New wallpaper - prepare the surface?

Hello

After living in the house for 12 years, we have ordered a new kitchen.
It makes sense to re-paper the walls.
Although I used to paper walls frequently and gladly, and I am not the clumsiest, some questions arise:
The current wallpaper in the kitchen is peeling off in some places at the edges. I guarantee that I applied the paste well and evenly.
What could be the reason?
Should "Makulatur" be applied before wallpapering?
Are there different qualities?
Any other tips for the kitchen?
I am wallpapering myself. I am convinced it will be better.

Steven

Hi,

I could imagine that the steam from cooking in the kitchen is responsible for the peeling at the edges.

We recently stripped our entire house of woodchip wallpaper and wallpapered with painter’s fleece.

Apart from the best possible removal of the old wallpaper plus applying a separating primer on the drywall sheets, we didn’t prepare anything else.

But from the experience I had with this, two tips:
1. Ideally buy the ready-made paste (Henkel). It’s quite expensive, but in my opinion it stuck much better than the powder to mix (also Henkel).
In the end, the extra cost was definitely worth it.

2. Apply paste very generously at the corners and rather mess around too much than too little.
At first, I was always too careful applying paste where the previous strip of wallpaper was already stuck, so the corners very often peeled off.

At some point, I started spreading the paste so generously that the surface of the previous strip also got some. After pasting on, the residue could be easily removed with a wet sponge.

The reward for this: An almost perfectly wallpapered living room without ugly seams and peeling.

We deliberately started on the upper floor to get into the groove so that we would be better on the ground floor (the living room has to look good…).

We had wallpapered before several times, but if you only do it every few years, you always have to start over.
The upper floor turned out so-so because the two of us hung the strips and it never really got straight.

On the ground floor, we started the same way, and luckily my girlfriend was so frustrated that she gave up after the second strip ;)

So I was forced to wallpaper the entire ground floor alone.
Result: A result that even a professional probably could hardly have done better :)

You "don't have to" wallpaper over waste paper beforehand. Depending on the substrate and type/decor of the non-woven wallpaper, however, it might be advisable if the wallpaper is too transparent/thin.

Otherwise, primer + proper paste and it will hold. Even if after years (due to steam or drafty spots?) it should loosen a bit, you can always touch it up with a small brush and some paste.
I have also always wallpapered myself and claim that some professional companies may be faster but do not always achieve better results.

Good luck!

My parents and I have never used Tiefengrund. I could imagine that it did not exist in the 1950s or was simply unknown.

The thing with the water vapor could very well be true. But it could also be that the spots were not properly pasted or that too much paste was removed by touching.

Those would be a few possibilities.

Do you have a wallpaper smoothing roller? If not, get one. Then you can press the edges down well again.