Walls smoothed and primed, ready for wallpaperFlowers, birds and – COLOR!Reminds me of this Pierre Frey which I hung in a nursery a few weeks ago.
Home office, craft room, veg-out room – whatever the “official” description, this room in the front of the house belongs to the lady of the house. She loves birds and flowers and bright colors, and was thrilled to find this wonderful wallpaper pattern on Anthropologie.
Most of Anthropologie’s papers are by York, in their SureStrip line, which is one of my favorites. The material is pre-pasted. I like to sprinkle water on the back and then spread it around uniformly with a paint roller, and then book for a few minutes in a plastic trash bag.
The paper goes up beautifully and the seams are invisible. SureStrip is designed to pull off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate.
Notice anything? No – you don’t. That’s because it’s virtually impossible to see ANYTHING in this all-black powder room. The homeowners acknowledged that this “haute design” idea was a mistake.Two walls and part of the sloped ceiling. Adorable interpretation of forest animals
Not only did this clever design and light background brighten up the space, the homeowner exclaimed how it also made the room look larger.
This is an under-the-stairs powder room in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston. Originally, everything was black – walls, woodwork, floor, ceiling. The sink / mirror wall was the exception, being covered with white tile.
What a perfect fit is this scene of whimsical animals in a forest setting, in black on white.
The wallpaper is by Marimekko, a Finnish company.It is a non-woven material made of synthetic fibers. It can be hung using the paste-the-wall method, but I prefer to paste-the-material because it makes the paper more pliable.
Yellow strip along right side of strip at top of photo. Grey strip just to the right of my pencil in the second photo.Horizontal yellow stripe about center in this photoHard to see, but this photo shows “ghosting” of the print from the instruction sheet showing through the surface of the wallpaper. The instructions had been rolled up inside the paper. Somehow, the ink transferred onto the wallpaper. This ruined about 2′ of the bolt of wallpaper – multiplied by three bolts.Edges splayed / curled up, probably due to a trimming glitch at the factory. In addition, several feet of this affected area had a darker color – which would have showed up as a stripe along one edge of the wallpaper. This Candice Olson wallpaper is made by York. York is normally one of my favorite brands. But today was disappointing.
Once I discovered these printing and trimming defects, I contacted the homeowner. After kicking options around, she decided to NOT have the wallpaper hung. Why spend all that money for paper and labor, and have a less-than-stellar result?!
She will present these problems to the company. There is a good chance that she can avoid defects in the replacement paper, IF she gets them to send a different run.
Here is another reason why I am glad she purchased from a “real” wallpaper company (in this case, she bought from Burke Decor), instead of a middle-man company such as Wayfair, Etsy, Ebay, and even Amazon.
A wallpaper-focused company will be able to ferret out problems. And they will be knowledgeable of Run Numbers and etc. So the replacement they send will be free of printing and other types of defects.
This wallpaper is by York, in the Candice Olson line.
Nothing wrong with this pattern – just outdated. And starting to fail after more than 20 years on the wall.The new selection is fresh and crisp, and coordinates nicely with the woodwork and tile colors.This bathroom had some Hellishly narrow and awkward spaces to maneuver around in.
After 20+ years in this Willowbend / Meyerland neighborhood, the homeowners are updating several rooms in their home.
With the new wallpaper, this hall bathroom is modernized, yet still in keeping with it’s ’60’s era classic ranch style roots.
In the photo, you see where the painter let his paint roller bop against the top of the wall. There are other areas where they painted the ceiling, but let their brush run along the top 2″ of wallpaper.
So what’s the problem? My task for today is to strip off the wallpaper. But the paint on top of it makes it difficult (impossible) for water to penetrate the wallpaper. Water needs to be able to soak through, so it can saturate the material and reactivate the paste.
If water can’t pass through this barrier and soften the paste, it will be a long road to hoe to get that paper off the wall easily and without damage to the underlying surface.
Original yellow dining room wall color was light enough and cheery, yet the room looked dull and uninviting. A lighter background brightens the whole roomVisual movement via the vertical floral pattern brings the room to lifeThe design looks hand-painted
The hand painted coppery colored horizontal stripe in the crown molding really accentuates the colors in the wallpaper. We all agreed that the room would not be as stunning without that stripe.
The pattern is “Summer Harvest” #216496, and is by Sanderson. It is a non-woven type wallpaper, and can be hung by the paste-the-wall method. Although I generally prefer to paste the paper.
The interior designer is Stacie Cokinos, of Cokinos Design.
This master bedroom had textured walls that needed to be smoothed before the wallpaper could go up. (Texture looks bad under the new wallpaper, plus it interferes with good adhesion.)
I “skim-floated” the walls with drywall joint compound (what we call “mud”). This is akin to troweling on plaster.
Once that was dry, I sanded the walls smooth. In the first photo, you see the amount of dust that is created!
In the second photo are my “sanding sponges.” Some are coarse, some are fine, and one is angled, all with specific uses. These became available maybe 25 years ago, and are a huge improvement over the sandpaper-wrapped-around-a-block-of-wood that everyone used previously.
The putty knife is used to knock off big globs or high ridges, before hitting the wall with the sanding sponges.
Actually, I used to use a hand-held electric sander. That tool was fast, but it put a whole lot of dust into the air, and it traveled all over the room.
The sanding sponges are hand-operated and don’t throw dust up into the air. Also, manufacturers have made improvements to the joint compound formula which encourage the dust to sink to the floor rather than become air-borne.
You still end up with a lot of dust, though. And it does sift all over the room.
No problem. I simply bring in my Shop Vac (not pictured) and vacuum up all the dust. There’s still residual dust, so I use a damp rag to wipe dust off the floor, and a damp sponge to remove dust from the walls. (Important, because wallpaper will not adhere to a dusty wall).
Note that the photo shows an empty room. In rooms that have furniture, I cover it with painter’s plastic. And in most situations, which are usually one accent wall, I put up a sheet of plastic along the wall, draped from ceiling to floor, which contains dust to the 3′ along the wall, and prevents dust from getting to the rest of the room.
I also want to note that I am a big proponent of drop cloths. The reason you don’t see them in this scenario is because you can’t vacuum dust off a dropcloth, because the dropcloth gets sucked up into the vacuum nozzel. Much easier to vacuum dust up off a solid floor, and then wipe up any residue.
I also want to note that all my ladders wear “booties” / baby socks on the feet, to cushion the client’s floors and protect against scratches.
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