To protect the toilet from primer splatters, and the occasional tool that gets set on it. I tried the fuzzy covers they make for your grandmother’s toilet lids, but they were too bulky and didn’t fit right. Enter little kids’ T-shirts! They fit perfectly, are easy to transport with my dropcloths, come in cute colors and slogans, and, at 50c or so from Value Village (my favorite thrift shop in Houston), they can be replaced when they get too soiled.
In a recent post, I mentioned how when there’s a strong contrast between the color of the woodwork and the primer, you don’t want any primer peeking out between the wallpaper and the molding. So when rolling on the primer, I cut in with an angled trim brush along the molding. But I’ll pull back just a tad, leaving a 1/16″ or 1/8″ gap or so, so the white primer doesn’t actually touch the woodwork. This prevents any of the primer from showing after the wallpaper goes up. Wallpaper paste doesn’t adhere well to glossy paint as is used on moldings, but this teeny bit of of a gap won’t be enough to cause adhesion worries.
Originally, the powder room was moody and posh , with black lacquered walls , ceiling , and woodwork, black toilet and sink, and that gorgeous etched mirror. But the homeowner waned it to make a statement – and this wallpaper sure does!Corner to left of door.Same corner primed. Wallpaper paste won’t adhere wall to the glossy paint. My preferred primer, Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime , sticks to just about anything, provides a good base for the wallpaper , dries quickly , and facilitates removal of the wallpaper when it’s time to redecorate .Same area with wallpaper. Close-up .Flocked means that the wallpaper has raised , fuzzy areas, something like velvet .Just look at my work table at the end of the day! I sure don’t want to transfer any of this to my next jobs, so I took extra care to remove all of this dust before packing up my equipment. The design is called Croquis and is by Jean Paul Gaultier , and the brand is Lelievre , a French company. The material is a user-friendly non-woven or paste the wall , and was nice to work with. It will strip off the wall easily when it’s time to redecorate. The home is in the Spring Branch area of Houston .
Walls have been skim-floated and sanded smooth, primed, and are ready for wallpaper.Done. The dark woodwork really accentuates the wallpaper; the room would not be nearly as dramatic and fun without the dark woodwork. Eeek! Another console sink to squeeze under and behind. Just this area took more than an hour. Some tricks I’ve learned is that you don’t have to wrestle full-length and -width strips. Here I cut the two strips behind the sink horizontally at the point where the vanity hits the wall. I hung the upper strips. Then, moving to the right, I hung the strips to the right. After I ended in the corner to the right (not pictured), I came back and hung the two short strips under the sink. So I was only wielding strips 2′ high, instead of 9′. I also sliced one strip vertically at the point where it intersected the drain pipe under the sink. This was much easier than trying to wrangle an 18″ wide strip around the drain, two faucets, and the metal support pipes. What are these cwitters up to??!Close-up. The homeowner said that the family has a sense of humor , and wanted something wild and fun . Detail.Many House of Hackney wallpapers come as a mural , or 4-roll set. This diagram shows the layout of the four panels. You can take a second set of four panels and place it to the right (or to the left – just keep track of the sequence order of the panels) and the pattern will continue. Each panel is about 18″ wide, so a 4-panel set gives you about 6′ of width. Panels are about 9.5′ high. This is called Hackney Empire and is in the Midnight colorway. This is a non-woven material , also called paste the wall . I did paste the material rather than the wall, though, as it makes the paper more supple, and enables me to get paste into difficult-to-access areas – such as under and behind that console sink! Non-wovens are designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece without damage to the wall when it’s time to redecorate. This HofH material was lovely to work with.
Re my previous post , it’s very common for wallpaper to shrink just a tad when the paste dries, and this can leave you with teeny gaps at the seams. So when hanging a dark paper like this, I like to stripe a band of black paint under where the seams will fall. This way, if the paper does gap at the seams, you will see dark, and not the white wallpaper primer . I measure and plot where each seam will fall and then run a stripe of diluted water-based craft paint (from Michael’s or Texas Art Supply) under where the seam will be. I wet a scrap of sponge and dip it in the paint, adding water as needed. Don’t make it too thick or dark. Because you want the wallpaper adhering to the wallpaper primer underneath all this. On top of the wallpaper primer, the craft paint dries pretty quickly. But I use a heat gun to be sure the paint is good and dry before hanging each strip. Don’t paint more than one or two stripes at a time, because wallpaper stretches and expands when it gets wet with paste , and it’s difficult to predict exactly where each seam will fall. For the same reason, be sure your stripes are at least 1/2″ wide, if not a full inch. Additionally, I’ll take a pastel chalk (NOT an oil pastel – oil stains wallpaper) and run it from the backside along the white edges of the wallpaper, to prevent any white edges from showing at the seams. Do a Search here to see previous posts about that trick .
