Before. Primed and ready for wallpaper . Done. This image could be positioned so that the palm leaves push up from the floor , or, as in the photo , they hang down from the ceiling. This is a popular look right now, and very fitting to an accent / headboard wall in a bedroom . Done. The homeowner bought one mural from Russia before she and I consulted , so it would be difficult to get another. In addition, the mural images don’t continue from right to left, so you can’t place two murals next to each other and have palm leaves continue unbroken . The manufacturer’s picture on-line is misleading, too, because it’s been Photoshopped to look like it fills the whole wall with tropical fronds . As you can see, the actual mural is a lot narrower than the wall, plus shorter by about a foot and a half. The mural is placed slightly off-center on the wall , because the homeowner wanted it centered on the bed , which sits a little to the right of center . Plans are still incubating, but she’ll probably have wooden panels or trim placed on the wall flanking the mural as well as beneath it, to give a finished look. All in all, I think the room looks dreamy !Close-up .The material is vinyl and has a woven fabric – like texture . The mural came in four panels, each about 3′ wide by about 8.5′ high . Here I am laying them out so I can get measurements and to be sure they go up in the right sequence. There were a lot of these little black specks of a chalk – like substance on the back , and even some on one area of the front . Did I tell you this came from Russia ?! Sorry, no brand name, but this was thin and very flexible and pretty nice to work with . This is a popular design concept , and many companies are making similar patterns . Try RebelWalls.com , which is super quality and really good customer service, plus tons of designs and images to cover your walls .
Headboard wall skim-floated smooth and primed – ready for wallpaper. Having the foliage hang from the ceiling means you see more of it as the leaves and blossoms fall and fold around the bed. Moody and brooding colors make this perfect for a master bedroom. It looks like it was painted on canvas or burlap, or possibly like you are looking through a window screen out onto a dark forest. There are some very expensive versions of ” upside down over-scaled dark floral ” patterns. rebelwalls.com makes it affordable for any budget, and with a DIY friendly, easy-to-install non-woven paste-the-wall material. Murals are custom-sized to your wall(s), which is more tricky than it sounds, so be sure the paperhanger calculates dimensions before you order. Rebel Walls sells mostly murals, but they also sell traditional rolled goods, too. They can even create custom-made designs. The home is in the Bellaire area of Houston.
Originally, the homeowner wasn’t “really” thinking about adding wallpaper to her master bedroom. But, in the back of her mind, she must have been “kinda” thinking about it, because, after I finished measuring several bathrooms in the home and was poised to leave, she hauled me into the bedroom and asked what could be done to create more of a haven.
I pulled out some samples of patterns I have hung in other homes, and she immediately zeroed in on this one. My sample was the navy blue colorway, but she grasped that wallpaper comes in different color options, and was able to envision this in a softer color to coordinate with the rest of the walls. (Note that that hot pink is a protective plastic sheet – not the color of the headboard!)
To me, the pattern looks like architectural details from old Roman ruins. The distant photos distort the design a bit, so please look at the close up to get a better idea.
Usually I will place a design like this in the middle of the wall. But in the case of this 18′ wide wall, the bed was not centered on the wall, nor was the chandelier. In addition, there curtains on either side of the wall that obscured the corners.
So I opted to center the circular design motif on the chandelier. This meant the bed had to be moved to the right … a whole 3″. This way, as you walk out of the master bathroom, you see the chandelier, the headboard, and the wallpaper design all synced up vertically.
The pattern doesn’t hit the wall uniformly on the right and left sides of the wall, but the drapes cover that. And, on a wall this wide with lots of furniture in front of it, who cares, anyway?!
The wallpaper is by Designer Wallpapers, one of my favorite companies, and was bought at Southwestern Paint. See link on the right for where to purchase wallpaper in Houston. This home is in Katy.
A new sister is coming, potty training is in progress, and so it’s time for this toddler to move out of the nursery and into his “big boy’s room.”
Pictured is an accent wall, against which the bed headboard will go.
Because the wallpaper is dark and the primer on the wall is white, it’s possible that seams may not grab tightly, and white gaps may appear along the seams.
To counter that, I’ve run a vertical stripe of dark paint under where the seams will fall. The paper is a non-woven material, which has a high fiberglass content and will not expand when wet with paste, nor shrink when it dries. Yet it doesn’t hurt to have a little extra assurance that white won’t peek out at the seams.
I also used a bit of artist’s chalk (not oil or ink!) to color the white edges of the wallpaper. More insurance.
This all-white master bedroom definitely needed perking up. The homeowners also wanted to coordinate with the large painting you see on the right.
