Back to do another room for these fun-loving homeowners who are all about color and pattern and bold . I’m redoing a master bathroom that I did back in the ’90’s. The home dates to the 1920’s and retains many original features , such as the doorknobs. The pink tile may be original, or may be a mid-century update. Either way, the bones of this house are way cool !
Just WOW! Maximalist , here we come! The pattern is called Susie Q . The label on the box shows just a portion of a pattern repeat . Always look at a room-set photo to see what the full design will look like spread out on your wall .
This material comes three strips to a box . The manufacturer calls each of these strips a ” roll .” This is a little different terminology from standard wallcovering lingo. Measuring for how much to purchase is different, too, because these three separate strips / rolls work together more as a mural , than traditional rolled goods. Trust me – ask the installer to calculate before you order.
Each 3-roll set comes packed in its own fancy box . Pattern is called Susie Q and the manufacturer is Mind the Gap .
It’s a non-woven , paste the wall material , which means it’s durable , washable , easier to install , and will strip off the wall easily and with no damage to your walls when you redecorate .
Mind the Gap makes some pretty wild and crazy stuff. Check them out if you’ve a taste for adventure . The home is in the West U area of Houston
So, I left work Tuesday and everything was fine. I stopped at a taco truck , and after that the van started up just fine. Next I went to a strip shopping center and passed about 45 minutes. When I got back to my van and tried to head home – it wouldn’t start! The lights on the dashboard came on, the A/C was blasting. But the engine wouldn’t turn over. It didn’t even chug or gurgle or anything. Just nuttin.’ Thank the lucky stars for Triple A . AAA . A great concept. (But don’t get me started on trying to communicate via their new AI “Artificial Intelligence.” Absolutely HORRIBLE !!) Finally got a live human. She said 1.25 hours’ wait. But in reality it took for over 2.5 hours for a truck. By this time it’s after 9:00 p.m., stores in the strip center are closed, so I took refuge in a nearby Shell gas station convenience store. All kinds of characters come in there, and hang around outside, so I was glad I had a place to sit safely inside. My vehicle wouldn’t start up for the tow truck driver, either. I thought the guy would jiggle some wires, or try some tricks. But he just wanted to tow my van. So 11 miles we went, to deposit the van on the driveway of my mechanic near downtown Houston . This is also blessedly close to my house. I’ve been using Ron’s Downtown Auto for 35 years.
That says ” Armada .” The guy was super nice.
So I lost a day of work, sitting at home waiting for info about my van. Had to beg clients to reschedule their install dates. My mechanic was swamped, with at least a dozen cars in the bays and lined up outside. So I expected to have to leave my van a second day. But the guys said the vehicle started up for them just fine. They said they couldn’t find anything wrong. Checked the wires , checked the starter , checked the battery . Pretty much the most likely thing is that maybe the gear shift wasn’t 100% in the “Park” position. That will keep the engine from turning over. Cheesh! I shoulda thought of that at 8:00 p.m. last night!!
This young family has only been in the home for about six months. All during this settle-in time, the mom has not loved the existing wallpaper in this niche area off the family room / under the stairs . She says it looks like a Rorschach test . Wow! The new look is bright and fresh and happy . I placed the dominant feature of the pattern to fall vertically down the center of the wall . The colors and theme coordinate nicely with new throw pillows on the sofa in the adjoining family room / great room . Close-up . The wallpaper is by York . Despite the info printed on the label , it’s a non-woven material and can be hung via the paste the paper method (as stated on the label) or via the paste-the-wall method – which is what I did today. This material is a lot like Rifle Paper , which is also made by York . It’s thick and spongy and creases easily , even if all you’re doing is unrolling the bolt . See what I’m talking about in the bottom center of the photo, in the shadow of my phone / camera .
