Cute As Can Be Pineapples In Clear Lake Powder Room

Originally, this powder room in a brand new home in the Clear Lake area south of Houston was painted a taupe-y grey, and the walls were heavily textured. This bright and crisp Pineapple pattern in navy on white really opened up and brightened the room, and made it fitting for a family with two toddlers.

It took a day and a half to smooth the textured walls, and a full day to hang the paper. The extremely un-plumb walls and un-level ceiling and floor and sink, and other features were all obstacles. The homeowner and I decided that it would be better to have the pattern match in the corners, and then let it run crooked along the ceiling and floor lines. Too complicated to get into here. But in the end, the finished room looks great!

I usually love Serena & Lily papers, but this time I encountered several printing defects. There was a slight pattern mis-match at the seams. There was a faint smudge on one motif at the point of every pattern repeat. And one bolt had a line of dark blue ink along the right edge that ran for several feet. AND … this bolt came with no label. I assumed it was a return, and was of a different run, and thus was unusable in this powder room Luckily, I usually have the homeowners order enough paper to accommodate issues like this.

Coincidentally enough, my Wallcovering Installers Association colleagues on our private Facebook page had just been discussing Serena & Lily papers, and a rash of printing defects and other issues that many installers had been experiencing lately.

Other than the printing defects and wonky walls, the paper went up nicely.

Serena & Lily papers (and other home good merchandise) can be bought on-line, or through their paper catalog – which they just mailed out recently.

Dramatic Artemis Black Floral Completely Changes Dining Room

Like many newish suburban houses, this Clear Lake (south of Houston) home is all pretty much a homogeneous light tan – every wall, every room. This is the homeowners’ first venture into wallpaper – and, boy, did they make the right move!

This salad plate-scaled, brightly colored floral design on a black background amplifies this dining room accent wall many times! The pattern comes in other colorways, but none of those would have the impact of this black version.

The wall was textured, so I had to skim-float it and sand that smooth, then apply a primer. In the photo, you see where I have striped dark paint under where the seams will fall, to prevent the white primer from peeking through. I also used black chalk (see photo) to color the edges of the paper, to prevent the white substrate from showing.

This wallpaper pattern is a multiple / quarter-drop pattern match, which is very complicated to plot and lay out. The House of Hackney company made it easy, by providing this material in a 4-panel mural format. See photo

In one photo, you see the strips arranged in the order they will be hung on the wall. Before hanging, these will be re-rolled backwards, so the unprinted white backing side is facing outward.

This is a non-woven material, and I hung it using the paste-the-wall method. When I am on the ladder and unroll the strip and working to get it into position, having the paper rolled backward keeps the printed side from coming in contact with the paste on the wall.

Non-woven wallpapers have a high fiberglass content, and do not expand when wet with paste, nor do they shrink when drying, so less chance of gaps appearing at the seams, and also you can get accurate measurements that won’t change. The fiber content also ensures that the wallpaper “should” strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate.

A few short hours after I left, the homeowners sent me some “finished” photos. I wish I were more tech savvy and knew how to get photos off of text and into this post, so I could show you the gorgeous room. But for now, you’ll just have to use your mind’s eye.

Disguising the Kill Point

I hung this beautiful tan peacock pattern on a pearlized background in a powder room in the Clear Lake / Seabrook area of Houston. The “kill point” is the last corner in a room, and you will virtually always have a pattern mis-match at that point, so I plan the layout so that falls in an inconspicuous place. Usually, that’s a door that is set close to a corner.

But in this powder room, all four corners were very visible. I didn’t want to end in one of those corners, because that would result in a half a peacock butting up against a cut-off tree branch, for the entire 8′ height of the wall.

So I put the kill point over the door, where the strip was only 10″ high. A 10″ mis-match is better than an 8′ mis-match, but I still didn’t want to end up with a chopped up peacock. So I fiddled around a little, played with the pattern, overlapped two pieces (with wax paper protecting them from paste), and spliced the two pieces together, using a curved cut instead of a straight cut, so I could cut around the tree branches and leaves, instead of cutting them off abruptly.

