High-gloss paint is fantastic in rooms with wallpaper, used on shelves and trim. Be careful, though: high-gloss paint is also unforgiving, and shows off surface flaws.

1 Clean walls first to help wallpaper stick. Black Magic Grit-Trap Bucket, $20, Canadian Tire

2 Think of the Sundance contoured sponge as the big easy: its size and shape cover lots of ground to make finishing touches a snap. $2.79, Canadian Tire

3 Keep your hair out of your eyes - and your wallpaper!

4 The Richard bright orange wetting tray, $3, The Home Depot, is a perfect complement to colourful accessories, like Home Hardware's Rainbow Rollers, $13 for 3. Beauti-Tone roller cages, $7, Home Hardware

5 Wallpaper panels stay together forever when they're pressed with the Richard Seam Roller, $3.08, Rona

6 A wallpaper scraper is a DIYer's best friend. Having more than one on hand means friends and family can pitch in. Richard 3-inch flexible angled wallpaper scraper, $5.98, Richard flexible wallpaper smoother, $1.58, The Home Depot

7 The Richard 6-in-1 paint/wallpaper tool, $6.83, The Home Depot, makes light all-in-one work of scraping walls, cleaning rollers, opening paint cans (or beer bottles!), and clearing out cracks

8 Ensure each piece is on the straight and narrow with a solid straightedge and a cutting blade with two gripping positions and automatic reload. Rubbermaid Straightedge, $10.65, Rona; Husky Auto Load Knife, $10, The Home Depot

9 Automatic measuring is at the push of a button - Black & Decker's Autotape reaches up to ceilings when you can't. $25, Sears

10 Cover ground quickly with a brush wide enough for panels of any size. Pasting brush, from $5, CIL Realife Problem Solving Primer, $15 for 946 ml, Canadian Tire.