Look about center, and you’ll see more creases . These increased as you went toward the center of the roll / bolt , as this stuff comes from the factory this way. Creases in this particular roll / bolt were not horrible, and I probably could have gotten away with placing this material on the wall. But instead I wanted to find unblemished paper. So that meant discarding the paper in the center of the bolt (because it was creased), and then using the yardage from the beginning of the bolt, all the while carefully handling the fragile material, so as not to add more creases. It’s too bad that the homeowner has to pay to purchase paper that cannot be used. I hope that York can rectify this problem soon. The home is relatively new , and is in the Spring Branch area of Houston . installer
This isn’t actually paint – it’s my wallpaper primer , Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime . Murphy Bros paint on Bissonnet in the Rice Village stocks it for me. Because it’s white, and most of the walls I’m spreading it on are also white , I have the guys add a little pigment , to make it easier to see where I’ve applied it on the wall. Surprisingly, EVERY time, there is pigment that didn’t get completely mixed into the primer.
Right side, middle, here you see that it has transferred into the roller tray .This is bad, because once it gets rolled onto the wall, there will be splotches of color . Not a big deal since we’re talking about primer and the wallpaper will cover it up. But if this were paint and you wanted your room to look nice, this sure would not be acceptable. Here my brush has picked up a big glob of the blue pigment and it’s now spread around the wall.
It just baffles me, that this happens every time. I mean, most people buy custom-colored paint. Surely they’re not all getting smeary, un-mixed pigment in their wall paint. ?? I’ve never had this happen at other paint stores.
Top left: A Street Prints is the brand FAR LEFT IMAGES: Brush pasting the wall – this is a paste-the-wall product. This also tells us that it’s made of non-woven material. Which also tells us that there’s no booking time, and, if you choose to paste a strip rather than the wall (as I often do), you can paste and hang the strip immediately, with no wait period. If this particular paper did have a booking time, the label sometimes tells you how many minutes that is. Wavy lines – Means the paper is washable. Don’t take this too literally … no wallpaper will hold up to soap or cleaners or scrubbing. But these non-woven wallpapers are more easy to clean with gentle actions than plain paper wallcoverings. Sun – The paper is resistant to fading Paper being pulled off the wall – Strippable. Once the paste has dried and cured, this material is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece, with no damage to the wall. The alternate to this is a peelable material, in which the top layer, usually a vinyl, peels off and leaves the paper backing on the wall. You then use a sponge to soak the backing with water and reactivate the paste, and then the paper will either pull away, or can be gently scraped away from the wall with a broad putty knife. MID LEFT WORDS: Pattern Number – The number assigned to this pattern. Some patterns also have names. Batch Number – Also called Run Number or Dye Lot. You want all your rolls to be from the same Run Number, as this means they were all printed at the same time with the same batch of ink. Paper from different runs will be ever so slightly different colors, and can give a striped appearance on your walls. Design Repeat – The image actually refers to the Pattern Match. The pic of two arrows pointing at each other means that this pattern has a straight across match. Meaning that the same design motif appears at the same point on every strip. Example … a sailboat will be at the top of the wall on every strip. Another type of pattern match is a drop match. Here the motif is at the same point on every other wallpaper strip, and drops down half a repeat on the alternate strips. So that sailboat is at the top of the wall on Strip 1, drops down a few inches on Strip 2, and then is back up at the top again on Strip 3. Another, third kind of pattern match is a random match. Which means there is no match, and you can hang any strip without regard to keeping a particular motif at the top of the wall, or matching a design element across the seams. These are usually stripes, or textured vinyls, or natural materials, like grasscloth or cork. Yet another pattern match is random-reverse. Again, textured vinyls or natural materials. To reduce the chance of color variations at the seams, you hang one strip right side up, and then the next strip gets hung upside down, and repeat. Underneath those two arrows on the label is “53CM.” This is the actual pattern repeat. It means how many centimeters go by before any given pattern motif appears on the paper again. In this case, 53 cm = 20.5″. So that sailboat will be at the top of the wall, then it will appear again 20.5″ down the wall, then again at 41″ down, etc. MOVING TO THE RIGHT: Information about emmissions / environment , manufacturer, technical specs . I honestly don’t know what those three images on the far right edge mean, but they don’t have any consequence on the installation of the paper, so off my radar. 🙂 At the very bottom we do see that this is under the Brewster umbrella, which manufacturers / sells a lot of wallpaper brands, just about all of them quite nice. Also it’s made in England. British papers are usually nice non-wovens.
