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The job: Hang a Powder Room with a 14-color Brunswig
+ Fils handprint screened on a flat black
ground, 36" wide, untrimmed. In an amazing stroke of bad
luck, the pattern repeat was 34", and the crown-to-base
distance was 102", which was exactly three repeats, not
an inch less. I had to cut most of the sheets at four
repeat lengths, wasting 30" per drop and destroying any
cushion of extra material that I might have had on this
touchy job. Sweat-ville!
I mapped out the installation and striped the walls with flat black paint. A four-inch Whizz roller works great for this. After the stripes dried, I primed over everything with Drawtite Clear. Usually I use Shieldz Clear, but I was planning to double-cut the job, and I wanted a tough surface that I'd feel good double-cutting on top of. Lots of sanding before, between, and after coats.
The trick to double-cutting a handprint is to trim only one side on the table, and to trim to the edge of the printed pattern, outside the trim mark (circled). The pattern bleeds to the edge of the trim, and it gives you a match reference when overlapping the untrimmed edge of the previous sheet, while leaving enough of a material margin to double-cut in between the trim marks. Granted, it's only about a 1/4", but it's not a problem if you use a straightedge to double-cut. The results are worth the effort. Double-cutting handprint stock produces a perfect, nearly invisible seam.
I hang from right to left, so I hang my first sheet with an untrimmed left edge. The next sheet will have a table-trimmed right-hand edge (trimmed to the edge of the ink, not at the trim mark), which will be overlapped and pattern-matched on the wall, and then double-cut just inside of the trim mark. It's a tedious and time consuming method, and it's another good reason to use Drawtite. With softer, toothier primers, the sheets might freeze up on the wall before you get to the double-cut. Drawtite gives plenty of work time. I hung this paper with a mixture of straight Roman's 732 clay with a very little amount of Roman's 880 whipped in to extend the working time.
Here's a sheet coming out of a corner. Figuring out splits with an untrimmed edge is fun! Is this any way to make a living? I must be crazy. Fourteen colors, historic repro, not a sheet to spare. "Please don't tell me what you paid for this stuff, OK? Thanks, ma'am."
Here's the top sheet peeled away from the underneath sheet after double-cutting. I was able to buy a magnesium straightedge from Paintstoreonline at the convention. It's lightweight and non-marring, and it makes this kind of job just a little less nerve-wracking.
After pulling out the waste from the double-cut, I used a metal seam roller to roll down the paper and seam the edges. This paper scratched very easily. I had a new smoother, and I kept the surface very wet while smoothing, but I could still see very light scratches in the black ink. Fortunately, the room lighting was pretty mellow compared to my halogen work lamp, so it was OK. Whew!
When the room was finally hung, I washed the walls top-to-bottom twice with clean, hot water. They dried totally clean, but showed water spots, so I washed once more with a splash of Safe and Simple 603 in the water bucket, followed by a towel-dry. Matte, flat, seamless. Perfect. Pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. These are the kinds of results that I was never able to achieve with table-trimming, wet or dry. It's the only way that I hang expensive handprints now.
I don't usually go through the trouble of removing pedestal sinks. The hassle of hanging around them is outweighed, in my non-plumber's opinion, by the risk of damaging the fixture or screwing up the plumbing. But in this case, I just couldn't see how I could get around this particular Kohler fixture without tearing the paper or stressing the black ink. This was an eight-roll job that took about a day and-a-half after all was said and done. I billed the customer for my time.
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