From Dark to Lightly Cloudy

I liked the original paper in this powder room of a newish home in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston. But the mom wanted something brighter and better suited to her young family. This is the second time I’ve hung this pattern – and the houses are just a few blocks apart!

This wallpaper pattern is by Eijffinger (an European company), and is quite likely a riff on Cole & Son’s “Nuvolette” pattern of roiling clouds. The C&S design is quite powerful, and needs a large space to play out. This Eijffinger take is much easier to live with, especially when it’s on all four walls of the room.

This is printed on a thick and spongy non-woven material that was flexible, and it was pretty nice to work with. I could have pasted the wall to install, but opted to paste the material.

Something’s Buggin’ Me

The doors of this laundry room open to the upstairs hallway of a busy young family in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston. The mom wanted to see something more cheery than a drab painted wall.

The butterflies and beetles on this wallpaper have an iridescence that brings an almost life-like quality to the look.

This was a thin but stiff non-woven material, and I used the paste-the-wall installation method. The stiffness made it a bit hard to work with, and it was prone to creasing, and also was difficult to fit in closely to the curves of the molding on top of the cabinets.

If it had just been a flat wall with nothing to trim around (cabinets, molding, ironing board door), the paper would have worked better. OR, the manufacturer could have just used a more flexible substrate.

This wallpaper is by Clarke & Clarke, a British company.

A Blessedly Better Day Today

OK, so yesterday’s job didn’t present the best working conditions (see previous post), and I had to postpone the job. I contacted another client, and she was able and happy to jump at the chance to get her paper up this week – way sooner than expected.

I send my clients a “check list” of how to prepare for their wallpaper install. If anyone could have checked off all the boxes, this family did!

I had easy and spacious access to both rooms (downstairs powder room and upstairs laundry), the power is on and there’s plenty of light, the A/C is cooling and pulling humidity out of the air, there is running water in each room. The husband removed the bathroom mirror and pulled the laundry appliances out of the way.

The homeowner is letting me spread a padded moving blanked on top of their dining table so I can place my work table on it, which saves space and hassle. There is easy access parking right in front of the door, and not too many stairs to climb.

My satellite radio is getting good reception, so I’m guaranteed good music all day. The family pet is scared of me, so it’s staying out of the way, with no worries of scooting out the front door – and no peeing on my dropcloths.

Concentration on what I’m doing, plus the ability to move from my truck to the house to the two rooms I am working in are important – and all of this flows better when there are no obstacles or distractions, and I can get into “my zone.” This mom has three little kids, and she was thoughtful enough to make sure the little darlings were far away from my work zone.

Not only that, but at noon she handed me a key, packed the whole family up, and said they were heading to Galveston for the weekend!

Folks, I love my clients. But even more, I love being able to work without distractions, and being able to move back and forth as much as I need to, without worrying about getting in people’s way, disrupting their family life, making too much noise, opening the door too often and setting off the “Front Door Open” voice every time.

It’s great to spread my gear where it’s handy, not worry about other workmen “borrowing” something, spout out a cuss word if I drop something, arrive without a time frame and work until midnight if I need to.

I think I work harder, because I don’t have to worry about being in the family’s way, and then I can get obsessed with some minute detail and have the time to pursue various ways to work it out.

People think that wallpaper is all manual, but there’s a huge mental/math/engineering/concentration component, too. Blaring TV’s and screaming children and “overly-involved” homeowners hamper my concentration.

Call me a curmudgeon, call me a primadonna – but I do my best work when I’m all alone, it’s nice and quiet and there’s plenty of space, along with water, electricity, A/C, … You know – checking off the boxes on my check list! 🙂

Please Don’t Tell Me You’re Ready If You’re NOT

This young family in the Rice University neighborhood of Houston has been undergoing a weeks-long remodel of the master bed and bathroom suite in their 1939 home. They’re eager to get moved back in. I was scheduled for three days to smooth walls and hang paper.

I’d been told by both the homeowner and the contractor that the room is ready for wallpaper. So I showed up for work today to discover that it is not.