You can see that the pattern motif repeats itself, but that is not too noticeable, in the grand scheme of things, and looks way better than the alternative.

Interestingly, I did a similar trick earlier in the week with another kind of paper, and the technique was entirely different. The other paper was thin and could be overlapped and have appliqués applied to it. This paper, a thick non-woven with a textured surface, could not be overlapped, so a splice was the best route.

This wallpaper is by Ronald Redding for York Wallcoverings, and was sold by Ethan Allen’s Friendswood (Baybrook) location. Betcha didn’t know they had (free!) design services, did you?

Soft Pink and – Wild Green Banana Leaves for a Baby Girl

Here’s something different for a baby girl’s nursery. The mother wanted a “Beverly Hilton Hotel” look – this hotel features the iconic “Martinique” banana leaf wallpaper. It is fabulous, but it’s quite expensive, and it’s difficult to install, too. Do a search here to read my experience with it.

I was able to direct this mom-to-be to my favorite source for buying wallpaper (read below), and she helped her find something at a more reasonable price, that is better looking, too, and definitely is holding to the wall better.

The rest of the room – walls, ceiling, woodwork, are painted a very pale pink. There’s just enough pink in the wallpaper to coordinate it with the rest of the room and pull everything together.

This went on one accent wall in a baby’s room in Clear Lake. The paper is in the Sure Strip line by York, one of my favorite brands. I did have a little trouble this time with seams wanting to curl back, but only where the dark ink crossed the seam. This tends to be because the inks absorb moisture from the paste differently from the paper substrate, and they fight each other. I stayed a little late to be sure the seams were setting securely as the paper dried.

This wallpaper pattern was bought at below retail price from 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.

Wallpaper Repairs

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Some people get upset when there is a fair amount of wallpaper left over after the room is finished. This Clear Lake (Houston) couple felt the same, 15 years ago when I papered their kitchen and powder room. Well, come 2016, and the 40-year-old pipes in their ’70’s era home began to fail. Bottom line – they had to have the whole house completely re-piped. And to do that, the plumbers had to cut holes here and there in the drywall. When the drywall gets messed up, so does the wallpaper. Good thing they had extra wallpaper on hand!

The plumbers did a good job of patching the Sheetrock and then floating over the joints where the new patched-in drywall met the old. But there were still some areas that I needed to refloat and / or sand smooth, and then prime, before the wallpaper could be replaced.

The 2nd and 3rd photos show the soffit or fur down over the kitchen cabinets, first with the plumbers’ patch, and then with my new wallpaper repair.

The powder room had a swirly pattern, and had four walls that needed wallpaper repairs. In this room, as shown in the 5th photo, I appliquéd the new paper over the existing paper. Cutting along the design helps disguise the patch by eliminating visual breaks.

There is even a little paper still left over, in case another calamity strikes and more wallpaper repairs are needed. 🙂

Woodsy Accent Wall in a Clear Lake Living Room

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Trees are a popular decorating theme – I’ve hung this or similar patterns quite a few times. The homeowner was originally somewhat surprised to see that the paper had a tan color to it, because that had not shown up on the on-line images. (Note: Always best to go to a brick-and-mortar store to see and feel actual samples. You can also order samples before you buy.)

But once the paper went up, it was evident that the tan color works very nicely with the deeper tan walls in the rest of the living room and dining room. In fact, I like this better than if they had gotten paper that was grey tones only. The tan color helps pull the whole room together. They have black accents, too, like the dining table and the doors in the home, and the bits of black really punch it up!

This is an accent wall in a living room, and a comfy sofa will be placed in front of the trees.

I’ve hung this same pattern before, in paper, but this time it was printed on the newish non-woven substrate. One advantage of the non-wovens is that they will strip off the wall (hopefully) more easily than paper wallpapers. Also, they don’t expand when wet paste hits them, like papers do, so that helps you get accurate measurements, as well as offers the option of pasting the wall instead of pasting the back of the paper.

