The home is in the Memorial Villages neighborhood of Houston.
This grasscloth wallpaper by Thibaut is called Union Square. It has not just the texture from the natural reeds of grass sewn onto the backing, but also 3-D square “dots” of thick plastic or resin or vinyl … Doesn’t matter what the material is … There are raised, textured “dots” marching across this paper in a neat, orderly fashion.
But plastic can be sticky. On all of the bolts, the paper labels stuck to the plastic dots. Unrolling the grasscloth caused the labels to tear off strips, which remained stuck to the plastic dots. These scraps of paper could not be removed, so I had to cut off and discard the top 16″ or so of each bolt.
The really sad thing about this is that the wall height was such that I could have gotten three strips out of each double roll. But with having to discard paper from the start of each bolt, we were left with only enough remaining paper on the bolt for two strips.
Even worse on a few other bolts, the plastic dots stuck to not just the paper label, but to the paper backing of the grasscloth itself. This left strips of paper stuck to the dots, and also peeled bits of paper off of the back of the wallpaper – leaving the possibility of paste leaking through and staining the surface.
This sticky defect went through the entirety of each bolt, so there were three bolts that were unusable.
This meant that I could not finish wallpapering the remaining walls. And that we’ll have to send back the defective paper, and the homeowner will have to wait for the company to find non-defective paper, and ship it, and for me to have an opening on my schedule to finish the job.
The Thibaut Customer Service rep has told me that the company is aware of and has worked on this problem. (Thibaut is one company that actually LISTENS to us installers, and makes changes as needed.) Their solution is to place thin plastic wrap inside the bolts, to prevent the dots from coming into contact with any other material, like the paper backing.
I hope the replacement paper comes with this new innovation.
Usually, you expect Candice Olson wallpaper designs to be full of glitz and shimmer and glamour. In both theme and sheen, this one is much more earthy.
This is the main living area of a beautifully and respectfully renovated 1895 home in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston. Like most contemporary re-dos, the walls in this home are mostly white. The original-to-the-house fireplace was getting lost in that sea of white.
To the rescue comes this chocolate-brown wallpaper pattern with 3-D raised-ink impressions of Queen Ann’s Lace flowers. To keep with Candice Olson’s “glam” vibe, the stems are printed in gold ink. The dimensional quality of the ink syncs with today’s trend toward textured materials.
The dark hue really makes the fireplace stand out, yet the white flowers keep the look from being foreboding, and tie into the white used in the rest of the room.
I love the way the nature design and earthy color add an organic element to the room.
This wallpaper is made from a very sturdy non-woven material, which has a high fiberglass content. In fact, you could readily see the fibers, especially when the material was torn. Which was quite hard to do, because one selling point of the non-woven materials is their strength and durability.
These papers are made to stay intact and strip off the wall easily and in one piece, when it’s time to redecorate. They also do not expand when wet with paste, which means there is no booking time or delay between pasting and hanging. And your measurements will be accurate.
Non-wovens also offer the option to paste the wall instead of the paper. Although, in most circumstances, I prefer to paste the paper, for many reasons. Although this material is thick and stiff, it was not difficult to wrap it around the corner to the right in the photo.
The interior designer for this job is Stacie Cokinos, of Cokinos Design, and her jobs are mostly in the Heights area.
The wallpaper manufacturer is York.
Like many of the higher-end brands, this Brunschwig & Fils wallpaper had to have its selvedge edge trimmed off by hand. Unfortunately, they did not provide trim guide marks. Double unfortunately, I tried using the pattern as a guide, but, for a lot of reasons, this was a big fail – the edges looked like they had been trimmed with a hair curling iron. 😦
How, then, was I going to get good seams?
I was preparing to double cut (splice). But for many reasons, this was not presenting as a good option.
Then I got the idea to overlap. This turned out to be the perfect solution!
The edges of the “bookshelves” were not straight, so, instead of using my straightedge as a trim guide, I grabbed a new razor blade and free-handed my cuts along the design. (see top photo)
Then, after measuring, pasting, and booking my strips, I positioned them on the wall by overlapping one “shelf support” on top of the previous one. The second photo shows one strip being placed thusly.
Overlapping like this does leave a ridge under the wallpaper. But it is not very noticeable, especially since my design motifs were perfectly aligned.
What’s even cooler is that this overlap added a bit of 3-D to the room, which is what you would have if you had real wood and books in there.
Another advantage is that I could tweak the spacing if needed, to plumb up a strip that might have started going crooked.
Phillip Jeffries’s “Rivets” pattern is popular and trendy. The wallpaper I hung today is Thibaut’s response to it.
Thibaut’s version offers the same texture and appeal of real natural fiber grasscloth, as well as three-dimensional squares that unite to form larger squares.
Thibaut’s version Union Square is better because:
1.) Less expensive
2.) Better color consistency (fewer paneling and shading issues)
3.) Squares form a more muted secondary pattern, so it’s much easier to live with (the pattern doesn’t hit you in the eye every time you look at a wall)
4.) Squares are positioned on the strips so the installer can easily manipulate the pattern to accommodate un-plumb walls and un-level ceilings.
5.) For similar reasons, the installer can “tweak” the design a bit to ensure favorable placement of the squares (to eliminate having to cut through any of the squares, or bend them around a corner). Read below.