First photo – The painters are working in adjacent rooms and need to pass through my work area frequently. You can see piles of their equipment in my space. This is very disruptive to the thought process needed to hang wallpaper.

Second photo – There is no running water. I had to run down to the family’s kitchen to fill a gallon bucket so I could rinse tools and rags – which is not the same as keeping things squeaky clean with fresh, running water. And since there is no toilet, there is nowhere to dump the dirty water.

On the left, you notice an extension cord. Which leads to the third photo – there is no electricity. No lights. So I had to connect two extension cords and hang one measly 100 watt bulb from the ceiling fan, in hopes of having enough light to work.

The fourth photo shows where I am trying to spread smoothing compound onto the wall. The compound and the wall are virtually the same color, and, in the dim light, it’s next to impossible to see what I’m doing.

The contractor dug out a heavy-duty extension cord and borrowed the painter’s work light, which helped a bit. But later the painter (who was working in a room with no windows) came and took his light back.

There is also skimpy air conditioning in this room. It’s not about the temperature, folks – it’s about humidity. You need the A/C cranking to pull humidity out of the air. I won’t hang wallpaper when the HVAC systems are not running, because the resulting humidity is detrimental to wallpaper – adhesion, shrinking, yada. And smoothing compound won’t dry, primers won’t dry …

Fifth photo – the carpet has been ripped up, leaving nail strips along the walls, and leaving exposed nails here and there all over the floor.

I did what little prep I could and then left. I am not coming back tomorrow.

Unfortunately, because of mis/discommunication, this family’s wallpaper will have to wait until I have a client whom I can switch install dates with.

Also, due to this, I lost at least one day of work (self-employed people don’t get “vacation pay” 😦 ), and other clients of mine whom I could have helped that day didn’t get their paper up, either.

Gold-on-Black Versace Swirl Damask in a Powder Room

So you thought Versace was all about clothing and shoes … Well, that name is all over wallpaper, too!

The owner of this brand-new home in the Garden Oaks neighborhood of Houston loves to entertain, and he wanted something in his powder room that would really rock the socks off his guests. As I like to say, you can get away with a lot of drama in a powder room – and he pulled it off!

This is a textured gold-and-black vinyl bonded to a non-woven backing. The material appears to have stitching (see close-up) – but that is just a design embossed into the thick vinyl.

What there IS that the homeowner was not expecting (bought from images viewed on-line, without seeing an actual sample) is a good bit of glitter.

There is just enough glimmer to reflect light and catch your eye, but not so much as to be overdone or gauche.

Cute Flowers for Guest Bedroom Accent Wall

This bedroom went from typical traditional suburban style to much more contemporary and fun, thanks to this line-drawing pattern with a playful take on potted flowers.

Just the headboard wall was papered, creating a focal accent for the room.

By Exclusive Wallcoverings, this is a non-woven product, and can be hung either by pasting the paper or by pasting the wall. Since there were no intricate cuts to make or obstacles to trim around, it worked nicely to paste the wall.

Non-woven papers tend to want to retain their curled-up state, which makes them difficult to work with. To get rid of that “memory,” and to prevent the decorative side from bopping into the paste on the wall, I roll the paper backwards and secure with a hairband, as you see in the photo. Once I’m up on the ladder, I undo the paper and let it unroll toward the floor, working it into position against the preceding strip as it goes.

This home is in the Kingwood neighborhood of Houston.

Peel & Stick = Piece of Sh!t

We’re seeing more and more of this peel-and-stick, supposedly “removable” and “repositionable” plastic wallcovering. Unfortunately, many homeowners read the lofty claims by the manufacturers and think it will be a perfect alternative to traditional wallpaper. It is not.

The stuff is awful – I won’t hang it, and most of my friends won’t either.

First of all, you don’t NEED an alternative to traditional wallpaper – you just need quality paper and someone who will properly prep the walls and then properly install the paper.

