Hanging Wallpaper – Part 1

Whether it’s 1906 or 2013, not much has changed when it comes to hanging wallpaper.

This copyright free image is from a 1906 Sears, Roebuck and Company Wallpaper catalog. Along with samples of their papers, the catalog included instructions on hanging wallpaper, including this drawing of a man preparing wallpaper for hanging.

This illustration provides a wallpaper hanging idea that I haven’t seen before and seems like a great idea for even today. They say to take two 8 foot long boards that are between 10 and 12 inches wide and lay them on top of a table to provide a nice flat place to cut the paper and wet or add the paste.

This is the first in a series of five drawings on how to hang wallpaper. Sears sold their wallpaper in double rolls for 3 to 12 cents and each roll had 16 yards of paper. They proclaimed that you could paper an entire room for as little as a dollar per room an “expense so small it is not worth considering.” And, “On addition, we have perfected such simple instructions that enable anyone to hand the paper, and thus we save our customers another item of expense, namely, the amount that would be paid to a regular paperhanger to do the job.”

While one dollar doesn’t sound like all that much, keep in mind that in 1906 in most American cities, that would have bought around 20 loaves of bread. Sounds like to many families it would indeed be an expense worth considering.