6.) When it’s unavoidable to have to cut through the squares, the Thibaut 3-D material is much easier to get through with a blade or scissors than the PJ or the Schumacher products.
7.) The bolts are marked in the order they came off the printing press (see photo), so you can hang strips sequentially, to minimize shading and paneling (do a search here on those terms).
8.) Thibaut provides clear tips on how to work with natural materials and what to expect with the finished outcome.
9.) Thibaut offers to replace material lost to working around defects, and they will also reimburse an installer for (part) of his labor, if a product is defective.
10.) Other points which are escaping me right now. But suffice it to say, despite its grand reputation, Phillip Jeffries products are often extremely difficult to install, and disappointing in appearance, and customer service is basically, “We never had this problem before – it must be the installer’s fault.”
Thibaut, on the other hand, researches what it takes to make a good product, does test hangs, and, if there is a problem, Thibaut actually listens to feedback from us installers.
In the window photo, I did some tweaking to get the rivets to line up exactly over the middle of the window. It took some further tweaking to position the squares so they would march down either side of the window at the same distance from the edge.
How did I accomplish that? After much measuring and plotting and a few practice strips, I widened the distance between two sets of squares over the center of the window – by a full inch. 4.5″ instead of 3.5″ is a big difference, yet it is barely noticeable. What is more important is that the squares going down either side of the window are all 3/4″ from the edge.
This home is in the Briar Park neighborhood of Houston – interestingly enough, right next door to another home I papered a year or so ago, and a block away from another home I where I hung paper in the powder room and have more bathrooms to paper coming up … In fact, I have put wallpaper in a whole lot of homes in this one tiny neighborhood. Near Beltway 8 / Sam Houston Tollway and Briar Forest.
The interior designer is Layne Ogden of Layne Torsch Interiors.
Even though I carefully centered this trellis pattern on the dining room wall, due to the pattern being a teensy bit off-center on the strip, by the time it reached the right and left corners, the pattern was a tad off. Meaning that the dark vertical elements in this trellis design were about 3/8″ wide on the left side of the wall. But on the right side, the mirror-image elements were no more than 1/8″ wide, and tapered off to nothing at the top of the wall, due to a bow in the wall.
In the top photo, if you look at the bottom right corner, next to my ladder, you can see the difference in width of the vertical lines compared to those at the top of the wall, and at the left side of the room.
If the design had hit the corners in the curved parts of the trellis, no one would have noticed any slight difference in width. But since the pattern landed on a vertical motif that the eye expected to be 3/8″ wide, the right wall with it’s narrower or non-existent vertical motif was kinda noticeable. At least to me.
So I used my straightedge and a razor blade to cut some 3/8″ wide vertical strips. I then pasted these onto the appropriate place in the design. This made the Moroccan “lanterns” look a little narrower than they were supposed to be. But that is not nearly as noticeable as maintaining the width of those vertical strips at the left edge of the wall. See last photo.
I have done this with paper many times. But I was a little nervous trying this trick with a 3-D stringcloth material, because I feared the thickness of the overlay would be eye-catching. I also worried that the adhesive would not adhere to the strings.
But everything worked out nicely. The appliqués stuck without argument, and you really couldn’t notice the thickness of those tiny patches.
All this tweaking took about an extra 45 minutes. I think it was well worth it.
The owners of this 1970’s house in the Cypressdale neighborhood of north Houston have done some outstanding updates that have brought the home right into the modern age.
In this hall bathroom, the larger-scale, rough-surfaced shower tiles work with the sleek, white trough sink to create a clean-yet-warm feel.
A little pizazz on the walls was all that was needed to make the whole room pop!
This fun diamond starburst pattern in a metallic gold on raised-ink (embossed vinyl) covers the walls with the right scale, sheen, and theme.
The wallpaper is by York, and is in their Modern Metals line. I was quite pleased with it. While many wallpapers printed on non-woven substrates are thick and stiff and prone to creasing or having the inks crack and flake off, this one was thin and pliable and happy to hug the wall tightly, and then meld beautifully into turns and intricate cuts (like around detailed moldings). The seams were practically invisible.
What’s more, this wallcovering, with it’s 3-D embossed vinyl surface, will resist water splashes and stains much better than a paper-paper. A little caulk along the top of the sink will prevent water from wicking up under the paper (which could cause the paper to expand and curl and push away from the wall).
I pasted the paper, rather than the alternate installation method of paste-the-wall. Pasting the paper made it more supple and gave it more pliability, so it was easier to work with. It also allowed the paper to absorb moisture from the paste and then expand a tad before going to the wall. (Papers that expand after they are placed on the wall are likely to bubble or warp.)
This York wallpaper 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.
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I went to open the cover of this wallpaper selection book, and I swear, my hand was groping for something it thought was 3″ thick … The illusion is that deceiving!!
The book is called Venue, the designer is Kenneth James, and it’s made by Eijffinger. The book has many variations of patterns, and lots of photos of room sets – but my camera didn’t do them justice. If you want something to really bring a cutting edge to your contemporary style home, and dazzle your friends, (and totally befuddle that guest who’s unsteady from a little too much imbibing), you NEED to check out this book!
Contact my favorite wallpaper source, Dorota Hartwig, at Southwestern Paint near the Rice Village (Houston), (713) 520-6262.
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