For more than a decade, the dining room was bold red from head to toe. In this photo, I’m applying drywall joint compound to smooth the textured wall .Here’s the wall sanded smooth , primed , and ready for wallpaper . Done. The next question is – what color to paint the bottom 1/3 of the wall ? What do you think?Using the red beam from my laser level to center the design on the wall, and directly under the decorative corbel which the wood-worker homeowner husband installed as a feature to the crown molding . Close-up. I also balanced the pattern between the ceiling and chair rail / wainscoting .The wallpaper design is by Candice Olson , of HGTV fame, and is made by York , a company that I like a lot. It was purchased at a discount through Dorota at the Sherwin-Williams on University in the Rice Village . Call before heading over (713) 529-6515 . The homeowner had originally chosen something else, but it was unavailable. Dorota dug through her large library of selection books and found this, which is very similar, but more open and airy . We all three agree that this is the better option. It is a non-woven material , and can be hung via the paste-the-wall method , or the paste-the-material method – which is what I usually prefer to do. This NW stuff is durable , stain-resistant , humidity -resistant , and easy to strip off the wall when you decorate down the road. Cute in his bandana . But not very helpful at all! 🙂 The home is in the Candlelight Plaza / Shephard Park Plaza / Oak Forest / Garden Oaks neighborhood of Houston .
The crib will go on this wall. Originally it was textured grey paint , as you see on either side . Here is the wall after I’ve skim-floated / skim-coated it, sanded smooth , and primed with a wallpaper primer called Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime . I have them put a little blue tint in it, so I can see where I’ve rolled it on. This wallpaper comes in one continuous roll ordered by the yard , as you see on my table , as opposed to double roll bolts as most brands are packaged. This cute pattern is called Thatcher . It looks like a simple repetitive pattern , but it was actually fairly complicated . Not all those starburst motifs , and especially not the fan shaped lines around them, are the same. Looks hand painted with a paintbrush . The paper has a clay coated surface , which give it a beautiful matt finish. It’s lovely stuff to work with – seams melt away like butter , and trim lines are spot-on. (Many companies’ are not.) This brand’s papers come with an unprinted selvedge edge that has to be trimmed off by hand. You use a straightedge and single edge razor blade , and follow the manufacturer’s trim guide lines , to remove the selvedge. Today trimming this one bolt to do one wall took a full hour. The brand is Pepper Home . The home is in the Woodland Heights area of Houston . installer
Nicely centered pattern in the potty room of this beautifully renovated 1926 home in the Woodland Heights area of Houston . Toilet alcove before … along with my cute baby T-shirt used to cover and protect the toilet seat. Toilet area finished.Looking from the main room into the commode room / potty . Finished. The colors coordinate beautifully with the tile . Wildwood is yet another of the cheerful and fresh patters by Rifle Paper . I’ve been hanging a lot of their papers lately … the brand is very popular .wallpaper installation houston
It’s important that all your wallpaper rolls have the same run number , also called batch or dye lot . This means that they were printed at the same time with the same ink . Paper printed later with another batch of ink may be every so slightly different in color / shade . Looks bad on the wall. The same thing can happen with trimming at the factory. Different runs can be trimmed differently from each other. With this paper that I hung in a dining room last week (see previous post), the labels on all the rolls / bolts listed the same run number . But there was one bolt that was wrapped in not one, but two plastic wrappers. This raised an alarm in my head, because this indicates that it may have been a roll sent back to the factory, for whatever reason, and then repackaged. When this happens, you cannot be absolutely sure that the run number is actually that which is printed on the label. Somebody at the factory could have just grabbed a handy label and stuck it inside the wrapper. I tried not to use this double-wrapped bolt of wallpaper. But on the last section of wall, I got to a point where I just needed to use it, for just two 6′ strips. I was pleased that the color of both the background and the motifs matched perfectly. But not happy with this pattern mis-match. It was easy to see that the factory trimmers had been placed about 1/8″ to one side, from where they had been placed when trimming the previous rolls. It’s a busy pattern, and, from a distance, this undercut wasn’t all that noticeable. But on the other side, there was repetition of the motif , and this will really catch your eye. Happily, this only affected one seam, and since it was a very busy pattern, from just a few feet away you couldn’t notice it. Still, it bothered me. So I pulled this strip on the left off the wall, laid it on my table, and used my straightedge and razor blade to trim off that repetitive leaf tip – about 1/8″ from the right edge of the strip. The second strip, since it came off the same roll and had been trimmed the same, matched perfectly . This was also my last strip, so no more drama with mis-matched designs at the seams . What the overall pattern looks like. The pattern is by Rifle Paper , which has been finding its way into a lot of homes lately. This brand is usually a good quality non-woven material , and can be hung by pasting the paper or by paste the wall . It is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece, and with minimal damage to the wall , when you’re ready to redecorate . Very cute , cheerful patterns , and good price-point . Note that the run number is printed on the label. installer houston
What a cute pattern! Suited for a boy or girl, and will “grow” with the child for several years.Before. The parents had this block paneling wainscoting added before the wallpaper went up. It keeps the wallpaper pattern from being overwhelming, and the green color really sets off the colors in the wallpaper. Trees , flowers , forest animals , deer , leopards , peacocks , birds . Made by Rifle Paper by York , one of my favorite brands. Rifle Paper is a non-woven material , DIY – friendly , and designed to strip off the wall easily when it’s time to redecorate .
