Purple & Silver Transformation for Gal’s Bedroom

This 20-something gal’s bedroom is filled with glitter, sparkle, and mirrored furniture. She wanted to pull in the color purple, and, with help of my suggested source below, she found the perfect pattern, and it incorporated her favorite color, plus a bit of silver sheen thrown in!

This wallpaper went on one accent wall, behind the large, tufted headboard.

The photos are throwing off the perspective a bit. In person, you notice the circular and diamond design motifs much more than the vertical swipes. It’s a super look to finish this room.

This wallpaper pattern is by Wallquest, a good company, and was bought from my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price – Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.

The home is in the Towne Lake neighborhood of northwest Houston.

Textured Vinyl Faux Grasscloth in West U Powder Room

The homeowner waited 13 years to do away with the classic damask wallpaper in the powder room of their home in the West University neighborhood of Houston. That’s what happens to your plans when you buy a home and get sidetracked by kids, career, community, yada.

There was nothing wrong with the original gold damask pattern, but it was dark and it didn’t suit the homeowners’ taste. They were originally looking at grasscloth – but, luckily, listened to my many reasons to avoid that material (see page link at right).

They took my suggestion and went with this textured vinyl faux woven grasscloth by Thibaut called Bankun Raffia.

This material has the texture and depth of color that people are loving these days, but is (mostly) free of the color variations and fragility of real grasscloth.

Bankun Raffia is a commercial-grade material, so it is resistant to dings, splashed water, stains, fingerprints, and little boys with bad aim. 🙂

It’s harder to work with than regular wallcoverings, because it is thick and stiff and hard to cut and hard to make turn corners or work into tight spaces.

The finished look is tailored and serene, and a lot brighter. In the photo with my finger, you can see the textured surface and fauxed color application.

This wallpaper pattern is by Thibaut Designs, and was bought from my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price – Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.

Crazy Install – Underside of Stairs

You are looking upward at the undersides of five stairs that make up most of the ceiling in this West U powder room. You’ve gotta wonder why the builder didn’t just have the Sheetrockers drywall over it.

Well, either way, the workmanship in rocking in all these surfaces was incredible.

Equally incredible was ME getting wallpaper onto them! 🙂

It’s a lot more complicated than it seems, looking at it from the comfort of your cell phone screen. I won’t go into all the many factors, but each of the five stairs took me about an hour.

Poorly Trimmed Paper

This is “Bankun Raffia” by Thibaut, a textured vinyl product – one of my favorite alternatives to real grasscloth (do a Search here to read my comments about grasscloth).

As you can see, the factory didn’t do a very good job of trimming the right edge. It is a good thing that I spotted this before I pasted or tried to hang it. I had to hand-trim the edges of my strips.

Luckily, it appears to be in just this one double roll bolt.

Fern Wallpaper Trending in Better Homes & Gardens

Ferns were all the rage with the Victorians, and, of course, are popular with gardeners these days. This month, Better Homes & Gardens magazine highlighted ferns, including a couple rooms of fern-themed wallpaper.

The first room even made the cover of the magazine!

Bringing COLOR to Wine Niche Cubby Holes

Here’s a fun idea! Let’s pull color from the adjacent accent wall and put it in an unexpected place – on the backs of wine cubby holes in the home’s bar area.

This was more tricky to do than it would appear. Those triangular cubbies are NOT all exactly the same size. And the measurements from the front of the cubbies are not the same as at the back wall. So I couldn’t just make a template and cut 16 pieces all the same size and shape.

In addition, you have to take into account the expansion factor when wallpaper gets wet with paste. In further addition, it didn’t work to trim off excess paper as one normally would, because it was virtually impossible to get a hand and razor blade all the way to the back wall inside those tiny cubicles – and even more impossible to be able to maneuver the blade to make any trim cuts.

These 16 triangles took me about three hours, but, when it was all said and done – I got ‘er done!

