPLE it up, allowing you to judge affects of moisture etc.

No offense to your Hubby, but EASY may be a very relative word in this case. You might get the correct adhesive. You might even get the grass cloth installed properly; BUT you might end up still having to re-do the walls at some point, when the ideas gets soggy and shows signs of mildew.

Just my two cents.

Steven Wolf

Answer 4

there are lots of good looking faux grasscloth wallpapers so you should use one instead of the real thing and you won't have a problem. also maybe you could use a faux finish to cover the flaws in the walls. i like venetian plaster.