O.K., here he’s cute. Annoying, but cute.But HERE he’s about to get his behootus beat(us). NOBODY / NOTHING touches my table! The pasting table has to stay clean and unmarred, in order to not transfer any stains to a homeowner’s wallpaper. And to ensure a straight, stable surface to cut on.
This is a 2-room powder room in the Memorial Villages area of west Houston. The home is new and openly spacious, but has many classic elements like very elegant moldings and trim work. I absolutely LOVE this 1890’s Victorian era marble sink with metal legs – a lucky eBay score. The homeowner has young kids and an active family and wanted to do something ” wild ” in the powder room. I’d say this Wonderland pattern fills the bill!The look is especially effective due to the homeowner’s bold choice to paint the woodwork this rich mustard ochre color. Looking from the sink room through the arched doorway into the potty room. Cute, cute pattern! And lovely material to work with. The glass flower light sconces are vintage, too, dating to the ’50’s or ’70’s. A similar-themed glass, floral, and brass chandelier will hang in the adjacent potty room. This is the mirror that will go up, almost touching each light sconce on either side. The grey tones in the mirror look super good with the grey marble vanity / commode sink. Manufacturer is Borastapeter distributed by Brewster , both fine companies. It’s a non-woven material and can be hung by the paste the wall method or by pasting the paper. The original wallpaper came from Finest Wallpaper in Canada, a good company. But the homeowner ordered half of what was needed, and was not able to get more in time for our install date. I suggested she call Dorota at the Sherwin-Williams on University in the Rice Village (713) 529-6515) and, sure enough, she found a source that had the paper in stock and could get it here lickety-split. This is the second time I’ve hung this paper in one week, and I’ve hung it several times previously and have it coming up again – always in this dramatic and colorful black version. People sure love the whimsy of frolicking frocked pigs!
Just the sink wall will be papered. Sorry for the photos … the room is so small, and the door is blocked by the toilet, so I can’t get good distant photos. Here’s that accent wall with the wallpaper on it. The room also had an art niche with a curved rear wall. This is the first thing you see when you open the door. I positioned the pattern so the dominant white flower would fall in the center of the wall, under the spotlight. This is such a cute and whimsical pattern. Who ever heard of frolicking pigs wearing knitted sweaters?!The manufacturer is Borastapeter from Sweden. It’s a non-woven material, and was perfectly lovely to work with. It can be hung by paste the wall , but I prefer to paste the paper .
In anticipation of this accent wall mural, the parents had the three other walls painted a soft salmon-y pink. Finished! I love the way the pattern ” crescendos ” toward the center and top…. perfect for cradling the crib. The blotchy look will disappear as the wallpaper dries, and the background will become more bright white. The mural came a set size, of 12.5′ W x 9′ H. The width fit the wall with just a few inches extra, which was perfect. But the wall was less than 8′ high and the mural was 9′, so we lost about 12″ of the mural. I brought the design as close to the ceiling as I could, while still preserving that light blue flower at the center top. This meant that most of the pattern lost was from the bottom, which has more stems and flowers – but not as pretty as the elements toward the top. And most of the bottom is going to be hidden by the crib and other furnishings, anyway. Also note that the right side of the mural pattern does not match up with the pattern on the left. Meaning, the mural does not continue from one mural to the next. This means that, if you have a really wide wall, for instance, or a powder room more than 12′ wide, you cannot place two or more murals next to each other and have the pattern continue uninterrupted. This is pretty standard for Anewall murals. But there are tons of other mural manufacturers who do make products that will accommodate wider spaces. And that are also custom-sized to your rooms’ specific dimensions. Close-up looks like a translucent watercolor painting. The pattern is called Wildflower . Cute hidden creatures like this snail. On her own, the mom originally purchased a peel & stick mural. Once she contacted me, I set her straight on how … err … awful that stuff is. (Click the link on the right to read my page about this material.) The company allowed her to send the P&S back and exchange it for this better quality pre-pasted option, which I like a lot. (I’m not fond of their traditional which is vinyl and requires special install techniques). Still, we had some issues which I’ve come to expect from Anewall, such as gaps and overlaps at the seams, and some minor pattern mis-matches at the seams . This is a newish home in the League City area of Houston.
