Because it was the first thing the homeowners pointed out. Even before showing me the beautiful wallpaper I would be hanging there.
Drywall dust is fine and sifts everywhere. I looked at those shiny crystals and knew that there would be no way to clean them to remove dust . So, to keep dust off, I covered the light fixture with painter’s plastic. Only thing is, the light bulbs get hot and would melt the plastic. Which sticks and you can never get it off. Yes, I could have turned off the lights. But I didn’t want to work in a dark room. So above, you can see I took a scissors and cut slits in the plastic to allow the light bulbs to slip outside. This way, the glass fixture was protected, nothing hot touched the plastic, and I had plenty of light to work.
It’s kind of tricky finding the center of a design like this, because it’s not symmetrical and elements of it move to left and right , and some are wider than others. So it helps to be able to pull up a room-scale image on-line , or to lay a couple of rolls out next to each other on the floor and look at the pattern from a distance.
And extra cool that these features reached up almost all the way to the ceiling. AND that the design was loose and flowing . That’s what allowed me to fiddle with the pattern and center the trees on each individual section of wall . Normally a pattern would have to match all the way around the room. But here you would never notice if a tree branch didn’t perfectly match the next tree branch way up 9′ high over the window that was only 2″ high .
Since there were two tree figures to the design , I varied what I placed in the center of each wall, to prevent every visual vignette from being the same.
It was fun plotting all this out and executing the layout . I love when my work environment is nice and quiet and I have the space and time to play around like this .
The pattern is called Luminous Branches and is by York . It’s a material made by a good brand .
The homeowners had this elegant wainscoting added to the bottom of their dining room when the house was built . But for seven years, the room was bland and boring . The new crystal chandelier adds glamor , but the room is still lacking .
I’m encouraging the homeowners to paint that band of wall under the tray ceiling a very soft aqua color, to meld with the misty feel of the wallpaper .
This wallpaper pattern is called Luminous Branches and is by York , one of my favorite brands , in their Designer Series line. The material has a slight raised / embossed / textured effect. It’s a non-woven product, so is strong , durable , stain-resistant , and designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece and with no damage to the wall when you redecorate later. Non-wovens can be hung by the paste the wall method , but I generally prefer to paste the paper . NW requires no booking / soaking time , so they install a little faster , with no worries about shrinking or gaps at the seams . In fact, the seams are near-invisible . The home is in the Braes Heights area of Houston
It helps to access the pattern on-line, to see a full-scale , room-set photo. And also to roll the paper out on the floor.
The center of the pattern is 20 1/8″ from the left edge of the paper . Since the wallpaper is 27″ wide, this places the center at 6 7/8″ from the right edge of the strip. Hold on to that / those figures!
It helps to access the pattern on-line, to see a full-scale room-set photo. And also to roll the paper out on the floor.
At the left, I’ve marked the mid-point of the wall. The mid-point is 27″ from either side. Since the center of the tree is 6 7/8″ from the right side of the wallpaper, to the right I have marked 6 7/8″ over, which is where the right edge of the wallpaper should be placed. This will land the center of the tree motif at the center point of the wall. This also works out to 20 1/8″ from the left edge of the subsequent wallpaper strip.
Confused yet? We paperhanger s aren’t just slapping paper on the wall . There is a lot of math and plotting and engineering that goes into all this.
At least the way I do it. You can call me the Queen of Overthinking . 🙂
Instead of placing the left-hand strip along a plumb line at the 20 1/8″ point on the wall, and then placing the next strip to the right of it, and having to trim against that window molding, I found it simpler to pre-trim the right-hand strip to 20 1/8 ” wide, and then I could simply butt this strip up against the window molding, eliminating the need to wipe paste off the molding, and also keeping the pattern straight along the molding. But there is also that 2″ high bit of space over the window. That’s why I’ve left that little tab of wallpaper you see at the upper right of this photo.
The pattern is called Luminous Branches , and is by York.
Note that this calculating and plotting could be achieved because this product is a non-woven / paste the wall material. This stuff does not expand when wet with paste . That means that you can take measurements and trim your wallpaper , without fear of it stretching beyond where you plotted for it to land on the wall.
And poppies – well, ya know … that whole psychedelic thing from back then …
This is a pretty nice non-woven material, water and stain-resistant , fairly easy to install , can paste the wall or paste the paper , seams are near invisible . It will be easy to strip off the wall when you redecorate . Affordable price .
I’m going to hang new wallpaper in this hall bathroom, and first must remove the existing paper. But – surprise! When I removed the outlet cover, I discovered that the previous guy hung this floral paper on top of the original paper. Ouch!
An interesting side note … the original paper looks a whole lot like the pattern I had in my powder room for many years. I loved it.
Anyway, both these papers are solid vinyl material, which is, essentially, plastic , and has a slick surface. Wallpaper paste won’t adhere well to this shiny surface. Even without taking the time to strip off the original paper, a primer should have been applied over that vinyl. Yet, as you see, this paper has hung on well for two decades.
He used regular paste, too – not something formulated to stick to a slick surface (which we call VOV or vinyl over vinyl ). Again – amazing that it stuck. And very glad that he didn’t use VOV – be cause that stuff is near impossible to get off!
Another problem with hanging wallpaper over old paper is that the seams of the bottom paper will show through the new paper.
To remove this wallpaper, I stripped off the top vinyl layer of both layers of wallpaper. That left the paper backing of the original wallpaper still adhered to the wall. Here I’ve soaked that backing with water , using a sponge and bucket of warm water, applied over and over again, until it soaked in and reactivated the paste. 30 year old paste!
Here I am gently scraping it off the drywall . As you can see, no primer was applied to the drywall. Gee, folks! A primer formulated for use under wallpaper should always be applied, to any surface, before hanging new paper. I like Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime . Besides providing an appropriate surface for the wallpaper paste to bite into , easing installation by allowing slip , and withstanding the tension caused when wallpaper paste dries and the paper shrinks and tugs at the wall (which could cause seams to come loose ), a primer will seal the drywall and ease removal of the wallpaper when you redecorate down the road.
Without a primer, it’s common for wallpapers to “bond” to uncoated drywall , which makes removal nearly impossible. Like I said, I got really lucky with this one, because the original paper did come off relatively easily and with no damage to the wall surface .
The color is called Dusty Pink – it’s a very livable pink. This is very popular pattern , and I’ve hung it a bunch of times, in every colorway . It’s one of my favorites, too. I love the soft swirling foliage , and the simple two-color scheme . This makes it a very easy pattern to live with , whether it be one accent wall or a whole room . In fact, the pattern is so soft and un-intrusive that it makes a wonderful choice for papering all the walls in even a large room such as a bedroom or dining room (Search here to see the dining room I did in the soft blue version .)
I like the quality of just about everything from this company. This is a paper wallpaper , and goes up nicely . Like most traditional wallpapers , this is installed by pasting the paper . The home is in the Champions Forest area of northwest Houston . installer paperhanger