Originally the walls were a drab sorta-white. The homeowner wanted something bold and fun for this small powder room. Good choice in pattern, scale, and color!Rifle wallpaper has only been around a couple of years, but it’s gotten really popular. I’ve hung it a number of times already is 2022, mostly in the dark colorways. It’s a nice non-woven material and can be hung using the paste-the-wall method. Although I usually paste the paper, for various reasons.
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.
The first installer was inexperienced, and left gaps at the seams, wrinkles, creases, mis-matched pattern, and even tears. The homeowners had their painter strip off the wallpaper, patch the torn areas of the wall, prime, … and then they had to purchase a whole new mural. Oh, and next they called me! 🙂 The painter was unschooled on wallpaper, too, so he just grabbed something off the shelf at Sherwin-Williams that had “wallpaper” on the label, and rolled it on. That particular primer, Pro 935, is meant to be used in different sorts of situations, and was too glossy and too tacky. I covered it with my preferred Pro 977 Ultra Prime by Roman. Putting latex / water based paint over torn drywall will often cause the moisture from the paint to soak into the drywall paper and cause it to expand, which creates bubbles. These look bad under the new wallpaper. Here I have cut around one such bubble and removed the top layer. I will skim-float over this area, let it dry, sand it smooth, and then prime over it. A whole wall’s worth of mural fun rolled up into one cylinder. They provided powdered paste – which I did not use, mostly because these tend to be too wet and can lead to staining on these non-woven materials. I did, however, take the paste home with me, because every now and then you run into a delicate wallpaper that requires this stuff – which can be hard to source. I started hanging in the middle of the wall. Mostly because whoever measured forgot to add FOUR INCHES to both the height and the width. Instead, the manufacturer added only one scant inch at each side. This didn’t give much play at all, to accommodate trimming at the ceiling and floor, and walls / ceiling that went off plumb / level. This means that if the ceiling wasn’t level, it could start sloping either up or down, and that means the mural would start getting either cut off, or some white space might show at the top. By starting in the middle, I could split the difference between any irregularities, and, hopefully, over the 12′ width of the wall, now divided into two 6′ sections, any off-level sloping would be minimal enough that it wouldn’t visually impact the top or bottom of the design. I know that doesn’t make sense to a lot of you reading this, but I do have a number of paperhangers who follow my blog, and they do “get it” and hopefully will learn some new tricks. monkey, giraffe, flamingo, cockatiel Finished and ready for furniture – and a baby!For this non-woven product, I used the recommended paste-the-wall installation method. I can see why the other guy had difficulty. This was a very thin, but stiff, material. I got wrinkles, too. It took some time and some finesse to urge them out of the paper. This is another reason why I started in the center of the wall. If wallpaper starts warping or wrinkling, it usually will cause the outer edge (the edge not butted up against the previous strip) to expand and twist. As each subsequent strip goes up, the twisting and distortion becomes magnified. You can’t butt a straight edge of a new strip up against a strip that is bowed out of shape on the wall. Thus, by starting in the middle, I can minimize the number of bowed edges. Instead of four, there will be only two. And the amount of distortion will be less per panel. I will note that this usually does not happen with non-woven materials. A big chunk of mural was cut off by the door and lost to the trash pile. As the mural worked its way across the top of the door and down the right side, a different set of leaves, and a lot of blank area, was going to end up in that 6″ wide space between the door and the wall. I thought it would look cooler if the design of the foliage to the left of the door continued on to the right side of the door. So I saved the strip that got cut off by the door and then did some tweaking in various ways, and got that narrow strip placed to the right of the door. When you look at it, it appears that the leaves and fronds are passing from left to right uninterrupted through the doorway.
“Before” wall, smoothed and primed.Measurements done, strip placement plotted, material rolled backward and ready to hang.Start in the center, to ensure the rainbow lands behind the crib. This is the first three strips.Although the paper is smooth, the printing method makes it look lightly textured.
Momma chose this soft, water color-y rainbow mural by Anewall for her baby girl’s nursery.
The wall had to be carefully measured, and specific dimensions sent to the manufacturer, to ensure that the custom-printed mural would fit the wall and also have sufficient “bleed” (extra 2″ around EACH side), to allow for trimming and for unlevel and unplumb ceiling and walls.
Don’t let “custom printed” scare you. Modern digital printing makes this easy and affordable.
Just be sure that the paperhanger measures (not Handy Hubby) BEFORE you order.
This was printed on a non-woven material, and I hung it using the paste-the-wall method.
The manufacturer is Anewall. I like the products from this company.
They offer several substrate options. I guess I like the non-woven (paste-the-wall) version best. Second to that is the pre-pasted. Not so fond of their vinyl offering, and definitely wouldn’t work with a peel & stick.
The home is in the Bellaire neighborhood of Houston.
See my post on March 6, 2021for the original problems with printing defects on this material.
The company sent replacement paper, from a new Run, as we requested. The replacement paper also had the same printing problems, although not as bad.
The homeowners decided to go ahead and have the second batch of paper hung in their powder room. It turned out to be a good choice – yes, there are some slight pattern mis-matches (see 4th photo), but they’re not very noticeable, and are much lesser than what we had on March 6th.
This springy and bright floral pattern with an upward movement is called Summerside and is by Serena & Lily. S&L makes very lovely paper, and I enjoy hanging it. And you can expect it to perform well and hold tightly to the wall for many years to come.
The home is in the Bellaire neighborhood of Houston.
During the pandemic, the man and wife are both working from home … in the same improvised home office … and getting on each other’s nerves. The lady of the house decreed it’s time for the guy to move out!
So they commandeered the home’s original living room and are turning it into an office for him.
They wanted something to warm the look of the four all-white walls, while maintaining an air of professionalism and business, and at the same time being a choice that could transition to another use, once the pandemic ends and the room no longer needs to serve as an office.
This white-washed cork wallpaper with flecks of gold is the perfect choice for an accent wall behind the man’s desk.
As with all natural material wallpapers, you can expect shading and color variations between and even within strips. This one turned out pretty homogeneous.
I don’t have information on the brand or manufacturer. The material is natural cork, which is applied to the paper backing in bocks approximately 6″ square. It comes 3′ wide x 24′ long, and is a paste-the-material product.
The rather contemporary home is located in Bellaire (Houston).
The manufacturer is Brewster, in the A Street Prints line. It’s a medium-weight non-woven material, and I used the paste-the-wall installation method.
Because the dark wallpaper was printed on a white substrate, to prevent the white from showing at the seams, I used a dark grey chalk pastel to color the edges of the seams. You have to do this from the back, and be careful not to let the chalk rub onto the surface, because it could cause a visible dark line – just as visible as a white line.
The home is in the Bellaire neighborhood of Houston.
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