Artichokes In Master Bathroom

This bathroom is part of an addition to a 1940 home on the near east side of Houston. The drywall is new. As I requested, the painters did not apply any coatings . Here you see I’m priming the walls with my primer made specifically for wallpaper – Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime .

Done. The vanity will be pushed against this wall , and lighted mirrors will be hung over it. Keep fingers crossed that the electrician doesn’t mess up the wallpaper while installing the mirrors .

I think this pattern looks like a tapestry .

This paper went up beautifully . The seams are practically invisible from a foot away.

I love the slight raised ink texture of this surface print wallpaper .

Artichoke is made by Serena & Lily . I really like just about all of their papers .

This House is NOT Ready for Wallpaper

Two weeks before a job is to start, I send my clients a “check list” so they know how to prepare for Install Day.  It includes things like check to be sure it’s the right wallpaper pattern, how I can get into the house if the homeowner is away, how much space I need for my set-up, etc.

It also says quite clearly that all construction work has to be completed, and there needs to be electricity, light, nearby running water, and no workmen coming in while I’m working, and no workmen coming in later who might mess up the paper.

This ensures that I will have optimum working conditions (I need lights so I can see what I’m doing. I need water so I can keep your paper clean.)  And you don’t want Bubba coming to hook up a light fixture and put his sweaty hands all over the new wallpaper in the process.  Or a painter coming to touch up, who decides to “protect” the new wallpaper by putting blue tape on it.  Of course, when he removes the tape, the surface ink or  the wallpaper itself will come along with it.

Yet you would not believe how many people – innocently or desperately – tell me they are “ready” when they really are not.  Here is an example of a house that is not ready for wallpaper.  It is very likely that the paper will be damaged by tradesmen who come to “finish up.”

Baseboard is not in place.  When positioning the baseboard, it’s likely the carpenter will bang into the wallpaper.  When painting, you can bet the painter will get paint onto the new wallpaper.  Or, as mentioned above, he will use tape that, when he goes to remove it, will pull the inked surface and / or the paper itself off the wall.

Door molding is not in place.  Same issues as above.

No electrical outlet in the room.  What if I need to use a fan or heat gun?  And wallpaper will sit tighter to the wall if I can put the plate cover in place immediately.

The electrician is not finished.  This switch sticking out of the wall is just plain dangerous.  In addition, when he time comes to finish whatever it is he’s working on, he will probably put his greasy hands on the wallpaper, or lean his scratchy tool belt against the paper.

My checklist says I need clean, running water in the immediate area.  It specifically says NOT a hose in the yard.  Yet look where I had to get my water.  (I was working on the THIRD floor.)  This house had no faucets, no drains, and not even a working toilet.

Wrong Electrical Boxes for These Sconces

This is the mounting bracket for a sconce / light fixture . The fixture itself is exactly the same size as the bracket.
So it’s unfortunate that the electrician used an electrical box that is too large . As you can see, the blue box shows on both the left and right sides of the light fixture.
(I will also add that I think this light fixture is narrower than most – I suspect it was made overseas where boxes and codes are different from here.)
In addition, the blue box juts out from the wall and will create a bump under the wallpaper , plus prevent the paper from adhering tightly to the wall . The jaggedly cut drywall will leave impressions under the paper, too.

Here the plastic electrical box is recessed better into the wall. But there are still gaps on the left and right sides of the bracket.
To get the wallpaper around the brackets without gaps showing , I removed the brackets, and then brought the wallpaper in to cover the electrical junction boxes by about 1.” (no photo)
If the electrician needs more space for his wires , he can always trim the wallpaper back a little.
In the instance of the box in the top photo, there will still be wallpaper that can’t sit tight to the drywall , but once the sconce is replaced you really won’t notice.
I also had the option of leaving the mounting brackets in place and then placing the wallpaper over the metal plates. But first of all, I think this is against building Codes. And second, if the sconces are changed out later, or if someone needs to access the electrical connections, removing the mounting plates would most surely tear the wallpaper in the process.
So, best to have the wallpaper behind the plates, rather than pasted on top of them.

What’s Wrong With This Picture? My Table is Sacred!!

“Someone” (a.k.a. the homeowner) went and set something on my work table.

Folks, I can set things on my table. NO ONE ELSE can!!

Not even an innocent glass of water!

For one thing, it’s my work area, and I have all my needed tools and measurements and thought processes there. Outside items disrupt my thought process and the flow of installation.

But most important … the table has to stay CLEAN. As in PRISTINE. Any speck of grease, or ink, or oil or dirt can leave a stain that will transfer to the wallpaper. Sharp objects can cut it, and other objects can dent or scratch it.

My clients spend a lot of money for their wallpaper. Their investment shouldn’t be permanently marred because some electrician decided to dispose of his scratchy, sweat-stained wire clippings, or the wrapper from his hamburger, on the nearest surface – my work table.

The absolute worst was a homeowner himself, who walked by and casually set down a bowl from the backyard, full of GREASY CANNED DOG FOOD.

Shocking! Good Thing I Carry Electrical Tape In My Toolbox

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This house is being remodeled, and the electrician has not finished. He left these switches sticking out of the electrical box. See those screws on the side of the switches? Those are what carry the electrical current, one in and one out. If you touch one, nothing happens (theoretically). But if you touch both at the same time, a connection is made between them and you get a shock. Ouch!

Now think about trimming wet wallpaper with metal tools around switches sticking out of a box like this, with live current (what we call “hot wires) attached to them. No thanks! In fact, while I was trying to stuff the switches back into the box, there were sparks. No thanks!

So I got some electrician’s tape and wound it around the switches, covering the screws – and protecting me from the live wires!

Messy Workmen

Hiring an electrician?