This foresty design is by Ronald Redding, and is from York Wallcoverings.

I LOVE It When the Pedestal Sink is GONE!

Wow, was I happy to come to work today, and discover that the homeowner had removed the pedestal sink. These free-standing sinks are real buggers to hang paper around, and under, and around all those pipes.

Not having it there meant saved me about 40 minutes of time, gave the homeowners a neater look around the pipes (a decorative escutcheon will go around the pipes and drain to dress it up a little more), and it meant that there is no cut edge at the top of the sink, which eliminates the worry of splashed water causing the wallpaper to curl.

This textured peacock pattern is by Ronald Redding by York Wallcoverings, and was sold by Ethan Allen’s Friendswood (Bay Brook) location. It went in a powder room in the Clear Lake / Seabrook area.

Gesso-Like Texture on Wallpaper

This wallpaper has a wonderful texture, something like an artist’s gesso on a canvas painting. When light hits it from the side, as in the 2nd photo, you can really see the thickness and texture.

Textures are popular these days, and are usually embossed in heavy vinyl goods, or printed on a heavy non-woven backing, which is the case here.

Because the backing is so thick and stiff, it works best on a flat wall with little decorative elements – no turns or corners, not intricate moldings to cut around. Also, as you see in the last shot, the seams can be visible, although in this case they are not too bad.

This beautiful peacock pattern is by Ronald Redding for York Wallcoverings, and was sold by Ethan Allen’s Friendswood (Baybrook) store. I hung it in a powder room in Clear Lake / Seabrook, that previously had a dark red / black faux finish paper. This pearlized tone-on-tone design was a welcome and brightening update.

Ink Is an Enemy of Wallpaper!

The Sheetrock on this job has a lot of tears, so to get it ready for wallpaper, I am skim-floating it, to smooth it. The horizontal red line and the red numbers you see are where someone wrote on the wall in red ink, way back in the ’60’s when this Clear Lake home was built. Mirrors covered this wall for decades, so the ink never showed.

But if I were to hang wallpaper over this ink, it would, rather quickly, I am betting, work its way through the paper and show up on the surface. Several substances will do that, including blood, rust, water stains, grease, and ink – which is why we contractors (are supposed to) only use pencil when writing on walls.

The best product to seal this ink is oil-based KILZ, which is a wonderful sealer and stain blocker. However, putting an oil-based product on top of another oil-based product, like ink, sometimes does not work well. So here I have gone over the ink with joint compound. I have found that “mud,” as we call it, contains stains a little better, plus it is porous and allows the sealer to soak in, creating a better seal. As you can see, the ink is working its way through the joint compound, too.

So, once the mud is dry and sanded, I am going to put Gardz on the area. Gardz is a very thin, watery sealer that will soak into the mud, hopefully sealing it. Just to be sure, I will add another layer of mud over that. Once that is dry, I will apply a coat of KILZ. If the stains continue to show through, I will apply more coats of KILZ, and possibly more coats of mud, as well.

TERMITES!

This week I am to hang paper on a wall that was originally mirrored from floor to ceiling. When the glass guys removed the mirror, some areas like this were exposed. Here I am floating the wall to smooth it, but below the white smoothing compound, you can see the recessed area in the wall, and the little bitty brown specks. Can you guess what this is?

OK, well, the title gave it away. Yes, this is a sign of termites, as they chew into the drywall and leave their guano (poop) behind (the little specks). It’s an outside wall, which is where you most typically see this sort of thing. It’s probably old damage, and the house has probably been treated and the termites long gone. I have, in the past, seen live termites and their larvae inside walls!

Some of the chewed drywall is crumbly, and the guano definitely is loose, which would provide an unstable surface for the wallpaper to stick to. So I used a product called Gardz to seal the loose areas, and then am skim-floating the wall to smooth it (the white stuff). Once it’s dry, I’ll sand and prime, again using Gardz, and the wall should be good and solid for the wallpaper.

This home is in the Clear Lake area of Houston.