I wanted to center this wallpaper pattern so the palm tree / banana leaves would fall nicely over the sink and in between the light sconces. That took a lot of measuring, plotting, planning, and time, But it gives the wall – and the whole room – a nicely balanced feel. Unfortunately, due to the dimensions of the room and the width of the wallpaper, it also led to some difficult, time consuming, and downright PITA logistics. Oh, and ate up a lot of wallpaper, too. For starters, note the narrow gap on the left that needs to be filled with wallpaper. That 1″ wide strip along the linen cabinet requires a full 7′ length of wallpaper. That’s about 12 sq ft of wallpaper needed to cover the 1/4 sq ft of gap. Moral: Always buy a little extra paper! Note: I did other sections of the room before going back to fill in this gap, so was able to use a scrap from another area, rather than cut up a new 7′ long piece. Here it is with that 1″ wide strip pieced in. Arrrgh! Here’s another one. A gap between a strip of wallpaper and the door molding, that tapers (thanks to un-plumb walls) from 1/4″ down to nothing. Thankfully, here again, I avoided cutting up a 7′ long strip of wallpaper by using scraps. No pic of the finished placement.
OK, so this master bathroom suffered a water leak, and the plumber had to cut through the drywall in the potty room in order to access the shower fixtures. Here the contractor has replaced the cut-out piece of Sheetrock. He did a really nice job. For the most part. Of course, he didn’t bother to remove the wallpaper before doing his repairs. This is vinyl paper (thick, slick, slippery, backing absorbs moisture) and really should have been removed first. But I was able to work around the patched-in area.The prep for this small room was a lot more involved than I anticipated, and required an extra day. Too complicated to get into, but there were two layers of wallpaper, and no primer by either of the previous installers. Original install dates back to the ’80’s. It took me a day and a half just to do the prep on this small commode room. The room finished. Note the stripes centered nicely on that back wall. The pattern and material were chosen to coordinate with the green stripes in the main area of the master bathroom. Kill point (final corner) over the door. I “shrank” some sections in order to get even widths and maintain the pattern repeat and match.The plumbing problem also damaged an area on this wall outside the water closet. So this area around the door needed to be replaced. The homeowners didn’t have any left over paper, so they chose something similar in color, style, and composition to the green striped paper you see to the right. Here is that transition door wall finished. We decided to use the stripe to define the ‘break’ between the two patterns. The alternative would have been placing the stripe against the door molding … but I felt that would be too repetitive, plus it would have left a cut-off section of flowers running along the side of the green stripe, and same on the opposite side of the door frame. And, yes, the wall definitely is not straight, square, or plumb. And here is that opposite side of the door frame, with the stripe running nicely along the shower tile. Some overlapping was involved in this job. Since the wallpaper is vinyl, and vinyl is slick, you need a special paste to be able to grab ahold of the glossy surface. These days, I sure don’t use often border paste, also sometimes called VOV or Vinyl Over Vinyl . But I was mighty glad to find this 10+ year old container deep in the bowels of my van. Still fresh and sticky, too!Besides borders not being popular today, these “satin” and “silk” look wallpapers are not very common. But this is exactly what the homeowners were looking for, to coordinate with the existing, 30-year-old paper in their master bath. Saved them having to replace all the wallpaper in both rooms! This paper is very economical, too. The couple shopped with Dorota at the Sherwin-Williams in the Rice Village, and she was able to track down the perfect material, pattern, and color. Now, aside from all the positive things I just said about this paper in this current application, I do want to make clear that I am not at all fond of this type material. Without getting into a long schpiel here, please click and read the page link to the right “Stay Away From Pre-Pasted Paper-Backed Solid Vinyl …. ” I will also add that I’ve developed a technique to work with these materials, and so far the installs, including today’s, have been going nicely. One double roll bolt had some of these blue mark printing defects running through about half of it. Luckily, most of these were on a section of paper that was cut off in order to turn a corner, so was discarded and not put on the wall. Exclusive Wallcoverings is the manufacturer. Usually I work with their non-woven or traditional paper products, which are quite nice. The home is in the West University area of Houston.
Accent wall primed and ready for wallpaper.Finished! The pattern is nicely centered on the wall, both horizontally and vertically. I love the way the colors in the wallpaper work with the moss green in the floor tile. To the left, the wall continues into the bathroom. The homeowner wanted the wallpaper in the laundry area only, and not in the bathroom. We decided it made sense to stop the pattern at the edge of the door molding, and in the short 5″ high area over the door. At first I trimmed the left edge of the strip vertically the same as the design that was running down along the side of the door molding. But I didn’t like the little triangles of background off-white against the color of the wall paint (not shown). So I got creative and cut the paper off along the zig-zag lines of the wallpaper pattern. This way, the transition looks a little more planned and logical.I told the mom that it looks like her kids took finger paints to the walls!Manufacturer is Ottoline . This non-woven material had body, but was flexible and soft. It was a delight to work with. I chose to paste the paper , but you can install this by the paste the wall method, too.
I have to cover 15″ width of wall with a strip of wallpaper that is 27″ wide. Working with that 27″ wide strip and pushing it into the corner, and getting paste all over the woodwork, and trying to not get creases in the paper … all very difficult.My solution is to trim the wallpaper to fit the corner. Here the strip has already been cut, pasted, and booked (folded pasted-side-to-pasted-side). I’ve determined that I want the new strip to be 15″ wide. This will allow enough to cover the wall space, plus the 1/2″ inside the little space between the wall and the door trim. Because wallpaper expands when it gets wet with paste, to get an accurate measurement, I’m trimming after the strip has been cut, pasted, and booked for a few minutes, and has expanded to its maximum. This is called wet trimming. Alternately, dry trimming is when you measure and trim an unpasted and unfolded strip. My straightedge is set at 15″ from the left edge of the wallpaper. I’ve used a single edge razor blade to make the cut. Here is the strip in position on the wall. I’m using a plastic trapezoid squeegee wallpaper smoother to push the right edge into the small space between the wall and the door molding. You can see how nicely the wallpaper wraps around the corner and tucks into that narrow space. The pattern is called Garden Party and is by Rifle Paper, which is made by York, one of my favorite companies.
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