It’s nice when a manufacturer does this. Notice that all of the pattern motifs are contained within the width / borders of this strip of wallpaper. Nothing passes across the seam. There is nothing to match from strip to strip. Even if the walls are out of plumb , or the ceiling is not level , this allows me to keep the same design element at the same spot below the ceiling, all the way across the wall or around the room . See photo. All seven strips across this nursery accent wall have the design motifs at the same distance below the crown molding. Not having to connect a pattern motif to another across each seam means that I can pull each strip up to where I want it under the crown molding. No going off-track or sloping / tracking down or up. This cute pattern of pastel hot air balloons is by Caitlin Wilson and is in the Sure Strip line of pre-pasted , easy to install and easy to remove wallpaper s made by York . I like this material a lot.
Yesterday’s install was quite fun, but there were some unusual or challenging features to the room. Here are some of them. First, in most areas, the chair rail had a sort of gap between it and the wall, probably then filled in with caulk. I used some craft paint from Texas Art Supply to color that in, so there wouldn’t be white showing between the dark green paint and the black wallpaper. My usual trim guide (not pictured) is thin, designed to allow you to cut very close and tight to the edge. But in this case, I was afraid it might leave some of that gapped area showing between the paper and the wood trim. So I used this steel plate tool, which is thicker and would allow me to get a fat cut – just enough paper left to wrap a teeny bit onto that gap area. Note that before I trim, I’m going to press that edge into the corner. I couldn’t hold the camera and hold it in proper position at the same time. Also, you’ll notice the rolled edge at the top of the tool. That’s thicker, and allows for getting an even fatter cut, for instance, when you want just a tad of paper to wrap around a corner . Do a Search to see my previous post about this technique. Here I’ve made the trim cut and am peeling away the excess that was trimmed off at the bottom. See how the bottom edge of the wallpaper now wraps a tiny bit and fills the gap neatly?Next issue – wall height. On this wall, the height is 3′ + 30.5″But on the opposite wall, the height is 3′ + 29.75″. This means that you can expect the ceiling to move up or down, which means that a pattern motif – let’s say one of those cute chameleons – could get his head chopped off by the descending ceiling. Next issue – bowed wall. Here my yardstick is sitting pretty squarely against this wall, in a corner . But as I move it up the wall a little further – wow! – that wall takes a dip to the left. And it’s quite a dip! The wall has a bow in it. I can get my next strip of wallpaper to cover that space. But the fallout will be that pattern motifs will hit the wall at different points, which means that the next piece to be placed after that, the pattern will not match perfectly at all points. All right. So that previous corner had a bow. This one is out of plumb. Here you see my laser level showing that my wallpaper strip is hanging nice and plumb.But move the laser to the corner and you see that it’s out of plumb .Here’s a better example. Again, this causes the pattern to not match perfectly in the corners. Another shot of the bowed wall, which, for various tech reasons, due to Word Press ‘s crappy New Editor , this shot got out of order and I was not able to place it with the others under the topic. Papering around the electrical outlet , I had to unplug my light source. There was light coming in from the hall. But this paper, as well as the paint, were so dark that I couldn’t see well to work. Enter my Big Larry flashlight .Small enough to fit in my toolbox , but really bright and dependable for when you need it. The pattern is called Fantasy Tree and is by Breeze and was purchased through one of the showrooms in one of Houston’s decorative / design center s. It’s a nice non-woven material , easy to hang , easy to remove , durable and stain-resistant .
We wallpaper hangers / installers like to have a nice straight ceiling line . Meaning, that the same pattern motif will show up at the same height on the wall on every strip . For instance, the top of the sailboat will touch the bottom of the crown molding all the way around the room. But in old houses, poorly-built houses, or just plain old wonky houses (which are most homes in Houston! ), you can’t count on ceilings and floors being level , nor on walls being perfectly plumb . When I used my level to check the ceiling in this 1926 home in the Woodland Heights neighborhood , I admit – I laughed out loud! When a surface is level, the air bubble will be in the middle of the two black lines . It’s common for the bubble to be a little “off.” But this one isn’t even trying to be in the middle. Meaning – the ceiling is nowhere near level. The ceiling line is moving up and / or down as it moves across the room. The discrepancy can be as much as an inch or even more from one end of the room to the other. Meaning, there is no way that that sailboat is going to be just below the ceiling on every strip. Luckily, this particular wallpaper pattern was such that you aren’t going to notice much. The other thing is, most people who live in older homes, or homes with shifting foundations , or even new homes , understand that walls and floors rearrange themselves over time . So they’re understanding if sailboats drift down the ceiling line , or if patterns don’t match absolutely perfectly in the corners.