Authentic furniture, and reproduction wallpaper reflecting the styles and tastes of the time. This is a William Morris design , and reflects the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau design movement. I believe this is also William Morris .In the study , similar to the William Morris Willow Bough . These wallpapers were probably made by the Morris & Co. brand. Their patterns are very popular right now. If you go shopping, be sure to look for the non-woven or paste the wall material , not the historic British pulp paper. This is the home of Henry Shaw , botanist. It was built in 1849 , with additions and changes over the years.
Re my previous post, here is a more Victorian decorating style, particularly the intricate work on the ceiling. My camera didn’t capture much of the ceiling , but there are decorative borders and other fancy elements. I believe this wallpaper is made by Bradbury & Bradbury , who specializes in reproductions of past eras . The home is also called the Tower Grove House , and was built in 1849 .
This image is from American Farmhouse magazine. It shows a very small travel trailer. In the bedroom area, you can see an accent wall covered with wallpaper. What a cool idea, to add some spunk and visual interest and warmth to this traveling home. The pattern is a William Morris design, probably by Morris & Co.
Here’s the wall after I stripped, sealed, skim-floated, sanded, and primed it. Finished. The birds in the pattern balanced nicely with between the ceiling line and the wainscoting. I had more success with this install than the previous guy, due to proper prep, and also the material used this time was the user-friendly non-woven , rather than the old fashioned pulp type wallpaper the other guy had to wrestle with. Strawberry Thief is a very popular pattern right now, and comes in many colorways. Do a Search here to see my other installations of this design.There were some issues at the top of the wainscoting where the painters had used tape to mask off areas, long with caulk, an it left a rather large (1/8″) unpainted area between the wood molding and the wall. I filled this in with joint compound and primed it, and wallpaper would have adhered just fine. But that would have left a white gap between the wallpaper and the green molding. I rummaged in my truck for the best matching paint I could come up with, and painted over the white edge. This would have left a bit of a thin brown line between the wallpaper and the green molding. It would have looked OK, but I had an idea to get rid of the gap altogether.If I had used my regular thin straightedge (the red one), it would have let me trim the bottom edge of the wallpaper nice and close to the wall. But that would have left the aforementioned brown line showing. So I used the metal plate you see at the upper right of the photo as a trim guide. It’s thicker than my red straightedge, and so gives a fat cut that leaves more wallpaper and less of that brown line. In fact, the left edge, as you can see, is rolled, and that creates an even thicker edge to trim against, leaving even more wallpaper at the bottom of the cut. See the photo just above, to see how the wallpaper now completely covers the brown line. These metal plates have a lot of other uses. They are made and sold by a fellow member of the Wallcovering Installers Association . She makes a lot of other cool tools, too. If you are interested, send me an email. wallpaperlady@att.net The wallpaper design is by William Morris , a famed artist of the Arts & Crafts / Art Nouveau periods . The brand is Morris & Co. This label is EXACTLY the same as the pulp material the original installer worked with – save for that one word non-woven . Be sure you get the non-woven version, which is also called paste the wall . The home is in the Heights neighborhood of Houston .
Before, primed and ready for wallpaper. For various reasons, removing these mounting brackets for the light sconces would have created more problems than it solved, so I left them in place and worked carefully around them. The difficulty is that the sconces are exactly the same size as the mounting plates, so it’s difficult to trim around these plates that jut out from the wall and still get the paper close enough that no gaps show around the base of the light fixtures. When possible, it’s much easier to remove them and put the paper behind them. I chose to center the design on my first strip in between those two sconces, rather than on the faucet. Good thing this is a small and busy pattern, because neither the mirror nor the sink faucet were centered between the sconces. But no one’s gonna notice. If you look in the middle of the photo, you’ll see the vertical red line of my laser level. I’m using this as a guide to place the motifs down the center of the space. Here’s a shot of my laser level. Less than $100 at Lowe’s maybe eight years ago.Finished sink wall. The hooks are for the large, white framed mirror.Window corner next to the toilet. The mint green paint on the woodwork next to the light blue wallpaper print ties this room in beautifully with the other rooms on the first floor of this house. The colors also coordinate beautifully with some artwork in the dining room just steps away.The pattern is called Aboreta and is by Thibaut , one of my favorite brands. It’s a traditional paste-the-paper material , and was nice to work with. Thin and breathable and should hold up nicely in a humid bathroom. This was purchased from my favorite source for wallpaper and for help in finding what you’re looking for – Dorota at the Sherwin-Williams on University in the Rice Village . Her hours vary, so call before you head over.
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