Liner Paper--A Complete Guide (Parts I & II) In Germany, if you are having chest pains never say “I’m having angina and need an ambulance.” Angina in German is a sore throat and the ambulanz is an outpatient clinic. You’d probably be better off just clutching your chest and falling on the ground. In England, when your friend says that he has an incredibly large wardrobe he isn’t vying for a spread in GQ Magazine, he’s actually saying that he has a really big closet. In the realm of language these cognates are sometimes referred to as “false friends” or words in two languages that are similar in appearance but have different meanings. In the good old USA when two paperhangers are talking about liner paper nobody ever knows what they are talking about even though they are from the same country. And so it goes. Allow me to add some specificity with this column. (I may only add to the confusion— but at least we can broaden the scope.) The first place to get a grip on the subject of liner material is to see if the liner requirement is about whether the wall needs a liner material or the wall covering needs a liner material. Misbehaving Walls: Recently I was asked to do a high end wallcovering company’s showroom and was told over the phone that the walls were “all ready to go.” It turned out when I got there that they were ready to go straight to Hell. One long wall was a medium rough surface that had a checklist of red flags which could ruin a delicate, high end wallcovering installation. There were several areas of unprimed joint compound together with other areas of primed-over old paste in addition to areas that needed further patching. Primed over paste can cause a seam splitting disaster with a high shrink paper product, so some sort of liner was in order. The company also wanted their new wall covering to be strippable because they change patterns on this wall frequently to show off their collection. I opted to use a smooth, white, fabric backed material as a resurfacing liner which would cover up all their wall problems and stabilize the wall and allow for either wet stripping or mechanical stripping in the future. (Available at www.walloutlet.com Smooth finish, white Type I FBV 54” wide in a 35 yd bolt around $140 + shipping order code # RDR-9615.) I was also on a tight schedule which inhibited me from filling, waiting for patching material to dry, sanding, repriming, and then waiting for primer to dry. This type of FBV liner allowed me to patch with a quick-setting powdered hot mud that I could quickly cover with the liner once the material had set. After priming the smooth white fab-back liner with an acrylic primer, I hung grasscloth which would be wet strippable in the future. With this type of resurfacing, the future wallpaper removal person could spray to their heart’s content with removal solution and not ruin the liner material nor the underlying wall, eliminating the constant re-spackling of this wall every time a material was sprayed and removed. Generally, when a problem wall requires a treatment to make it smoother, paperhangers speak of using a bridging liner. Unlike the above show room liner installation which needed to be water proof, most bridging liner jobs are currently being done with non woven liners. A more old-fashioned way to bridge a surface with a porous material is to use plain canvas. Canvas does a great job, especially when the owner has a removable mural they want the option of removing in one piece. The problem with canvas and some of the coarser non-woven materials is that they impart their own surface roughness to what are increasingly thinner pattern papers. When absolute smoothness is required for a metallic finish paper or a shiny white finish paper the liner must be perfectly smooth on its own. For this type of installation there exist heavy duty plain paper liners and smooth finish, paper/synthetic hybrids.