I hope you like cleaning up after them – because they won’t!

I measured an under-construction home in the Heights for wallpaper today, and found messes like this under EVERY electrical box.

A Screwy Curiousity

Light fixtures come with the proper mounting plates / brackets, to attach them to the electrical box in the wall. The plates come with the correct fasteners to attach them to the holes in the electrical box.

So why then, when installing two wall sconces, did the electrician use FOUR DIFFERENT screws to attach the plates to the boxes?

I can only guess that he didn’t cover the drain in the sink, then dropped the screws down the drain, and then went digging for any old screw or bolt that he had lying around in the back of his pickup truck.

Hidden Trap Doors Covered With Wallpaper

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The top photo shows where a cut-out was made in the wall, to allow the plumbers to have access to the bathtub pipes inside the wall. The chunk of drywall they cut out has been replaced, and you can see around that the original wallpaper, which is a green grasscloth. Around that, the grasscloth has been painted tan.

The second photo shows another wall with a hinged door that allows access to some attic space behind. Let’s hope that whatever electrician or A/C guy who needs to crawl through there will be thin and trim!

The homeowners had to live with this access door in the middle of their new baby’s nursery wall. The wall was to be wallpapered, and they wanted the door to disappear as much as possible. When I got there, there was about a quarter-inch gap all around the trap door. Instead of trimming the wallpaper to the wall and to the door, which would have left a dark 1/4″ gap showing all around, I trimmed close to the trap door, and left just that little 1/4″ bit of wallpaper “flapping loose.”

You can still see the door, but it’s fairly well camouflaged, and looks much better than before.

Light Fixtures With Small Bases Are Difficult To Work Around

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On some light fixtures, the base is barely larger than the electrical box or its mounting plate, so it won’t cover any imperfections in the wall, and it’s essential that the wallpaper comes up exactly to the very edges of the mounting plate.  I often remove that mounting plate so the paper can go under it, which gives a neat look.

In this room, the light was changed from one fixture centered over the sink to two wall sconces.  The electrician had a hard time fitting the new boxes into the wall.  (It is much easier on new construction.)

There are a lot of things going on wrong with these sconce settings, but some are not visible and are difficult to explain.  It took me about an hour to figure out what was going on, and how to rectify a box that was cattywhompus in the wall – but that’s a different story.

Here you see a gap because the sconce base is too small to cover the hole for the electrical junction box.  This fixture had a larger (3/4″) gap on the other side that is not pictured.   In the next photo, the box is extra large, and extends out beyond the small sconce base.

I had to cover up those gaps to make a solid base for the wallpaper to hold on to.  In the case of the blue box, I had to smooth over the ridge caused by the thickness of the blue plastic against the wall (to prevent a ring from showing under the wallpaper, all around the fixture).

To bridge the gaps, I used a certain kind of paper, dunked in Gardz, a penetrating wall sealer that dries hard.  That essentially recreated the portion of wall that had been cut away.  Once that dried, I skim-floated over it with joint compound and then sanded smooth, to even everything out.

I used joint compound again to float all around the ridge on the blue box, and got a perfectly smooth wall.

Since I had been able to remove the mounting plate, I was able to get the wallpaper to fit under it, so no gaps showed around the base.  Then I reconnected the wires and rehung the sconces.

As you can see in the finished photo, it turned out great.

 

Electrical Box Placement Throwing A Wrench in Wallpaper Job

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Here is a double-sink vanity in a master bathroom (Photo 1). For this post, we are focusing on the right sink and light fixture. In Photo 2, the original light fixture has been removed. It was a “bar” type fixture, meaning that it had a backplate and front cover that were rectangular (bar) shaped, and you can see the outline of that by the different paint color in the Photo 2.

In Photo 2, you also see the electrical box in the wall that supplies power to this light fixture. It is not centered over the sink. That was OK, because the original light fixture was centered over the vanity, not over the individual sink. The electrical box was not centered over the sink. This could be because there is a stud in the way, or because it was centered over a previous, pre-remodel sink that was situated differently, or because the electrician was lazy.

Either way, it didn’t matter, because an extra length of electrical wire was added, and the bar fixture was long enough that it could be moved horizontally to the desired position over the sink, and it was perfectly centered and looked wonderful.

The problem came when my clients, new owners of this ’50’s era, mid century modern ranch style home, wanted to install an updated, sleeker light fixture Photo 3). This new fixture has a canopy (front plate) that is plenty large enough to cover the electrical box. But it is NOT large enough to cover a trip horizontally across the wall to a point centered over the sink.

Which is another way of saying that if this new light fixture is positioned over the sink, as the homeowners want, it will not cover the electrical box, and the electrical box will show. And plus, the connections will not meet safety codes.

This leaves the owners in the hapless position of either living with the new light fixture slightly off-center over their sink. OR they can have the electrical box moved to exactly centered over the sink.

This is sometimes more easily said than done. There may be a wall stud in the way that prevents repositioning the electrical box. If the box can’t be moved, and the electrician elects to run a wire along or through the wall, there will be cut-up Sheetrock, and patches and possibly humps in the wall. Lots more complications that electricians and Sheetrockers know that I don’t.

And it caused the homeowner to have a delay in the installation of their dream wallpaper. I can’t hang wallpaper until the box is moved and the wall is repaired. And more cost top to pay the electrician – on top of the new wallpaper, new towel bars and light fixtures, and labor to install all of this.

Probably the worst part is having the wallpaper install scheduled, then not being able to move forward, and then having to scramble to find a qualified guy who can get the lights positioned correctly, and all with a quick turn-around, so the wallpaper install can happen within a reasonable time of the original install date.

Moral of the Story: If you are going to change light fixtures (or any fixtues), it’s a good idea to do this before the new wallpaper goes up.