Before. Grey and boring . The built-in banquette seating has been removed.Finished.Closer look.Showing the pattern centered on the wall, and with the shutters. The dimensions of the paper not corresponding well with the width of the window, along with logistics of pattern placement at the ceiling line but starting my first strip under the window all created some plotting and engineering challenges. Fun, but time consuming. But it turned out great!The original idea was to just paper the nook area, ending at the vertical door molding. But it would have looked odd to stop the wallpaper above this doorway. So the homeowner and I decided to run the paper along the top of the doorway, and then down the left side (not shown), which dead-ends into some cabinets and the granite countertop. It looked good and was the right call.It tickles me that this is quite obviously a riff on the very popular Strawberry Thief wallpaper pattern by William Morris , which is quite popular right now (do a Search here to see my installations of it). When a company comes up with a hit, you can be assured that a competitor will soon be making its own version of it. The original has a lot more color, but this version is limited to just two colors. Even though there is a lot of contrast between the black and the white , the pattern doesn’t feel busy, because the design is so close and tight . There is a lot of symmetry , repetitiveness , and balance in Wm Morris and similar styles . I love the raised ink texture to this material . Whoops! A slight pattern mis-match . The overall design is busy enough that small imperfections like this (as well as some color variations / shading ) are not really noticeable . It’s odd to me that the printing defects are different in different strips / rolls of the wallpaper . You’d think that if the print roller was out of whack, it would create the same image every time it strikes the wallpaper surface. Or maybe it’s the trimmers that are off. If they had cut 1/16″ more off that left edge, we might have a perfect pattern match . The manufacturer is York , one of my favorites , in their Sure Strip line, also one of my favorites. It’s in the Magnolia Home collection , by, yes, Joanna Gaines , of HGTV fame with the show Fixer Upper . SureStrip is a pre-pasted , thin , flexible , non-woven material that is easy to hang . It’s also easy to remove when you’re ready to redecorate , because it’s designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece with no damage to your walls . installer houston birds
Before. Primed and ready for wallpaper .Done. This is an interesting colorway, because it’s a bold pattern but relatively muted colors. Looks almost like a cartoon or anime .Close up, the paper had a noticeable texture embossed into the vinyl surface . The texture transferred to the back, so I used extra paste to be sure to reach the recessed areas .Starting in the middle to position the pink flowers (most dominant visual feature ) down the vertical center of the wall . This also evens out any off-tracking due to un-level ceiling line . Mfgr is Missoni Home , which is made by York , one of my favorite brands . This is a textured vinyl material and was VERY heavy. It is on a non-woven backing , so required no booking time , and could be hung by the paste-the-wall method. I preferred to paste the paper . This is a new contemporary home in the Braes Heights area of Houston .
Finished living room accent wall. This was a looong wall – 24′ wide. It took 14 strips of wallpaper!Before. I’m getting ready to skim-float the textured wall to smooth it, then apply a wallpaper primer .Ready to hang, with my “A” and “B” strips lined up in the order they will be hung. This is a paste-the-wall product, and I like to roll them backwards so the surface doesn’t bop into the paste as I position the strips on the wall. I secure with elastic head bands from the dollar store. First strip starts in the center of the wall, both to balance the pattern. But also because the ceiling line is way not level and the pattern will go off-track at the ceiling, this will minimize the tracking by spreading it outward 12′ each way from the center. If I start at one corner, the tracking would be a lot more noticeable by the time it crossed the whole 24′ of wall. Close up.This is simply called Palm Leaves and is by Cole & Son , a good brand. It’s a non-woven material and is designed to strip off the wall easily and with minimal damage when you redecorate. It’s also a little more durable and stain-resistant than paper wallpapers. It was very nice to work with. The home is in the Westbury area of Houston. The couple has mid-century modern furnishings, and this wall looks fantastic as a backdrop !
No, this large room with sink and counters isn’t a kitchen. The family loves to entertain both family and friends, so included this “bonus” room in their new home’s plans. It’s used for both entertaining and crafting. The wall facing you was originally painted a semi-gloss navy blue. In the photo, I’ve applied my wallpaper primer. It will adhere to the glossy paint, and provide a matt finish for the wallpaper paste to grab ahold of. Taking measurements and plotting the layout. This paper has a selvedge edge , which has to be trimmed off by hand with a straightedge and razor blade. The manufacturer has not provided trim guide marks , so I am using a ruler and my eye. The new look is so dramatically different I couldn’t resist taking a photo mid-hang. As you can see, I’ve used dark paint to stripe under where the seams will fall, to prevent any of my primer from showing through at the seams. You can see the ceiling line starting to track upward on the right portion. More on that below. Finished. Perfectly centered.This is the mounting hardware for the big screen TV . I asked them to remove the TV, but we left the mounts in place. In order to support the heavy TV, they are placed quite securely into the wall , and I feel it’s best not to jimmy around with that. Rather than have the first strip straddle the TV mount, I plotted to have my first seam fall down the middle of the wall, placing a seam in the mid point of the mount. This meant I had to hang four strips instead of three, but it made it a whole lot easier to work around the TV mount, as well as to keep the left and right edges of the grasscloth straight and plumb. Close up showing the texture of this grasscloth material. It’s atypical to have grass cloth printed with a pattern , and I rather like the way the ink looks somewhat scratchy against the rough background. Because it’s Schumacher, you can expect printing defects . The slight pattern match doesn’t bother me, as there were many more places along each strip that matched up perfectly. Nor do I mind the different intensity of ink on the two strips. That’s all part of the look of grasscloth. But I wasn’t pleased with the white ink out in the middle of nowhere, as seen about 1//3 down the center of the picture. This isn’t considered a defect , and from a distance it’s not really noticeable. But it bugged me. So I used some water-based paint and a very small brush from the craft store and lightly touched up the spots. I also softened the mis-matched edges a bit. There’s a fine line between covering the white spots and staining the material, so use a light hand. And never permanent ink or oil-based markers or pastels.Likewise, the ceiling line was not level, so as I moved from the mid-point out to the right, the ceiling rose above the geometric motif’s top edge, and a white line began to be visible, but only to the right of the centerpoint. So I used the black paint to cover up that extra bit of white. This increases the width of that horizontal navy blue line from 1/4″ to about 1/2″. But from down on the floor you can’t tell, and it looks a whole lot better than having white on the right side and none on the left. The brand is Schumacher and the home is in the Garden Oaks / Oak Forest area of Houston. The interior designer who came up with this bold and lively look is Clayton Brooks .
