How Can You Remove Old Grasscloth Wallcovering and Install New Grasscloth?

Jay Johnson - Design2Share gets many requests for answering questions on wallcovering of all kinds, but none more than grasscloth. Today's grasscloth designs are beautiful and colorful, and we just installed some new basket-weave grasscloth to a 2/3 room-height wainscoting wall surface in our master bedroom. The effect was spectacular, adding texture and interest to what used to be a boring beige wall. Here is a simple how-to video for removing old grasscloth wallcovering from a wall ... and the demonstrator is using Piranha Wallpaper Remover. Saturate the grasscloth with the remover and let it set for the recommended time, and it eats away the adhesive that holds the wallcovering to the wall.

Now comes the trickier part - installing the new grasscloth. Click on this eHow link for step-by-step instructions on how to DIY hang new grasscloth wallcovering. But, do you want to know our opinion at Design2Share? It's very tricky to do the seams of grasscloth just right. You're dealing with "fabric" wallcovering, and you don't want to overlap or fray the edges of the fabric. Cuts must also be clean.

So ... we're seriously recommending that unless you're a skilled DIYer, you might be much better off hiring a professional with lots of grasscloth experience to hang your job - and to estimate the number of rolls you're going to need for one room. (And are you sure you want to DIY cover all those switchplates and go around thermostats and try to estimate the coverage around corners? It's complicated, and you will NOT find a good DIY video anywhere online about how to hang grasscloth. That's what we're talking about!)