The Entry Wall Covering = Massive Failure!

Hi Everyone,

No, I’m not exaggerating. I will try to be succinct because I’ve already spent umpteen hours on the entry wall covering.

First,, it took me many months to decide what I wanted to do. I loved the printed tapestries at Romantic English. I found one and tweaked the colors.

 

 

This was going to be beautiful.

 

From the beginning, I knew the secret to putting up the canvas fabric onto the walls was to have the fabric paper-backed.

 

David, the owner of Romantic English has been incredibly obliging and although the artwork in the living room has had issues with the coloration and print, he got the entry just right. Incidentally, he’s no longer doing custom work. It’s not because of me. He told me before he had started that he was no longer doing it.a

 

Still, there was a do-over involved. Both of us made mistakes, but David insisted on making the entry wall covering panels over for me.

I would’ve saved myself a lot of time and trouble had I called Custom Laminations first. I tried, but getting through to them is difficult.

 

Hot Tip: Dial through until you get a prompt for the operator. Emailing would probably have worked too.

 

Anyway, I figured they would figure it out.

It took me a few weeks to send off the fabric. I read on the Custom Laminations website that the fabric had to be sent on a roll. So, I ordered the thinnest and lightest 2″ x 48″ roll from Amazon.

 

,

 

It took me a while because I wasn’t satisfied with how badly I had rolled the fabric on, even though it took me two hours to do so. I never did re-roll it, and finally went over to the Copley Square FedEx office. Unfortunately, a sorely uniformed agent waited on me. I can forgive uninformed, however, this dude was arrogant AF and tried to sell me a box that was 60″ x 30″ for my 7″diameter by 48″ roll of fabric. The price was nearly $300.00!

 

What???

 

I should’ve realized when I walked up to the desk and he looked at the 48″ roll of fabric like it was a bomb or something.

Oh, I did walk in two weeks earlier to inquire if they could ship a roll of fabric for me and what they needed. A different guy said, “Just bring it in and we’ll take care of it.”

In addition, I checked the Fed-Ex website and knew they had a box, the right size, however, Arrogant Agent (AA) patently refused to check and insisted that the triangular box I saw was only 24″. However, at that moment, God stepped in to give me a hand because only about 18 feet away, I saw the same box I had seen on the website get picked up. As the box was moving through the store, I asked AA:

 

“What about that one? I can see that it’s at least 48 inches long.”

 

He said, “No, it’s not.”

Don’t argue with me, you little twirp!

I said, “I’m 99% sure the fabric will fit in that box.”

 

Well, that box isn’t four feet, argued AA, now acting super-annoyed.

 

We don’t have a box that long. Our longest triangular box is 24″ he reiterated.

I think you guys can see where this is going.

Please check on that, I asked as nicely as I could.

He excused himself and returned a couple of minutes later with the box that I said would be perfect.

 

See? I told you it would work I smiled trying not to look [too] smug.

 

No response whatsoever.

Oh dear, I guess I inadvertently bwoozed his wittoo ego.

He didn’t even look up from his screen and brusquely continued typing.

Knowing full-well that he had no intention of apologizing, I asked him anyway.

Under his breath, still fixated on his screen, he said, “sorry.”

 

Wouldn’t you be annoyed?

 

I’m phenomenally tired of rude people, so I asked him, “Is that the best you can do?

Now, he looked up and gave me an exasperated look as if to say, “how dare you walk in here with a roll of fabric and expect ME to know that we have a box for it.”

Good grief!

Look, I apologize too much. I mean, I’m the woman who kept apologizing to everyone while I was in excruciating labor with Cale.

Like, “I’m sorry y’all have to stand here watching a woman who has a wild ravenous cat inside her tummy trying to claw his way out.”

 

via GIPHY 

Run, Little Bro, Run!!!

BTW, this gif below is exactly what it’s like when you’re over a week past your due date.

 

via GIPHY

I’m sure some of you can relate.

Of course, I asked to speak with the manager.

This time he shot out of there lickety split,, and she appeared a minute later.

I didn’t say much, but she got some other helpers and couldn’t have been nicer and she apologized profusely. Of course she did because dude didn’t handle that one so well. In addition, she didn’t charge me for the box.

What should’ve been at most a ten-minute stop took 40 minutes.

 

A week later, I got an email from Custom Laminations with the headline:

 

Fabric needs to be returned.

What?

They don’t do panels.

I didn’t ask why, I just said, okay. My bad. I should’ve tried harder to make contact. However, I read all of the instructions very carefully and it said nothing about not being able to do panels.

 

So, today, I received the roll of fabric. Since they are professionals, they wrapped it tightly in heavy plastic.

Below, a bit bedraggled and in my kitchen is what nearly $300 down the drain looks like.

 

Please forgive me for the long-winded story. It’s necessary so you can get an inkling of what this process has been like.

 

Okay, so now what?

 

Well, I could start over, but:

1. I really like this tapestry

 

Oh, I forgot to tell you one thing.

 

In order to get the fabric to be no more than 60″ wide, I had to take apart a seam about 18″ from the bottom of the big central panel.

Unfortunately, I did a terrible job, which might cause some problems.

However, is there another way to attach the fabric to the wall?

I bet some of you already know the answer.

YES, there is!

And that is with liquid starch. Yes, like the stuff my mom used decades ago to press my dad’s shirts. I guess some folks still use it.

 

I have found a number of tutorials that explain how apply fabric to the wall with liquid starch. Some are more complex than others.

 

 

The one above is one of the best. I wish he had shown how he cut around that open arch. I’m sure it wasn’t easy.

The thing is, I don’t know if there’s a paper hanger who will do this unorthodox type of installation. It does involve wetting the front of the fabric.

 

Is the dye color-fast?

 

Not 100%, but I’m not washing it. If dunked quickly in water, no dye leaches out. Plus, Rit makes a product that is supposed to hold the colors in. I think it’ll be okay,, though. The starch only gets brushed on.

Supposedly, this is a much easier installation than regular wallpaper. I believe that’s because there’s some time to reposition the fabric, if necessary.

 

If it were only the two small panels, I wouldn’t worry about it.

 

However, the big one with the doors is a problem. I wish I had had the entire door painted now. If I put plenty of paper down, I think I could handle painting the doors, but only inside the moulding.

Then, I could wait for Cale to come, but a better idea might be to ask my upstairs neighbor, who’s the nicest lady, and has probably installed wallpaper before. She put up about 100 paintings by herself when she moved in. Oh, and she picked up my first dishwasher on her own and carried it in.

I will let you know. In the meantime, I could still try and find a professional who will do this. Maybe it’s not as weird as I fear it is.

Do any of you have experience applying fabric to the wall like this, or have had it done?

 

Two more things before I go.

 

Yes, there’s Modpodge, but I’m not sure about that one as it is really like glue and might be impossible to remove. It might be possible to use typical wallpaper paste, but I’m not sure about that one either.

I found a discussion on Facebook which you can see here that discusses all of this and one or two other ideas. 

Well, that’s all for now.

If you enjoy these types of mistakes post, please check out one of my all-time favorites about 15 catastrophic mistakes one can make with fabric. I made at least half of these!

xo,

 

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