When you hang wallpaper on all four walls of a room, when your last strip meets up with the first strip you hung, you almost always end up with a mis-matched pattern. I didn’t want a 9′ long pattern mis-match in a visible corner in this powder room. So I opted to put it over the door, where the space is only 7″ high, and where people are not likely to be looking anyway. I had to bridge about 30″ of wall space.As my strips came closer together, I was left with this gap.If I put the next piece in place, I would be left with some ‘boxes’ that would be cut off, leaving a noticeable mis-match. I knew I could make it look better.First I used my straightedge to trim the top of the strips so they would fit flush at the ceiling line. That’s not usually how you work along a ceiling line, but in this case it was a good option. Then I sliced the strips apart vertically, following one edge of the dark blue stripes. Then I started putting the strips in place, overlapping each of them just a little, to make each set of boxes narrower. This made each set of boxes narrower, but it also made them equal width. Here they are, all lined up in place. You really don’t notice that the boxes above the door are narrower than those on either side of the door. And it looks a whole lot better than having boxes chopped in half. This wallpaper pattern is called Feather and is by Serena & Lily.
Sink / window area, primed and ready for wallpaper. Pattern nicely centered on this wall and at ceiling line.Breakfast area window wall before.I tweaked the pattern just a tad so I could get the dark vertical line along the cabinets on the right, and then also down the left side where this wall meets the painted wall. It makes a nice stopping point for the eye, and it looks so much better than box motifs that might have been chopped in half.The “star” design adds so much energy and life to this room!The pattern is in the Sure Strip line of pre-pasted wallpapers by York Wallcoverings. I really like Sure Strip. Graham & Brown makes a very similar design called Indigo, which is very popular. I like this one better, for lotsa reasons. The home is in Pearland, a southern suburb of Houston. Some previous posts show other rooms I did at that same time. The homeowners did a wonderful job of coordinating the colors and themes throughout the home, working with golds and greys. The wallpaper and design help came from Ballard Designs new physical store on W. Gray in Montrose / River Oaks. After I arrived to start work, the homeowner decided she wanted the paper behind the refrigerator and also over a bank of cabinets to the right over the ovens. I hadn’t measured for these areas, so we didn’t have enough paper. Ballard could order more, but it would take several weeks to arrive. So I had the homeowner contact my favorite resource, Dorota Hartwig at Sherwin-Williams on University in the Rice Village. (713) 529-6515. She’s been slingin’ paper for decades, and knew right where to go that could supply the same paper in just a few days. The additional two bolts arrived yesterday, so I was able to hang them and finish the job today, right on schedule. 🙂 This home suffered extensive water damage to the entire first floor due to burst pipes after the major freeze here in Houston in February 2021. It’s taken these folks more than a year to get their home back together. I was proud to help them get their home and lives back to normal – and a good bit prettier!
This small floral print was fashionable when it went up, 30+ years ago. But now it’s dated, and also some stains and dirt are showing. Time for an update!Old paper has been stripped off, the walls have been primed with my favorite Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime, and ready for wallpaper. Done! An accent of grasscloth was used on one wall. I love the way the greens match, and everything coordinates with the paneling / wainscoting. Usually I place the pattern so a prominent design motif sits at the ceiling line. But in a room with wainscoting or chair rail, that horizontal mid point in the wall is more visible. So I plotted to have the bottom of the dark green, most visible flower land just above the top of the chair rail. It looks like it’s growing from the wood! The pattern also just happened to land nicely at the ceiling line, with no major design elements getting cut in half. The material has woven fabric look to it – but that’s just the printing. It’s actually a very flat paper. It was very thin, and reminded me of papers from decades ago. It hugs the wall very tightly. I liked it a lot. Exclusive WallcoveringsThe grasscloth accent wall. All four strips were reverse-hung, and hung in the sequence they came off the bolt. Yet you see a color difference (called paneling or shading ) between some strips. This is quite typical of natural products like grasscloth and sisal. Close up. Bad photo … the color is actually an attractive green. The material is more of a thin balsa wood about 1/2″ wide, rather than traditional grass or reeds. I feared it would be difficult to cut through, but it turned out to work very nicely. But it would not have been good in a room with corners or intricate details to trim around.
The home is in League City, a southern suburb of Houston.
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