Wallpapering Gammel Estrup - the manor museum

This is the beautiful Gammel Estrup manor museum  

 The counts tower room.

On the walls are canvas.

On top of the canvas is two layers of acid free base wallpaper

This shows a little bit of the difficulty we faced in the room. 

The walls are curved and round - vertically and horizontally. 

 Ready - set - go ....
Not easy to put up distemper hand painted and very expensive wallpaper
But we can do it :-) 

 Anne Ejlersen was my right hand on this job - she is a very gifted craftswoman.

Educated housepainter, decorative painter and diploma painter.

Measuring.... 

Happy with the first day work of wallpapering

New sheets were painted day by day after measuring out - 

in order to prevent too many hours of painting.

The new smaller sheets were put up on the left side of the window.

We spend quite some time to puzzle the right bird colors and sheets together.

Bottom left sheet is with two birds and right sheet with one bird.

Next sheets is the opposite with new color birds 

Each of the birds were made in 4 different colors:

Green, red, purple and blue.

Exact copy of the original Chinese wallpaper from 1780

Distemper wallpaper is the most difficult to hang - especially on the curved canvas walls.
The glue on the backside of the wallpaper dissolves the paint and the watercolor patterns.

We had to invent a new wallpapering method to prevent ruining the colors.
If we ran the brush directly over the surface - the dissolved distemper paint and the water colors would be pulled along the surface and create a nightmare.

Look closely and you will see the transparent sheet of plastic 

(architectural drawing paper)

The last details are hand painted at least one day after the wallpaper is hung up. 

Corners takes quite a lot of measuring - they are never straight in old buildings.

The little secret door was also a bit difficult - especially because of the corner.

The details were very important - and unfortunately the keyhole is placed right in the center of the bird.

But - we managed and the little secret door is well hidden.

Corner detail - see how the paint from the bird rubs off so easily....

Just love this little fellow... 

Next step... corner is done :-) 

Next challenge....

Measuring...cutting....

Hanging...

Using new wallpapering techniques.

Done with the first one - pattern follows around the corner - happy me!

Carefully washing the edges from the little spots of glue.

Here you see how the pattern is not fully painted at the edge by my fingers.

Look closely at the berries - you can see the paint is dissolving and how it rubs off.

It's not much on this picture - it was different from sheet to sheet.

More measuring....

Details...

This wall was very curved - that's why we didn't cut off the extra paper on the side - we needed it to adjust and compensate - afterwards we extended the pattern by hand.

The last sheets of wallpaper were painted on the location to be able to measure and then hang.

A happy painter - last sheet is almost done.

And the last sheet of hand painted wallpaper is almost up...  

Done wallpapering...!

Now - all we need is hand paint the meetings of the wallpaper horizontally and vertically.

The curved canvas.... so stress full and difficult...but we did it! 

The result is uplifting.

Also from the side of the chandelier.

Done and happy!

Signed...

And champagne for the staff - Anne Ejlersen, Iben Lund Rasmussen and me... 

Thank you for seeing this - I hope you will share on facebook or Linkedin - if you like it.

Long live all of the traditional craftsmanship.

Kind regards

Heidi Zilmer

Captain and Creative Director of

Zilmers