Getting back to P&S, the stuff is virtually impossible to hang. Imagine a 9’x2′ strip of Contact Paper, trying to position that on a wall without it wrinkling or sticking to itself, and then trying to butt another strip up next to it. Not gonna happen. It also does not “remove easily” … well, it does, but it will tear your wall apart in the process.

These homeowners had some guys doing other work in the nursery, and they said they could hang the wallpaper, too. They weren’t experienced paperhangers, and they weren’t up to the battle against this P&S. Virtually no one is.

First, they should have smoothed out the textured wall. Second, most P&S products spec that the wall should be sealed with a semi-gloss paint, which needs to dry and cure for two weeks. As you can see, this adds time and labor charges to the job.

I’m not sure why there are gaps at the seams (top two photos), but better prep would surely have helped prevent this. The large wrinkles are due to the inflexiblity of the material and its unwillingness to twist or stretch into position. With the baby on the way, the homeowner dad got desperate and used nails to try to tack down the curling paper.

The baby girl arrived, the parents lived with this wall for a while, and, when life settled down, they contacted me. I counseled them to forget the P&S and to choose a traditional wallpaper.

They zoomed in on this butterfly pattern by SuperFresco. This material is one of the newish non-woven materials, which contain a component of fiberglass and thus don’t expand or shrink, and won’t tug at the wall, so fewer worries of seems popping loose. These qualities also make it possible to dry-hang the paper, by pasting the wall instead of pasting the paper. I usually paste the paper, but on a single accent wall such as this (no toilets or sinks or fancy moldings to work around), pasting the wall works beautifully. It also saved me lugging my heavy, bulky work table up to this townhome’s third floor. 🙂

Removing the P&S paper was easy – it is strong and held together while I tugged it off the wall … I could do it all from the floor, without even climbing the ladder. Unfortunately, it took much of the paint along with it. So much for the “removable” claim.

It was still as sticky as the day it was born – so I rolled it all up and stuck it to itself and tossed the whole mess into the trash. Done and gone!

I skim-floated the wall to smooth it, sanded smooth, vacuumed, wiped residual dust off the wall with a damp sponge, and then rolled on Gardz, a penetrating primer-sealer, that also is a great undercoat for wallpaper.

All that (especially waiting for the smoothing compound to dry) took several hours. I think it was about 6:00 before I started hanging wallpaper!

Thin non-wovens generally go up with pleasingly invisible seams, and this one did, too. I was surprised to discover more than a few large wrinkles and bubbles. This could have been because the paper got twisted during installation, because the wall was smooth but not flat, because of some uneven reaction between the substrate and the paste which caused off-gassing (burps!), or some other reason. But it meant that I had to go over the wall several times, checking to be sure all areas were firmly secured to the wall.

The finished accent wall looks great! It’s a gentler pattern and a quieter color, and doesn’t hit you in the face as the original floral pattern did. There’s a little bit of fun shimmer in the scattered pearlized butterflies, and the blue-grey wings coordinate nicely with the three grey walls in the rest of the room.

Finally, Baby Girl is ready to move into her own room!

Scalamandre Textured Stripe

This is one of those jobs that you have to see in person to fully appreciated, because the photos show only a fraction of the coolness of this material.

The homeowner of this brand-new home in the Garden Oaks neighborhood of Houston loves to entertain, and he has a large personality. He turned his living room into a bar / lounge / reception sort of area. It’s the first thing you see as you enter the house.

This room has a lot more luxe and drama and cool furnishings that I am not showing, out of respect for my client’s privacy. But suffice it to say, the overall effect will really WOW everyone who walks into the home.

Scalamandré makes this product, which is called “Pacific Stripe.” It has a high plastic content, which allows for the heavily textured surface, as well as a lot of Mylar, which accounts for the metallic-like sheen.

One photo shows this material rolled out on the floor, to see how the pattern plays out across the width. Turns out the dark striped ridges come nine to a set. The edges on either side of the goods have more than nine ridges … This means that when strips are placed next to one another, you will end up with many more than nine ridges at each seam. So some has to be trimmed off of either side of the wallpaper, to ensure that each band of stripes has only nine ridges.

