My Wallpaper on Upcoming Local Home Tours

Are you a Home Tour Junkie? I am! I attend all the home tours I can in the Houston area. This year I am thrilled to say that two of the homes where I hung wallpaper will be on the Heights Home Tour in April. And another home I worked in will be on the Woodland Heights Home Tour in March. Two homes were pulled together by interior designers – Stacie Cokinos in the Woodland Heights and Rachel Goetz in the Heights.

As a side note, a home on the Good Brick tour last year featured a room I hung wallpaper in, and a few years back some of my work was shown on the Garden Oaks Home Tour.

Forget the past stuff – come on out to the Heights and the Woodland Height Home Tours and see some lovely homes, some cutting edge decorating, and some really craftsmanly-hung wallpaper!

Silvery Grasscloth on Bookshelf Backs

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This homeowner has a wonderful knack for decorating, and her front sitting room in a newish home in the Rice University area of Houston is beautiful. But she wanted to add a little “oomph.”

This grasscloth did the trick. The natural material adds texture, and the silvery backing adds a little glamor without overpowering the rest of the room. And it’s a lovely background for the decorative items on the shelves.

British Love for a Montrose Powder Room

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This couple lived in England for a while, and adopted British taste in decorating. I have papered four rooms for them so far (another is coming up!), and (almost) all have been done in imported British wallpaper, with traditional designs.

This pattern is by Colfax & Fowler (called “Dalancey”), and is on what we call a pulp substrate. It is a beautiful, matt finish, lies very flat to the wall, and will resist curling under humid conditions. It has no protective coating, so can be stained by splashing of water or toiletries or even hands, and painter’s tape will lift the inked layer right off the backing. In other words – beautiful to look at, but handle with care. 🙂

This home is brand new, but presented challenges due to unplumb walls, bowed walls, and crooked corners. I had to do a lot of twisting and finagling, and a little patchin’ in, and some fudging with the pattern match, but the end result looked fantastic. The homeowner said, “I can’t believe how much it changes the room!”

And she said, “Every time you come, you leave our home looking a little more beautiful!”

Fabulous Jolt of Color in a Little Girl’s Bedroom

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The homeowner was originally looking at doing one accent wall behind the bed, and was loving a contemporary design with sort of concentric wavy-edged circles in a rhythmic pattern, by a high-end manufacturer that is known for printing defects, and that was crazy expensive and had a 65″ pattern repeat (lots of waste).

Over time, she looked at the room differently, and did an about-face, ending up having block paneling installed on the lower 1/3 of the walls, and then papering all four walls with a classic trellis pattern in a bold and contemporary color.

Unlike the original choice with the wavy circles, this trellis design has been around for hundreds of years and will not go out of style. The strong turquoise color stands out brilliantly against the white paneled wainscoting, so the room looks crisp and fresh for its young inhabitant, a six year old girl. The décor will be pumped up even more with the addition of a few jolts of bright coral – a vase, a throw pillow, and – most daringly – the chandelier.

Although this room presented challenges (unplumb walls coupled with an unforgiving geometric design, plus two windows with crooked edges and dimensions out of sync with those of the wallpaper), it was a fun install. A lot of plotting and brainwork was required to get that geometric pattern to look straight against those unplumb walls.

The 4th photo shows the kill point – the point where the last strip of wallpaper comes back around to meet the first strip. This almost always ends up in a mis-match. This corner did mis-match, but I had a lot of fun fiddling around to make it look like it matched.

Most men don’t care too much about decorating, but this father was really excited about the transformation of his daughter’s room.

This wallpaper pattern is called Downing Gate, and is by Thibaut Designs, and was bought below retail price from Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. Dorota was also able to get the paper shipped here super fast, so the homeowner could keep her original installation date. (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.

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.

More Wallpaper in Better Homes & Gardens Magazine

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I love it when home / shelter magazines show wallpaper in their decorating features! Once readers see how beautiful wallpaper is, and how it can enliven a space and give personality and warmth to a space, they are sure to want wallpaper for their own homes.

The first photo shows “Daydream” by Hygge & West. Do a Search on my blog (upper right corner), and you will see that I have hung this popular pattern many times, in several colors.

The second photos shows “Feather” by Serena & Lily, a company that makes wonderful wallpaper. The next pattern is theirs, too, and possibly the last one, too.

Three of these are colorful and playful, while “Feather” makes a quiet, warm backdrop to a more sophisticated living space.

Cool Race Car Wall Decals in a Boy’s Room

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If your little man is big into something, how about decorating his room with his passion?

These decals come in assorted sizes and colors, and can be mixed and matched and positioned any way you like.

These are a peel-and-stick product, and came from the on-line company Stephen Edward Graphics http://www.stephenedwardgraphics.com/.

Wallpaper in Southern Living Magazine Decorating

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I’m always pleased to see wallpaper shown in decorating features of national magazines. In the December 2015 issue of Southern Living, here are three rooms in a home that have used wallpaper – in a dining room, and two bedrooms.

Buy What I Tell You To Buy – PLEASE!

O.K., so I showed up for work today, for an 8-roll job to put grasscloth on an accent wall in a master bedroom.

The only problem was – the homeowner had only purchased 6 rolls.

So we had to postpone until another double roll of paper can be ordered and shipped. And let’s just keep our fingers crossed that the run numbers will be the same.

This delay means the homeowners will have to live with furniture out of place, their schedules have been disrupted, and they have additional shipping costs, not to mention the disappointment of not getting their room decorating finished.

For me, it means a lost day of work, and having to juggle the schedule, to try to fit this job into my already-full calendar. For my other clients on the waiting list, it means that I could have gotten someone else’s wallpaper up, but didn’t have enough advance notice.

Wallpaepring a Refrigerator Alcove

I hung wallpaper in this breakfast room / kitchen in a 1930 home in the River Oaks neighborhood of Houston two years ago. The wallpaper and interior design work came from Venetian Blind & Floor, near the Rice Village shopping district, a very good place to buy carpeting, wooden flooring, tile, countertops, drapes, and other decorating needs.

Their huge built-in refrigerator died recently, and was replaced with a really tiny one. Since the small refrigerator doesn’t fill the alcove, all the unwallpapered space inside the alcove shows.

So, with the less-than-one-double-roll-bolt of left over paper, I measured, split, spliced, plotted, and pasted, and managed to get paper on the side walls and on the 8″ on either side of the back wall that the new refrigerator didn’t cover.

I wouldn’t normally put wallpaper on the top of the alcove, but since that area was not painted, and since the original wallpaper recessed a little into that area, there pretty much was no option but to put wallpaper there, too.

I matched the stripes on the ceiling to the stripes on the two side walls. The stripes on the back wall could be matched in one corner (not shown), but in the second corner (shown in the last photo), there had to be a mis-match. A corner is a good place to put a mis-match, especially with a stripe, as it won’t be noticed much.

Also, since we were running out of wallpaper, there is a mis-match on the back wall, near the right corner (shown in photo). I think I disguised it pretty well. Can you find it?

Note: The wallpaper doesn’t go all the way to the floor because the refrigerator will hide that part – and because we simply didn’t have enough paper! The blue tape is holding up white corner molding that we glued to the outside corners of the alcove. It will be removed once the adhesive is dried.