Wallpapering The Ceiling

‘Wallpapering the ceiling?’ I hear you cry, ‘Am I reading this right? Wallpaper… on the ceiling? Surely that’s just madness. Insanity, even.’

That’s exactly what I thought when the Stead announced that he wished to put woodchip wallpaper on the ceiling of his hallway. There is a story behind it.

It’s all part of the ongoing Saga Of The House Of Stead. When he moved into his new house, there were ugly beams on the walls and ceiling. When I say ‘beams’, what I mean is nasty bits of brown painted 2x4, replete with 6-inch nails. They were foul. Dire. I would go as far as to say… ‘awful’. Yes, I said ‘awful’.

Anyway, most of them came out of the walls and ceilings without too much hassle, despite the overly large nails. Each beam left a nasty brown stain on the ceiling – a problem that could be easily masked with many layers of paint. Sadly, however, upon removing the very last beam (which had an extra nasty nail in it), Stead managed to create a sizeable hole in his ceiling.

Being a terribly clever bloke, Stead masked this hole by putting a bit of metal gauze, usually employed in the car-repair business, in the hole and used layers of filler to create a new bit of ceiling – which is now probably stronger than the rest of ceiling. This still created the problem, however of an odd looking flat patch on an otherwise stippled ceiling. Too big to be painted over and ignored.

Stead’s suggestion: Let’s put woodchip wallpaper on the ceiling. After a coat of paint, It’ll look just like any stippled ceiling.

I was understandably dubious. Wallpaper on the ceiling sounds like a bad idea. My concern lay around its adhesion to the ceiling and our ability to put it up. And that it’d look like woodchip wallpaper. On the ceiling. The alternative, Stead told me knowingly, was getting the ceiling re-skimmed, which would cost about £300. The wallpaper would cost about £10.

Well, Stead was insistent. So we reached a consensus that went something like ‘Well it’s your ceiling, Stead. If it looks stupid, you’re then one that’s gonna have to look at it every day.’ I thought that was a reasonable statement.

So we spent most of yesterday afternoon putting woodchip wallpaper on the ceiling. And, I have to say, it looks pretty damn good. It went up with no major problems (apart from Stead’s mini-tantrum when the first piece didn’t go quite right) and, despite the lack of paint, doesn’t look bad at all! We have to leave it a few days (i.e. ‘til next weekend) before we can paint it, but I am now confident that it will look very reasonable.

Do you hear that, Stead? I’m conceding your point. Retracting my objections. It would seem that, this time at least, you were right. I suspect this is due to blind luck more than anything else but I am willing to give you this one. Well done.

See you for more painting fun next weekend.