Shells / Fans in Master Bedroom Closet

Left side of entry wall primed and ready for wallpaper.

Starting the right side of the wall.
Instead of laying a 9.5′ length of wallpaper down along the door frame and wrestling it around the tops and bottoms of several fixed-in-place shelves, I used a razor blade and my straightedge to slice the strip horizontally into sections, measured carefully to coincide with the position of the shelf brackets.
This way I was working with much smaller and more manageable chunks of paper.

Entry wall finished.

Entry and side walls finished.

Opposite, window wall finished.
This closet, with 20 single rolls (10 double roll bolts) of wallpaper, several fixed shelves to wrangle paper around, support brackets to trim around, and two windows to wrap wallpaper inside, took me two 10-hour days to prime and paper.

Here’s a close-up, with a light switch for perspective, to show the lightly textured surface of the wallpaper.

BN European brand of wallpaper.
This is a non-woven material and could be hung via the paste the wall method or the paste the paper installation process.
Pasting the material made it much easier to work around all the obstacles and tight areas.
The paper was very soft and pliable. It is an embossed ( textured ) vinyl and will be more resistant to stains and dings than most traditional wallpapers.
This home is in the Heights neighborhood of Houston.

Super Alternative to Grasscloth – With Texture, Color, Durability

I am not fond of grasscloth, for many reasons – Read my blog page on the right.

So here’s an alternative that I love. It’s made of embossed vinyl, so it has a textured surface and a tri-toned color finish, which people are loving right now. The vinyl composition makes it practically impervious to water, fingerprints, toiletries, and little boys with bad aim. 🙂 Being commercial-grade, it is also durable, so it will hold up to dings and bangs. And it has a woven fabric backing, so it will strip off the wall easily when its time to redecorate.

This wallpaper pattern is called Bankun Raffia, and comes in 30+ colors. It’s made by Thibaut Designs, and was bought at below retail price from Dorota Hartwig at Sherwin-Williams in the Rice Village. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.  (713) 529-6515

Banged Edges – Makes Wallpaper Unusable

Shame on the UPS / FedEx guy for hurling this carton of wallpaper from one end of the truck down to the ground. (“allegedly” 🙂 ) However it happened, the ends of three of the five bolts of wallpaper were banged up, dented, and damaged.

Often, with paper, these damaged edges will flatten out on the wall once the paste is dried. But this “Woods” pattern by Cole & Son is printed on a thick, spongy non-woven material. It will not flatten out like a paper will. These dents and dings are likely to show on the wall. That’s a dent and a ding every 6″ or so, all the way down the wall – a full 9 1/2 feet.

In this case, a full 10′ strip from each bolt was unusable. The homeowner could have reordered more paper, but that would have caused a delay in getting the room done, a domino-effect with scheduling other contractors, more labor costs, more paper and shipping costs, etc.

I did a lot of plotting and measuring and calculating. In the end, I had to pull a lot of tricks out of my hat, but I was be able to finish the room without any banged edges in any visible areas.