West wall smoothed, primed, and ready for wallpaper. The homeowner used to live in New Orleans, and she tells me that signs like this are very common in local convenience stores and neighborhood dives. Transplanted to Houston, these signs are very dear to her heart as a reminder of her roots – and the funky lifestyle in the Big Easy. She wanted the signs recreated somehow to cover the walls in their newly-renovated powder room in the Houston Heights. I suggested she contact rebelwalls.com , who custom made the paper and sized it specifically to fit each wall in the room individually. I measured and made drawings, and a designer named Simon at RebelWalls laid it all out. North wall before. This is the wall with the toilet and sink. There were a couple of glitches, the first being that the strips were printed about 10″ longer than I requested. No biggie – I’d rather have too much paper than come up short. But the main glitch being that I had asked for this “sign” to be centered over the toilet, which meant that the center of the sign (I used the middle fleur-de-lis) would land at 17.5″ from the wall to the left. But somehow it got printed to where the left edge of the pattern was 17.5″ from the wall … That left a whole lot of white space between the wall and the design, and also pushed the words too close to the mirror, which will hang over the sink to the right. After careful measuring, calculating, and testing, I determined that if I used my straightedge and razor blade to take off a 12″ wide slice from the left side, the “sign” would move to the left such that its center would fall over the mid-point of the toilet. Voilà ! As you see in the photo, now the words are nicely balanced on this section of wall, and will not crowd the mirror which will be hung to the right. The rest of the wallpaper moving to the right is unprinted, so as to leave a blank slate for the mirror to hang on. Here you see that wall, and also the wall to its right. This east wall has the same sign, but in a smaller scale, sized to fit the narrower wall. It’s also placed at a different height Graphic designer Simon used my drawings and measurements to get the words nicely centered on this wall. The area above the door to the right (not visible) is left blank. Here is the west wall (on the right) abutting the south / window wall. The bull-nosed / rounded edges / corners such as you see around the window are really a pain with wallpaper, especially when they go both around the sides and the top, and can lead to some impossibilities. Too complicated to get into here. But I was pleased with the way this worked out. And the placement of the pleated shades toward the front of the opening helped a lot, too. One interesting thing to note is that the thickness of this non-woven wallcovering (along with the joint compound I used to smooth the textured wall) is enough that it narrows the space inside the window just a tad,,, and that makes it a bit tight for the shades to fit back in,,, and that opens the potential for abrading the wallpaper as the shade is raised and lowered over time. Another point … even though the widths of the wall spaces to be covered were different, we requested that the size of the font on the “sign” lettering be the same on the west wall and the north / mirror wall, and ditto for the window wall and the door wall. I also made sure that the “signs” started at the same distance from the ceiling. This then ensured that each “sign” would land at the same distance from the tile below it. Synchronizing the size of the fonts as well as the spacing between ceiling and tile helps immensely to lend a feeling of unity and order to this room. I spent a full 2 1/2 hours plotting, measuring, testing mock-ups, and going back to the drawing board, before I ever cut any paper. Prior to that, there were two visits to the home to get measurements and kick around options with the homeowner. In addition, she spent countless communications with the manufacturer and with our specific designer. All this futzing is important, because, with murals, there is no second chance. There’s only one of each panel, and if one gets screwed up, there are no more to pull off the bolt, like you’d have with regular rolled goods. RebelWalls is the manufacturer. I’ve had lots of great installs with this company. What was inside our box, including Simon’s dimensions and lay-out. Basic installation instructions. Ours was a bit – a whole lot – more complicated, because it covered not one but four walls. In our case, it worked best to have each wall be a separate mural, so to speak. RebelWalls includes free wallpaper paste. I prefer to use my own pre-mixed vinyl adhesive, which is SureStik Dynomite 780. Recently bought by Roman, so the name has changed to just 780. Certain pastes have been known to ” stain ” non-woven wallpapers (areas look wet but never dry out). I think that a high moisture content in the paste has a lot to do with this. So I’m hesitant to use a powdered paste that needs to be mixed with water. I’ll squirrel away that RebelWalls powdered paste for another, better suited job. For this home’s install, I’m sticking with my tried and true 780. A coupla more notes. One, this project was a study in vision, desire, anticipation, and patience. The homeowner first contacted me in July 2021. It took nearly eight months to come to fruition. Granted, they had a whole kitchen remodel in the middle, which also included an update to this powder room. But just speaking for the wallpaper, there were several site visits, many emails, and then innumerable communications with the design team at RW. In fact, since I’ve hung lots of RebelWalls and am familiar with their process, I thought I could lay out the design. But this project of separate “sign” motifs for each wall section was taxing my skill set. Finally I laid down my pencil and paper and said, “Stop doing what you yell at your clients for doing, which is trying to do something you don’t have expertise in! RebelWalls has designers who are trained to figure all this out. So let THEM do the math and placement and calculating and layout.” So we turned it over to them, and within a short time they had it all worked out perfectly (except for those few glitches I mentioned). Their customer service was amazing. All this was crucial to ensuring that mural pieces fit the wall perfectly and that the final product looks stunning. I also want to mention that the RebelWalls quality is excellent. It’s a non-woven material which has many advantages (too numerous to go into here, but you can Search). The seams melt together like butter and are invisible – even on areas with all that bare white space with no pattern. On a simple accent wall, you can paste-the-wall to hang it. In this (and most) cases, I pasted-the-material, which gives more flexibility and also ensures that paste gets into hard-to-reach areas – like behind a toilet. In addition, the non-woven material is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when you redecorate. The company offers scores of patterns, from cute to sophisticated, and, as we did this time around, can make custom creations. Super customer service, too.
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