A front parlour in a heritage house in town
The town of Uxbridge has a core of heritage houses near its centre, with newer subdivisions on the edges and country properties beyond them across the Oak Ridges Moraine. This job was in one of the older houses in town, a brick home with tall ceilings, wide baseboards, deep window casings and a picture rail running around the front parlour about a hand’s span below the ceiling. The walls were original plaster, painted many times, most recently in a pale green.
The owners wanted the parlour to feel like it belonged to the house again. They had chosen a navy floral damask paper with a large, formal repeat, to cover every wall from baseboard to picture rail. They also wanted the woodwork and ceiling repainted.
Walls that had never been straight
Before ordering quantities, we checked the walls with a long straightedge and a laser level. Old hand-applied plaster is rarely flat, and this room was typical:
- Gentle waves across each wall, with dips and rises you could see when the laser line crossed them.
- Corners that leaned out of plumb, one of them noticeably, so the gap between corner and laser line changed from top to bottom.
- A web of fine cracks above the front window and a longer crack running diagonally from a door corner.
- A slightly hollow spot low on the inside wall, where the keys behind the plaster had let go.
- Old paint in a high gloss in places, which wallpaper paste cannot grip well.
The real difficulty with damask
A damask repeat is big, symmetrical and easy to read, which is exactly what makes it hard to hang in an old room. Out-of-plumb corners pull the pattern visibly off true, a wavy wall makes the motifs seem to ripple, and a large half-drop repeat means a lot of paper is used just to keep the pattern aligned. We had to plan the layout so the pattern looked straight even where the walls were not.
Protecting a room full of original woodwork
Everything movable came out of the parlour. The wood floor was covered with rosin paper taped at the seams, with canvas drop cloths along the walls where paste would drip. The edges of the original woodwork were masked with low-tack tape, and trim prep was kept as dust-free as we could make it: the old paint was sanded by hand with damp sponges and wiped down rather than power-sanded, with a fine-filter vacuum close by.
Preparing the plaster for paper
- Cracks. We raked out each crack, laid fibreglass mesh over it, and built it up in two thin passes of quick-hardening compound before sanding it flat.
- The hollow spot. Pressing on it showed the plaster moved slightly but was still in one piece. It was drawn back to the lath with a few screws and plaster washers, and the washers were buried under compound.
- Dips and ridges. The worst of the waves were eased with a light skim of compound feathered out wide. We did not try to make the walls perfectly flat; that is what the lining paper is for.
- Gloss and adhesion. All glossy patches were scuff-sanded to dull them, then the walls were wiped and given a coat of bonding primer, which gives both lining paper paste and plaster repairs a consistent surface.
Cross-lining the walls
Lining paper is a plain, unprinted paper hung under a decorative paper. On old plaster it does several jobs at once: it bridges hairline cracks, evens out minor waves, gives the finish paper a uniform, absorbent surface, and helps the seams of the top paper stay tight.
We hung it horizontally, which paperhangers call cross-lining. Running the lining at right angles to the finish paper means the seams of the two layers never fall on top of each other, so a lining seam can never telegraph through a damask seam. The lining edges were butted, not overlapped, and any small gaps were filled and sanded once it was dry. Then the lining was left to dry completely before the next stage.
Laying out and hanging the damask
Starting from the centre
The wall facing the front window is the first thing you see from the hall, so we set the main motif of the damask on its centre line. A laser marked the plumb line there, and the first drop went up centred on it. From there, drops were hung out in both directions around the room.
Matching a half-drop
The paper had a half-drop match: the pattern on each strip sits half a repeat lower than the strip beside it. That means alternate strips are cut from different points on the roll. We cut and numbered the lengths in order, checking each one against the last before pasting, so the motifs lined up across every seam.
Pasting and booking
This was a traditional paste-the-paper damask, fairly heavy, so each length was pasted evenly on the table, folded paste-side in, and booked for the time the maker gives, to let the paper relax before it went up. Booking every length for the same time keeps their expansion even, so the pattern does not drift from strip to strip.
Corners and the final seam
At each inside corner, the paper was wrapped just a few millimetres around, then the next strip was started on a fresh plumb line on the new wall, overlapping slightly into the corner. That keeps the pattern vertical even though the corner leans. Where the pattern met itself at the end of the room, the mismatch is unavoidable, so we placed it in the corner behind the parlour door, where it is hidden when the door is open.
Each strip was smoothed with a soft brush from the centre outward, seams were rolled lightly, and the paper was trimmed at the baseboard and picture rail with a fresh blade against a broad knife. Paste was sponged off the face, the trim and the picture rail right away.
Woodwork and ceiling
The ceiling was painted first, before any paper went up: cracks filled and primed, then two coats of flat white. The trim was done last, after the paper had dried.
The original baseboards, window casings, door casings and picture rail had many layers of paint, some of it oil. They were cleaned, wet-sanded to dull the surface, wiped with tack cloths, and spot primed with the bonding primer where bare wood or old filler showed. Two coats of semi-gloss enamel followed, brushed in the direction of the grain, with each coat given the full recoat time listed by the manufacturer. Zero‑VOC enamel kept the odour down in a room that opens onto the front hall.
Choosing a trim colour for a dark damask
Navy damask makes a bright white trim look stark. At the colour consultation, sample pots were brushed onto spare trim boards and held them against a sample of the paper in the parlour, in the clear north light of morning and again by lamplight in the evening. The owners picked a soft, warm cream for all of the woodwork, which keeps the edges defined without glaring against the navy, and a matching flat white for the ceiling.
Leaving the room tidy
Paste spills and scraps were cleaned up as the work went, and each day ended with the floor covering swept and checked, offcuts bagged and the pasting table cleaned.
The parlour is now wrapped in deep navy damask from baseboard to picture rail, the main motif centred on the wall facing the window, with warm cream woodwork outlining each wall.
Caring for a papered heritage room
- Dust the paper occasionally with a soft, dry brush. Wipe marks gently with a barely damp sponge, without rubbing.
- Keep furniture backs a little way off the wall so they do not scuff the paper.
- Fine cracks in old plaster can still move. The lining paper will hide most hairlines; a wider crack showing through should be looked at rather than glued down.
- Offcuts of damask, a spare roll and a labelled can of the trim cream were left for repairs.
Why lining paper suits heritage houses in Uxbridge
Older houses near the centre of Uxbridge have plaster walls that have settled, cracked and been repainted for generations. Papering straight onto them, especially with a formal pattern, shows every wave and crack. Repairing the plaster, cross-lining, and planning the layout around the room’s true shape is how our wallpaper installation work makes a large pattern look straight in an old room. We have papered and painted homes across the GTA since 2010, including older houses in towns throughout Durham Region.
If you are planning wallpaper for a room in an older home, get in touch for a visit; we will check the walls, measure the pattern repeat against the room and send an itemized quote.
