Hunt Slonem Bunnies Wallpaper

I saw this wallpaper in a powder room while taking the Houston Heights Home Tour last Sunday . This pattern was wildly popular about 10 years ago.
Imagine squeezing under that console sink with metal legs to place the wallpaper under there.

Another shot, showing a little more of the fir down / soffit over the sink .
According to Wikipedia , the designer, Hunt Slonem , started developing his obsession with all things bunny in the early 1980’s . He’s produced lots of different incarnations, and they’ve been used in wallpaper , fabric , artwork , kitchenware , decorative items , and everything in between.

Such a fun pattern. “And they breed like – rabbits!” This wallpaper is notoriously difficult to install . More on that in a future post.

Dwunk Cwitters Wid’ Booze and Hookah in Garden Oaks Powder Room

Walls have been skim-floated and sanded smooth, primed, and are ready for wallpaper.

Done. The dark woodwork really accentuates the wallpaper; the room would not be nearly as dramatic and fun without the dark woodwork.

Eeek! Another console sink to squeeze under and behind. Just this area took more than an hour.
Some tricks I’ve learned is that you don’t have to wrestle full-length and -width strips. Here I cut the two strips behind the sink horizontally at the point where the vanity hits the wall. I hung the upper strips. Then, moving to the right, I hung the strips to the right. After I ended in the corner to the right (not pictured), I came back and hung the two short strips under the sink. So I was only wielding strips 2′ high, instead of 9′.
I also sliced one strip vertically at the point where it intersected the drain pipe under the sink. This was much easier than trying to wrangle an 18″ wide strip around the drain, two faucets, and the metal support pipes.

What are these cwitters up to??!

Close-up. The homeowner said that the family has a sense of humor , and wanted something wild and fun .

Detail.

Many House of Hackney wallpapers come as a mural , or 4-roll set. This diagram shows the layout of the four panels. You can take a second set of four panels and place it to the right (or to the left – just keep track of the sequence order of the panels) and the pattern will continue.
Each panel is about 18″ wide, so a 4-panel set gives you about 6′ of width. Panels are about 9.5′ high.

This is called Hackney Empire and is in the Midnight colorway. This is a non-woven material , also called paste the wall . I did paste the material rather than the wall, though, as it makes the paper more supple, and enables me to get paste into difficult-to-access areas – such as under and behind that console sink! Non-wovens are designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece without damage to the wall when it’s time to redecorate. This HofH material was lovely to work with.

installer, houston, under the stairs

Peacock Wallpaper in Powder Room

An all-black powder room (walls, ceiling, floor) seemed like a moody, innovative idea. But it ended up being stark and uninteresting, not to mention claustrophobic.

A little wallpaper, still in a dark color, maintains the original idea, but lightens the mood (and brightens the room) a whole lot.

We decided to paper the sloped area under the stairs, but not the actual ceiling itself. This pattern and color on the ceiling would have been overwhelming.

Another shot of the wall and sloped area, opposite corner.

There’s nothing like spending an hour under the console sink! Besides all these pipes to cut around, note that the countertop is one mere inch away from the wall to the left.

Peacock by Rifle Paper is extremely popular, and I’ve hung it a number of times. Search here to see previous posts.
Interestingly enough, other brands have made their own versions, but homeowners still gravitate to this design.
The material is made by York , one of my favorite brands. It’s a non-woven paste-the-wall product. It’s much more durable and stain-resistant than paper wallpapers, and is designed to strip off the wall easily and with no damage to the wall when you’re ready to redecorate.
wallpaper installation houston

Console Sink = Torture Chamber for Wallpaper Hangers

Difficult access? Tight quarters? A little swearing?
YES to all.
But I got ‘er done!

Similar Theme; Different Feel

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

The original wallpaper in this large powder room in Hunter’s Creek Village was red and had “broken twigs” as its design. The homeowner wanted a subtle change, so went with something fairly similar, but more modern. The paper is a grasscloth, and is dark blue, with gold “broken lines” covering the surface.

The paper had a selvedge edge that had to be trimmed off by hand, using a straightedge and a razor blade. This is a bit more difficult to do with grasscloth, which is thick and stiff, than with regular paper. In addition, the manufacturer’s trim guideline marks were off, which resulted in edges that were not straight. It took some time to figure out how to bypass that, and how to salvage the strip that got the crookedly cut edge.

There were a lot of other challenges to this room, including crooked walls, bowed walls, 12′ high ceiling, paper that twisted when it got wet with paste, a console vanity with exposed plumbing and a lower shelf, and less paper than I asked for – I needed 11 1/2 strips, and I had 12 strips….which meant that there was no extra paper to fix an error. Every strip had to be cut and hung perfectly.

I trimmed, pasted, and hung one strip at a time. This was tedious and slow, but it allowed me to gauge what was going on with each strip and how it interacted with the other strips (previous and succeeding), crooked corners, and the conformation of the room, as I worked my way around the walls, plus it gave me time to work around more difficult areas, such as the light fixtures, the “low boy” toilet, and the console sink.

The finished room looks great, and the homeowner loves it.

Because it’s grasscloth, the family will have to be careful to not splash water onto it, because it will eventually stain the material, or cause the dyes to run.

This paper is by Kravat, and I was very pleased with the quality of the material. (But, let me say here, I was NOT pleased with the mis-marked trim guidelines.) Back to the grasscloth – the color was very uniform, and there were virtually no shading or paneling or color variations, which are problems with most other grasscloth products I have hung. Do a Search here on those terms, to learn more.

You get what you pay for. This Kravat grasscloth cost about $350 per single roll (about 22 useable square feet).