When Papers Misbehave: Pulp paper expands when wet and puts a lateral stress on the painted or primed wall as it dries. All over the USA there are many painted walls which look fine but have a layer of cheap contractors paint lurking underneath. You have, no doubt, seen old jobs where cheap, high-shrink, pre-pasted paper from the 1980’s and 1990’s has pulled off paint at the seams (with the paint being stuck to the back of the paper.) The irony is that the bad old, 8-bucks-a-roll, shrinking pre-pasted crap “needed a liner” but the liner job including material cost might have cost as much as the pattern paper job itself, so no paperhanger in their right mind even suggested it to the client in those days. But those iffy walls are still out there, bad paint layers are still lurking everywhere and the pulpy ampersand papers costs ten to twenty times what the old prepasted stuff cost. Often these Britpulps are telling you flat out to use liner paper. (By the way, the British tell you to “cross line” which translates as, “Use blankstock liner.”) How exactly does liner paper help to stop seams from pulling apart? How does one sell a blankstock liner job to the customer or designer who thinks you are just padding the bill? The answer to both questions lies in this photo of two people having a tug of war with a piece of typewriter paper in my backyard. Even thin, 20lb. typewriter paper has a formidable strength when pulled laterally in this way. And unlike paint, I have never seen a pattern paper that has had the strength to pull blankstock apart. This dramatic demonstration of paper’s strength has been used many times (by me) on estimates where the customer needs to be shown why money must be spent on something that will never be seen in the final job. Blankstock liner is also used to insure absorbency of the surface. Many times, depending on paste type, the seams of the pattern paper immediately start to set and lock down when hung over blankstock. This gives the paperhanger much more control of the seam area and avoids overworking of delicate materials. Absorbency of the hanging surface means that the sin of over-application of paste in the seam areas—usually causing splits seams on a primed wall—is forgiven I hope this liner material roundup has enabled you to “speak liner” with increased fluency and meaning. Part II Last issue’s Part I dealt with the different types of liner material. This one will explore how to hang them as well as give useful tips that can save you time and effort. You may find that selling a liner job can be easy or a hard sell depending on circumstances. If the walls are a disaster your bid can appear as a low cost alternative which spares the customer the expense of new drywall or extensive skim coating. Yet in the case of blankstock, the walls often appear to be perfectly fine and it can seem like you are attempting to pad the bill with unnecessary labor and material upcharges. I suggest you carry a few manufacturer instruction sheets from old jobs which point out the necessity of using blankstock or “crosslining” the wall with similar Britpulp materials. When selling a liner job for the purpose of covering up a misbehaving wall, you may want to consider carrying several 2’ x 2’ samples of the various liner varieties in your truck along with some samples of different types of wallcovering. This way when you are giving an estimate you can “sample hang” to precisely illustrate how well different combinations of products will cover up the bad walls. If the prospective client already has gotten delivery of the new wallcovering it’s even better. Open a roll and hang a few square feet of the actual material that is to be used— with and without a liner. Usually I tell the client to allow an overnight dry time and wait until the next day to see if the combo of liner material/finish paper is going to satisfactorily cover up the bad wall. This practice of sample hanging affords the paperhanger several advantages: *When planning to hang a liner for the purpose of making the walls look better, it’s a good idea to get into the habit of asking about the final lighting plan in the room. For instance, are they installing ceiling high hats or wall sconces? You know how these close-to-the-wall lighting sources can light up imperfections that were never seen before. Even inquiring about the planned position of furniture and table lamps in advance can help you. Last issue we started with the nuclear option of Plaster in a Roll or Faster Plaster which are the thickest hangable resurfacing offerings for awful walls that many customers may have given up on. Last year I was giving a bid on a commercial job for motel rooms that had two existing layers of FBV (fabric backed vinyl) over cinder block. These walls must have been giving guests nightmares for years. When the owner of the motel wanted me to give a price for installing yet another layer of FBV, I pointed out that multiple layers of vinyl could be an issue in the event of a fire and that black mold growing between sheets could set up another potential problem. I suggested that all layers of wall covering be removed and that Faster Plaster be installed. Instead of a sample patch I did a sample room with the Faster Plaster plus their proposed finish wallcovering for all the rooms. The Faster Plaster did an amazing job of covering up the sins of the cinder clock wall. If you have never hung this type of material the first thing you must do in preparation for the installation of this very heavy, very thick (30 mil) material is not to freak out…it’s