All the walls in this house are white. The homeowners wanted something to warm up the master bedroom .
Oh, this is so pretty ! Romantic , even. With a definite vintage feel. At first I thought the scale was too small for this very wide wall . But once the pattern is spread over the wall, you can see that it’s perfect. And the color is spot-on to coordinate with the brown-grey of the bed and end tables . Birds , flowers on what I’d call a mud / grey / brown background .
Pattern name is Fiore Blooming . This wallpaper is by BN Walls . It’ a slightly textured embossed vinyl product , printed on a non-woven , paste the wall material , which is user-friendly , and will strip off the wall easily and with minimal damage when you redecorate later. This was purchased from Dorota at the Sherwin-Williams in the Rice Village , who has more selections books than anywhere in the city – and knows what’s in all of them, so can help you quickly zero in on what you’re looking for. All prices are discounted. The store is open usual hours, but she’s there Wed-Sat , 10:00-3:00. Best to call first (713) 520-6262 . The home is in the Montrose area of Houston. installer install
This is a master bedroom accent wall. Instead of being in the center of the wall , the bed is placed a few feet to the left of center . I wanted to position the dominant motif (red flower) so it fell down the wall, hitting the center of headboard . Because the bed wasn’t in the middle of the wall, I couldn’t just measure and find the mid-point of the wall. And the bed had been moved away from the wall to give me room to work, and that can mean sliding an inch or two to either side. So I couldn’t use the headboard to find where it sat against the wall.
Luckily, the bed had been sitting on carpet . I was able to find the impressions the feet of the bed made into the carpet (in about dead center of this photo), and measure between the two to find the mid-point of the bed / headboard .
From there, I was able to determine the point on the wall where the middle of the headboard would sit. That’s where I plotted to place the red flower, falling from ceiling to floor along this vertical line . Here I’m using a 2′ level and pencil to mark a vertical line against which the edge of the wallpaper will be placed / butted . This very pretty floral and bird pattern is by BN Walls . It’s a nice embossed vinyl on a user-friendly non-woven / paste the wall substrate .
There’s no good place in this bedroom to set my laser level – the end tables aren’t flat / level on top, so the laser won’t operate. The dresser is too far away, and shoots the laser beam at an angle, and thus is inaccurate. So I’m doing it the old-fashioned way, using a 2 foot long level and pencil, to draw a plumb line . The first strip of wallpaper will be butted up against this line.
Well, after so many all-white-with-a-few-touches-of-grey homes, how’d’jou like to step through the front door and into this? Me, I LOVE it! Previously, the entry focal wall was stenciled with a geometric pattern. It was expertly done. But the family wanted something more energetic.Well, here it is – they got it! The family has FOUR boys , grade school-aged and younger. Go, go, go! This bright and perky pattern is the perfect backdrop for the lively home. This wall faces opposite the entry door, and leads to the family room – the hub of activity for this non-stop family . Close-up. Looks like it was created free-hand with a wide artist’s brush and tepera paint . Oh, and then the drips … Artwork in the adjoining home office coordinates perfectly with the colors in the wallpaper . This wasn’t planned, but was a wonderful langinappe . The pattern is called Crossroads and is by Milton & King .