This salmon-colored accent wall fills the bill!
Once the bed gets put back in place, the soft grey wooden headboard will be set off nicely against the adventurous wallpaper.
I say the pattern looks like stock market ticker-tape, or the control panel of a space ship. Take look at the close-up – how would you like to try to find that pattern match from one strip to the next?!
The townhome is brand new, and is in the Timbergrove area of central Houston. The paper is by Designer Wallpapers, and was very nice to work with, and will hold up nicely over time.
This 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.
This young family in the Rice University neighborhood of Houston has been undergoing a weeks-long remodel of the master bed and bathroom suite in their 1939 home. They’re eager to get moved back in. I was scheduled for three days to smooth walls and hang paper.
I’d been told by both the homeowner and the contractor that the room is ready for wallpaper. So I showed up for work today to discover that it is not.
First photo – The painters are working in adjacent rooms and need to pass through my work area frequently. You can see piles of their equipment in my space. This is very disruptive to the thought process needed to hang wallpaper.
Second photo – There is no running water. I had to run down to the family’s kitchen to fill a gallon bucket so I could rinse tools and rags – which is not the same as keeping things squeaky clean with fresh, running water. And since there is no toilet, there is nowhere to dump the dirty water.
On the left, you notice an extension cord. Which leads to the third photo – there is no electricity. No lights. So I had to connect two extension cords and hang one measly 100 watt bulb from the ceiling fan, in hopes of having enough light to work.
The fourth photo shows where I am trying to spread smoothing compound onto the wall. The compound and the wall are virtually the same color, and, in the dim light, it’s next to impossible to see what I’m doing.
The contractor dug out a heavy-duty extension cord and borrowed the painter’s work light, which helped a bit. But later the painter (who was working in a room with no windows) came and took his light back.
There is also skimpy air conditioning in this room. It’s not about the temperature, folks – it’s about humidity. You need the A/C cranking to pull humidity out of the air. I won’t hang wallpaper when the HVAC systems are not running, because the resulting humidity is detrimental to wallpaper – adhesion, shrinking, yada. And smoothing compound won’t dry, primers won’t dry …
Fifth photo – the carpet has been ripped up, leaving nail strips along the walls, and leaving exposed nails here and there all over the floor.
I did what little prep I could and then left. I am not coming back tomorrow.
Unfortunately, because of mis/discommunication, this family’s wallpaper will have to wait until I have a client whom I can switch install dates with.
Also, due to this, I lost at least one day of work (self-employed people don’t get “vacation pay” 😦 ), and other clients of mine whom I could have helped that day didn’t get their paper up, either.
Wow – Not many people get to sleep in a bedroom like this! The walls are covered in a cork wallcovering that is coated with silver metallic blocks that are about 6″ square. Then a gold metallic damask pattern was superimposed on top. It looks like someone rubbed gold leaf on the walls!
The result is an elegant, shimmery, somewhat edgy look. It’s all complimented by a deep red accent wall composed of large, 3-dimensional square blocks (visible on the left in the top photo). The bed and headboard sit in front of this red wall.
Silver, gold, red – stunning!
Cork is a natural material (like grasscloth, as an example) so irregularities and color differences are to be expected. In the top photo, you can see a vertical line down the left edge of one strip – I believe this to have come from a roller at the factory that was pressing too hard, or perhaps was too hot.
Beyond that, there are differences in color and sheen and pattern between the strips on the wall. All of this is normal, and not considered a defect.
This was a thick material and took a lot of strength to press tightly against moldings for trimming, and it was pretty difficult to work around outside corners. But the main obstacle was that it was all but impossible to see the pattern. The sheen of the silver and gold, and the scratchy look of the design, printed on the textured surface of the cork … all combined to drive the installer’s eyes crazy.
In the end, though, I got ‘er done. 🙂
This wallpaper pattern is by Thibaut Designs, and 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.
Today, a lucky little girl got her room livened up with an accent wall covered with this cheery and colorful watercolor-look peony wallpaper. Her bed is white, and will look super placed smack in front of this pretty wallpaper. Besides the flowers and leaves, the pattern features little critters – the little girl particularly loves the blue butterflies.
This is a new home in the Westridge Creek section in the far west end of Cinco Ranch, out in Katy, a suburb of Houston. The wallpaper was bought through Anthropologie, a site that many of my clients love.
The paper is made by York, in the Shelley Hesse New Orleans collection, and is in the SureStrip line. I particularly like SureStrip, because it’s a thin paper that hugs the wall nicely, plus it is on a non-woven substrate that is made to strip off the wall easily and cleanly when it’s time to redecorate.
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