Lots of higher-end papers need to have their selvedge edge trimmed off. But this is the first time I’ve encountered a thick, textured paper that had to be hand-trimmed. Note the photo showing this process.

My goal was to leave four ridges on the right side of the paper, and then five ridges plus a flat line on the opposite side of the paper, to maintain the correct rhythm of ridge-to-flat spacing. The paper was dark, and the lighting was poor, so it was difficult to see where to trim.

Also, the thickness of the ridges held my 6′ metal straightedge off the material, so it was very important to hold my razor blade absolutely straight, to avoid a beveled or wavering cut.

It helped that the contractor had painted the wall black (per my specs), so, after I deglosssed and then applied my clear primer Gardz, there were no worries about background color peeking out at the seams. As extra assurance, I colored the edges of the paper (which was bonded to a white substrate) with dark chalk.

Scalamandré provided no instructions or information of any sort, so I followed my gut as for paste, booking time, and other installation techniques.

The product was very thick and stiff. It was difficult to trim through and took many swipes of my razor knife. A simple accent wall like this is one thing … but this material would have been a real pain to hang in a room that had intricate decorative moldings, or in a complicated room like a bathroom – I would probably have had the homeowner remove the sink and toilet and then replace them after the wallpaper was up. ($$ to pay the plumber!)

As it was, this single accent wall behind a well-loved entertaining area was the perfect spot for it.

The homeowner is overjoyed with the finished bar. In fact, he can’t wait to host his first party!

“Etched” Foresty Look in a Baby’s Nursery

This “Bellwood” mural by Rebel Walls is very similar to the “Etched Arcadia” mural by Anthropologie (do a Search here to see my previous installations). Either way, this is a wonderful idea for a nursery, and a cool alternative to the usual pink flowers or dinosaurs that many parents choose.

This mom-to-be was originally uncertain about papering the 3-walled alcove (which will house the changing table) (see third and fourth photos), because someone planted the idea that it would get soiled quickly. I’m glad I convinced her to take the plunge – the room really does look better with both the accent (crib) wall papered, and the changing table nook.

This product is a mural, and came in panels that had to be hung sequentially (as opposed to regular wallpaper with a repeating pattern). No photos of the plotting involved, but you have to roll the panels out on the floor to ensure the correct sequence. I made sure to center the low part of the pattern around the changing table, so the high part of the trees cradled it on either side of the niche. I really like the way this turned out.

Additional plotting was required to plan the area over the door and then the 1 1/2″ wide space to the left of it (not shown). All this measuring and plotting has to be done before the homeowner orders a custom-sized mural like this. Another reason to have the paperhanger see the room BEFORE you order your paper.

This paper is a non-woven material, and has a high fiberglass content. That makes it easy to remove when it’s time to redecorate, but it also makes it easy to clean in the case of accidents.

So this mom should go on to change diapers with confidence, all the while enjoying the unique look of her baby’s nursery.

This home is in the Garden Oaks neighborhood of Houston.

The textured walls were smoothed by the painting company, CertaPro. Usually I insist on doing my own prep, but it worked for the homeowner to have the paint crew get the messy smoothing part out of the way. AND … I know the CertaPro guys, and I knew I could trust them to do a good job. And they did. All I had to do was apply a wallpaper primer, and then hang the paper.

No Work Today – Flooding!

If you’ve watched the news in Houston or elsewhere, you know that it rained and then flooded heavily here.

My job for today was set in Kingwood, a suburb about 20 miles northeast of downtown that got hit extremely hard two years ago during Hurricane Harvey – and again today.

I don’t pay a lot of attention to local TV, so I’m thankful that a friend alerted me to the weather and to driving conditions.

My client and I made the very wise decision to postpone this job until better weather and safer driving could be ensured.

As for me … the skies were dark, rain was pattering against the windows, and there’s nothing like taking a long nap with three cats piled up on top of you.