It’s a non-woven , paste the wall material , and was lovely to work with. Thin and flexible, yet strong and durable . No creasing , resistant to stains , and will strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate . I like this brand a lot. They have really innovative patterns, too. Do a Search here to see my previous installs of Milton and King . M&K is a little different from most wallpaper companies, because it (usually) comes as a sort of mural , in 3-panel sets . So it’s tricky to measure for, and also takes a different mind-set during installation . The material is 24″ wide, contrasted to most wallpapers, which are 20.5″ or 27″ wide. The panels come nearly 10′ high (these were actually longer), and these walls were just a tad over 9′ , so you have to plot how much to cut off and from what end. With the 3-panel set (which they call a ” roll “) you’ll have a Panel 1, Panel 2, and Panel 3. When hanging the paper , you have to keep the panels in their proper sequence . Since I started on the door wall so I could center the pattern over the window lites , to hang wallpaper on the other two walls, I was working from left to right , and then on the other wall I was going from right to left. This meant that, first, on the wall to the right, my strips were going from Panel 1, to Panel 2, to Panel 3. But on the wall to the left, the panels were going from Panel 3, to Panel 2, to Panel 1. Confused yet? Add to that the fact that the strips above the door were Panels 1 and 2. That means that the wall on the right, the first full-length strip, wasn’t starting with 1, but with 3. Then moving to 1. Then to 2 and then 3. But the wall on the left was moving in the opposite direction, and starting with 3. Then 2, then 1. Then 3. Double confused yet? See? THIS is when and why you want to call in a professional! 🙂
Another nice thing about M&K is their packaging . They wrap each roll ( 3-panel set ) in its own cushioned box . Each of those boxes goes into a perfectly-sized shipping box. Their paper always arrives undamaged , and with no banged edges , and perfectly intact . The empty boxes can be used to store any leftovers. Or can be broken down and tossed into the recycling bin . A good company, all the way around. Oh, and – did I mention … they’re based in Texas ( Dallas )!! This home is in the Timbergrove / Heights neighborhood of Houston
Here I’m butting two strips together. But – uh-oh! At the seam , there’s a wrinkle. And it’s a big one that I’ve not been able to work out . Here I’m working wallpaper around this corner, moving from right to left. I’ve just placed a strip to the left of the corner. The corner is bowed – leans right at the top, bows to the left at the center, and then leans to the right again toward the bottom. The strip I’ve just installed is not too wide, and the material is flexible enough that I can make it conform to the irregular shape of the wall on the right, pushing it tightly into the corner. (And, yes, I did have to trim off a bit at the height of the bowed area.) Because I contorted the paper a bit to get it to fit into the corner on the right, the left edge of the paper got distorted, warping a bit to the right at the top of the strip, bowing out to the left in the center, and then again shifting to the right toward the bottom. All this means that the left edge of this strip of wallpaper is not straight. That’s a problem, because now I have to butt up the next strip against this crooked edge. Here’s that left strip, as it’s butting against the strip to the right. Sorry, the photo doesn’t show clearly just where the seam is. But what’s going on is that the strip on the left is trying hard to twist a bit so that it can butt up against the non-straight edge of the strip to its right. The result of all this twisting from left to right is this wrinkle.
There were other smaller wrinkles that I was able to work out. But this one was too large, and overworking it would have resulted in permanent creases . OK, the issue is near the floor, and it’s small, and no one’s gonna notice a minor wrinkle down there. But I knew I could make it look better.
It was a pretty simple fix. The wild pattern was accommodating, because it disguised my tricks. I took a scissors and cut along an element of the design – in this case, a “V.” I cut far enough to the left to release all the tension on the warped area. Then I folded the two pieces back together, working out any wrinkles or tension. The pieces overlapped a bit, and that was fine with me. An overlap is better than a crease . I made sure that the top piece – the pink “V” – overlapped the part below. This was to better hide the overlap from the viewing angle, which was up at eye-level. When doing this, you also have to consider where the light is coming from, and where shadows are cast. Try to avoid shadows. Here it is smoothed into place. Can’t see it, even close up. I used my scissors to make the cut. NOT the snap-off trimming knife / blade . Because the trimming blade can cut into the wall. It’s really important not to score into the wall. Cutting into the wall surface can render the surface unstable , and can result in the wall delaminating , which can result in the paper coming away from the wall . Do a Search here to see previous posts about this. The scissors is safer, because it cuts the paper – not the wall. The trapezoidal teal squeegee is used to smooth all this into place. Here’s a close-up of this fun and colorful wallpaper design . Entry covered with this wild stuff!The pattern is called Crossroads and the brand is Milton and King . They even package the stuff like royalty , in a box-within-a-box. I like this brand a lot. Do a Search here on ” Milton & King ” to read previous posts .
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