actually not that difficult to install. The manufacturer provides you with a very heavy, super tacky, synthetic adhesive which makes the process as much a piece of cake as is possible with a heavy plaster cake. You will be pleasantly surprised that the stuff bends without crumbling and an 8 foot piece is maneuverable by a single person without working out in a gym beforehand. The provided adhesive can also be used in a pasting machine with the stipulation that you keep it away from open air as much as possible by covering the exposed adhesive areas with plastic. If you have ever used premixed tile adhesive you’ll get the drift---the glue is designed to tack up real fast. You can tuck the material into corners and cut it with your blade of choice. You can relax about any bad trims since you can touch up gaps with hot mud or spackle. Faster Plaster will astound you at its ability to cover and bridge the most egregious wall defects. One thing that it will not do is cover up bellies or, in the case of cinder block wall, the occasional cinder block that juts out from the rest of the pack. Before hanging this material check the wall with an extremely oblique light source to see if you have any blocks out of phase with the rest and slap on some fast hot mud with a 12” taping knife before hanging
There is an age old question when hanging the different liner materials as to whether one should prime or size it. My rule of thumb goes like this: If the lining material is porous, for example Faster Plaster, canvas, non-woven, or blankstock paper pulp, the answer is ‘no’ for priming, but paste sizing can always be done. It certainly never hurts to quickly roll on a layer of paste and let it dry before hanging for the porous types but this is mostly for ease of hanging and not to promote adhesion. Porous materials accept adhesive very well and allow good bonding. However, in the case of smooth finished FBV used as a liner (a non-porous liner), your best bet is to prime it with a 100% acrylic paint primer to insure a good bond if you are applying a standard pre-mixed adhesive to it. Since, in that case, you are trying to bond to a vinyl surface another choice would be to forgo the acrylic priming and use a straight vinyl over vinyl adhesive where applicable. If you recall, last PWC issue I deconstructed the liner landscape into these two starting point questions: “Does the wall need a liner?’ or “Does the finish paper need a liner?” If the finish paper requires a blankstock liner for the purpose of having an absorbent surface to hang on as with British Pulps, there is never a reason to seal or prime the blankstock in any way. But since paste sizing is not sealing, a blankstock can be pasted and left to dry before hanging a high end pulp to aid in higher initial tack and also to discourage seam “float” or slip-while-drying that can be a problem with the higher moisture, powdered adhesives these materials require. Besides the very specialty items of Plaster in a Roll and Faster Plaster, all other liner materials can be hung with your garden variety pre-mixed adhesives. I like to hang nonwoven liner with clay—mainly because the initial promise of nonwovens to be dimensionally stable and not expand on the wall is not really kept all the time. If you get a bubble here and there with a nonwoven and you have hung with a penetrating clay there is no problem getting them to lie down half hour or so later since the breathablility of this material makes the clay tack up perfectly. FBV liners, pre-pasted liners, and unpasted paper liners should be treated the same way you hang the wallcoverings with those designations. Then there is the other question frequently asked about liners: “Should I hang the liner material with a heavier duty paste than the finish paper is getting?” I guess the hidden concern in that question is whether the weight or stress of the top paper would loosen the liner material underneath. I have never met anyone who has had any liner failure in this way due to the choice of paste. By the way, some people think that because they are hanging a liner it precludes priming the wall for later removal. Folks, you still need to prime the wall with a wall protecting type, adhesion promoting wallcovering primer before you hang the liner material to aid later removal unless the liner is being installed as a wall resurfacing solution and will never be removed. Just Blankstock This last section is devoted exclusively to paper pulp blankstock liner. I talk to some paperhangers who have never used blackstock even with very expensive materials that call for “crosslining.” (Crosslining in British English means “hang blankstock.”) My question to them is: “Why are you acting as the insurance company who will pay out for a client who is spending $125-$200 per single roll should there be a paint failure at the seams?” Is it because the client has convinced you that although they spent $2500 in wallcovering material for the dining room it meant that they had to reuse teabags for the month and secret a bag of popcorn into The Matrix XII instead of paying exorbitant movie theater prices? Some installers will “X cut” into an existing paint surface to test for paint adhesion before going ahead to prime and then hang. But it should be written in caps that this is not a conclusive test to insure that seams won’t pop. The best way to provide insurance that seams can’t pop is to blankstock line the surface.
Blankstock jobs always look better than unlined jobs and they help you guarantee your installation. You really can’t go wrong with that. |