And in a few days, the homeowner will stuff those cubby holes full of wine bottles …. Sigh …

Colorful, Tribal, Fun – All In One

The owners of this newish townhome in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston spend much of their year in Africa (oil patch). The wife had a few goals for enhancing the all-beige space.

She wanted color. She wanted to tie in with some bright artwork the couple had collected. And she sought to bring a little of the African / ethnic feel they have come to love into their Houston home.

To me, the fun turtles on this wallpaper pattern look like batik-dyed pagne fabric. The teal is a wild jolt of color in an unexpected place – the master bathroom water closet.

The homeowner loves it so much, she is already thinking of adding more bright wallpaper to a more visible space – the adjoining master bedroom.

This wallpaper pattern is by Thibaut Designs, and was bought from my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price – Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.

Wild Bursts of Water-Colory Hues!

Oooooo …. Here’s something fun!

This 5-year old townhome in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston is typically all pale grey and tan. The homeowner wanted to brighten it up, as well as pull in some colors that coordinate with vivid artwork they have collected in Africa.

This pattern with bold swipes of primary colors in a sort of faux-finish design is perfect!

I hung this in a large powder room, as well as two walls in the adjoining bar area (no photo yet – see separate post).

This wallpaper is by Wallquest, and was sold by my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price – Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.

Marker Bleeds Through Wallpaper – Prevention

Whoops! Whoever hung the mirror used an ink marker to indicate where the hooks would go. Ink bleeds through wallpaper – and paint and other substances, too.

I had not seen the stains on the painted wall before I started to smooth the walls. But, as you can see, in just a few hours, it worked its way through my rough skim-float, then after this was sanded and primed, the ink bled through again.

KILZ Original oil-based primer / sealer / stain blocker is my solution for this. I don’t trust any latex or water-borne products.

No “after” picture, but I daubed a fingertip full of KILZ on top of each green spot, and am confident that the stain will not come through the new wallpaper.

Grasscloth in Cypress Powder Room

The walls and ceiling in this large powder room in a newish home in the Bridgeland Creek neighborhood of Cypress (northwest Houston) were originally a dark gold. I like dark rooms, but this one felt oppressive. It needed to be a little lighter, and to have a bit more interest on the walls.

The walls had a heavy texture, typical of new homes in the suburbs of Houston. I skim-floated the walls, then let dry overnight. The next day, I sanded the walls smooth, wiped off the dust, primed – and then was ready to hang wallpaper.

The pictures don’t adequately show the color of the new grasscloth, but we have natural brown grass color overlaid onto a really deep blue paper backing. The designer had the ceiling painted a dark, sort of murky blue, which coordinates really nicely with the blue in the grasscloth.

Lighting is funny … While I was working in the room, I had two 100 watt light bulbs; one suspended from the ceiling and one attached to where the light fixture belongs. The grasscloth just looked “normal.”

But once the room’s decorative light fixture went back up, it cast light on the textured surface in such a way that the “nubs” and knots really showed up! (see photo) The homeowner loved it!

As a note … With grasscloth, there is no pattern match, and you can also plan on seeing color differences between strips. So it’s important to plot where your seams will fall.

The electrical box, the light fixture, and the faucet were all in different vertical positions on the wall. Because the mirror would take up most of the wall behind the faucet and block the seam, I chose to center the seam on the light fixture, because it would be visible above the mirror. Well – sort of visible … as you can see, light rays from the fixture are so strong that no one can see where the seam is, anyway. 😦

The room had a “floating” sink. One of the photos shows the area under the sink. This area is open to view, and, because there are so many obstacles, it is difficult and time-consuming to wrap the paper underneath and trim around all those pipes and brackets.

The grasscloth wallpaper is by York. I was pretty pleased with the consistency of the material. Although some of the strips did present “paneling” and “shading” – color variances between strips – even strips that came off the same bolt and that were reverse-hung. One strip even had a rather abrupt color change mid-way from top to bottom. (no photo)

But that’s par for the course with grasscloth, and it’s considered to be “the natural beauty of this natural material.”

The interior designer for this project is Neal LeBouef, of L Design Group.