AOC Painters Use Wallpaper to Brighten Up the Basement

Wallpapering feels almost like a lost art. The decorative element was widely popularized by interior design trends of the 1960s and 70s, when living rooms, dining rooms and bathrooms were covered over in sheets of patterned designs. Even in the U.S. Capitol, wallpaper has been used to highlight areas of ceilings and walls. (Most have since been removed.) Now, several decades after its heyday, Architect of the Capitol painters in the Longworth House Office Building are utilizing wallpaper in a modern, relevant way.

A new mural installation in the Longworth Building's basement displays a collage-like image of the 118th Congress printed on several large sheets of vinyl wallpaper. In early August, Edwin Garcia, the Day Shift Supervisor in the House Office Buildings Paint Shop, oversaw the start of the installation — which wrapped up at the end of the month.

Garcia and his team of 12 day shift employees and 14 night shift Paint Shop employees keep the five House office buildings in pristine condition. A typical shift could require repairing plaster or refinishing scuffed, high-traffic areas. Others may involve high-profile work like painting Member offices as the newest House of Representatives are sworn in. Garcia describes times like these as his busiest — and most exciting — seasons. Many of his teammates have been with the agency for years, and Garcia himself started painting with the AOC in 1994. Still, the mural installation project was a first for a few of them.

Anwar Shaikh, Merlin Flores and Joseph Moger meticulously smooth a sheet of wallpaper in the Longworth Building mural installation.

"Wallpaper hanging skills could be a plus when you apply for a painter's position in the AOC, but those skills are not necessarily required," Garcia said. "With basic wallpaper hanging skills, we figured out how to install everything ourselves!"

The project required several AOC teams to execute a careful, weeks-long ballet. First, the night shift's plasterers and painters resurfaced and primed the walls the mural would eventually cover, removing rough or uneven textures and filling chips or holes. Once smooth, they identified structural elements in and around the wall, floor and ceiling that needed to be removed.

"These are things most people don't even think of," Garcia said. "But when you look around the hallway and see how many signs, outlets and sconces we have, you realize you won't be able to just keep cutting sections of the wallpaper to accommodate them. Those things need to be readjusted or moved."

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Several scenes in the mural visible near the House Office Supply Store.

To avoid making cuts in the mural, Garcia's team collaborated with AOC carpenters and electricians to safely clear the "landscape." They then began to adhere the first sections of the wallpaper, some of which frames the entrance to the House Gift Shop. As each panel was placed and pasted, black and white artistic renderings depicted Members of the 118th Congress, the House of Representatives seal, exteriors of House buildings, and selections of text from the Preamble appeared. Now finished, the mural is visible to Members, staff and visitors close to the cafeteria area within Longworth's basement.

While Garcia doesn't anticipate too many more wallpaper projects, he and the team feel proud to be bringing this retro decorative style into the 21st century.