Posts Tagged ‘cottage grove’
Wonderful Stringcloth Alternative to Grasscloth
July 23, 2020Beautiful, Funky 1960’s Mural
August 30, 2018Compensating for Crooked Walls
July 17, 2018Today I was to hang this cute bear wallpaper on one accent wall of a baby’s nursery. The walls were 0ff-plumb, and the ceiling was not level, and the pattern was very plotted and symmetrical. So let’s just say that the room presented challenges.
One thing that helped was the way the blocks of bears are printed on the wallpaper. See Photo 1. Unlike most wallpaper designs, the motifs did not cross the seams, so there were no elements to be matched from strip to strip. This left me free to place the bears’ heads at the top of the wall with every strip.
Normally, when the ceiling is not level, the wallpaper pattern (the heads of the bears) would start to move up or down the ceiling, and that means that the heads would start to get chopped off horizontally.
But since this pattern did not cross the seams of the wallpaper and I didn’t have to match any parts of bears across the seams, I was able to pull each strip up to the top of the wall, and eating a uniform line (or head-count 🙂 ) at the top of the wall. It meant that the lines of bears were not perfectly level from strip to strip – but that was not very noticeable, and was a whole lot better than seeing heads get chopped off.
The walls on either side were also not plumb. As a test, I hung the first strip of paper butted into the corner, so it is parallel with the wall. The second photo shows my laser level red line against the side of the paper. If you could see above the top of the photo, that red line is butted against the edge of the paper at the top of the wall. Yet as you move down the wall, the strip of wallpaper moves away to the left of the red level line.
I could pull the strip of paper into plumb so that it aligned with the red laser line – but that would cause a slew of bears to get their heads sliced off vertically where they hit the adjacent wall. As well as when they got to the opposite wall.
Also, since the ceiling was not level, the bears’ heads would start marching either up or down the ceiling line, and, again, some bears would get their heads chopped off.
What to do?
I checked for plumb on both outer walls, and found that both walls were off-plumb by a fairly significant amount. Luckily, both walls were out of plum parallel with one another. This meant that I could hang the paper off-plumb and butted into the right corner, and it would come out on the left side of the wall nicely parallel to the opposite side (right corner).
So the pattern aligned nicely with both the right and left walls. But since to do this I had to hang the paper off-plumb, it would also go off-level at the ceiling. And since the ceiling was already no where near level, it was very likely that the pattern was going to track up or down that ceiling line, with a bunch o’ bears getting their heads cut off.
Here is where the placement of the pattern on the 20.5″ wide wallpaper made a difference… Because I didn’t have to match a bear’s head to a bear’s head horizontally across the seams. I could position each strip so that the tips of the bears’ ears were at the top of the wall. (Read previous paragraphs.)
But because the ceiling was off-level by such a great degree, some of the pattern did get crooked, and so you see a couple of black feet starting to appear above the brown bear at the top of the wall (See photo 3).
But I’d rather have a few paws showing at the top of the ceiling, than have a bunch ‘o bears get chopped off vertically at the corners. But still, I didn’t like looking at those paws hanging down from the ceiling.
The fix was easy. I took some scrap wallpaper and from it I cut some thin strips of white paper that I then pasted over the offending paws. Voilà! No visible dangling paws.
AND the pattern looks amazingly equal in each corner,
This is a new townhouse in the Cottage Grove neighborhood of Houston.
UnBEARably Cute
August 31, 2017Here’s something cleverly fun for a little boy who’s coming in a couple of months. Bear paws and bear faces. What could be cuter?! The color coordinates beautifully with the blue paint chosen for the walls and ceiling.
This wallpaper is by Dwell Studios and is in the Sure Strip line, one of my favorite wallpaper brands. It is pre-pasted and easy to work with, thin and hugs the wall tightly, seams are invisible. And, when it’s designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece with no damage to the wall.
I hung this in a baby boy’s nursery in the Cottage Grove neighborhood of Houston.
Small Diamond Pattern on a Master Bedroom Accent Wall
July 12, 2014This soothing pattern went on the headboard wall of a large master bedroom in the Cottage Grove neighborhood in Houston. The other walls were painted a lightish shade of the same neutral grey in the wallpaper.
This wallpaper was bought at a discounted price from Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.
Jazzing Up a Stairway
July 10, 2014Some people see the ceiling as a “fifth wall.” Well, this family in the Cottage Grove neighborhood of Houston sees the stairway as another wall! Heading up and to the left are 14 more risers that I papered.
It took several hours, longer than I expected, and I learned on the second step that risers were not all the same width. 😦 I engineered it so there would be a vertical white line smack in the middle of each riser, with the “arrows” in the center pointing up.
This wallpaper is by Spoonflower, an on-line company with lots of cute patterns. Some of these new boutique manufacturers put out some pretty wonky papers, but Spoonflower is lovely to work with. You overlap the seams, which is a little unusual, and which leaves a ridge, but that is barely noticeable, and the overlapping eliminates the worry about drying and shrinking and gapping at the seams.
If You Choose a Plain Paper, Expect to See the Seams
March 13, 2014These days, textured papers are all the rage. This is a heavily textured vinyl on a woven fabric backing (something like cheesecloth, but firmer). Just be aware that on patterns like this, the seams almost always will show.
Note that I am breaking one of my own rules, and hanging the paper over a lightly textured wall. The paper is heavy enough that the wall’s texture won’t show, but the texture does interfere with the seams’ ability to pull tightly to the wall. Be certain that I discussed this with the clients before proceeding, and they OK’d it. Also note that I have striped a matching paint behind where the seams will fall, so that if there are slight gaps at the seams (there were), the white primer won’t show.
Back to the visible seams…In these photos, two things are going on. In the first shot, you notice the seam a little, because the textured pattern has no way to match from one strip to the next. So you are always going to see a little of a break where the bumps or colors do not match the panel next to it.
The second thing is, from a distance, you see a little bit of paneling, or shading. This happens when the color along the right edge of a strip does not match what’s along the left edge of the strip to it’s right.
To minimize this, I did what we call “reverse hanging” – I hang one strip right side up, and the next strip is hung upside down. That way, the right side of a strip is hung next to itself, so there is not a dramatic color break. You do, however, end up with a somewhat striped effect. But that’s usually only visible in at a distance, and only in some lighting conditions.
Yes, a little confusing. But it’s a good way to deal with solid patterns like this, and it minimizes the color differences.
This accent wall went in a bedroom in a new home in Cottage Grove, Houston. I’ll be back soon to hang paper in their living room.