Meg Braff Bad Printing Job

The homeowner very much loves this simple, tone-on-tone shore bird pattern for her dining room – just the top , above the chair rail / wainscoting. Here I’m plotting where to best situate the pattern on the wall , between the chair rail and ceiling , while keeping the most important pattern elements and motifs intact . (no cutting off birds’ heads at the ceiling , nor at the wainscoting ) I’m also checking the pattern match .

It quickly became evident that the pattern match, as laid out by the factory, was incorrect . Match it at the bottom (by my thumb ), but as you move up , the pattern goes a little out of whack . This is actually not all that bad , and is considered acceptable – the industry standard allows for up to 1/8″ – 3/8″ mis-match .
Hand-trim screen-print materials such as this are particularly notable for pattern mis-matches .
For the record, they’re also known for curling edges , puckering , waffling , and other issues that make them difficult to hang , as well as questionability as to how long they’ll perform on your wall before wanting to resort to that curling at the seams .

More pattern mis-matching .

But the situation got worse . These high-end screen prints often come with an unprinted selvedge edge that has to be trimmed off by hand , with a straightedge (the blue metal thing ), a razor blade – and a steady hand.
If the trim guide marks printed on the material by the company are ” off ,” then you’re supposed to ” trim to the pattern .” This means that you find the design element on the left edge of the paper and then find the corresponding element on the right side, and place your straightedge so that your trim cuts will result in the two edges matching up perfectly. (Or at least within that 1/8″ -3/8″)
At this point, the white lines in the design – let’s call them ‘grapes’ – are abutting my blue straightedge , and should meet up perfectly with the corresponding white lines on the grapes on the opposite side of the subsequent strip of wallpaper.

But, unfortunately, with this material, that didn’t work. If I lined my straightedge up with the pattern design elements , as in the photo above this one, by the time I moved down a few feet , as you can see in this photo , the pattern begins moving away from the straightedge . The white grape outlines do not butt up against my straightedge.
The likely reason is that this material has been printed on the bias . That means that the artisan at the factory got his screens out of whompus , for lack of a better term.

” Trim to the pattern .” OK. So here I’m placing my straightedge at 1/8″ away from the ” hook ” in this design .

Still the same distance from the “hook.” But the white lines are starting to move away from the straightedge.

Here they’ve moved farther off. With this design, from a distance , you could maybe live with the white lines not meeting up perfectly.
But what you couldn’t find acceptable is that the tan area between these white elements would be growing wider diagonally as you move both up and down the wall. Look at the photo. You can see the tan area growing larger .
But it gets worse as it spreads farther … As that tan section grows wider like a “V” or a wedge as you move up or down the wall, it additionally pushes the design motifs at the top of the ceiling or at top of the wainscoting either up or down along the horizontal lines of the ceiling and wainscoting .
So not only do you get a widening tan line between each seam , you also get the birds’ heads moving up or down from where they’re supposed to be positioned below the ceiling or above the wainscoting .
I spent an hour and a half trying different placements and trimming methods . I knew the client loved this pattern and that she was willing to accept reasonable flaws in the pattern match and positioning.
But even given that, I wanted her to have a good looking dining room – not one with uneven spacing between strips, or grossly irregular positioning along the horizontal lines in the room.
I even consulted with several (five!) “high-end” installer buddies of mine. No one had a ” tip ” for making an improperly printed design fall correctly on the wall. In fact, all five of them said it couldn’t be done.
I determined that this material was unhangable.
As mentioned, I tried to find an installer buddy who could make this work and get this client’s dining room done in time for Thanksgiving dinner. But no one wanted to take it on.
I don’t know if the manufacturer will replace the paper or refund the $ spend. Manufacturers are usually keen on saying that “it’s the installer’s fault .” I can say that I’ve had similar issues with Meg Braff papers in the past.
The homeowner really loves this pattern. It’s possible – but not assured – that purchasing the same design but in a different run will yield a better factory printing job.
Just a note that printing defects , curling seams , wrinkling / quilting , and more, are somewhat common with hand-screened wallpapers . And here’s another reason why I’m happiest when clients stick with middle-of-the-road, or slightly upper priced , wallpaper options . Email me and request my Info Pack (or see the link on the right) for more information and brand name recommendations.
Sad to bow out and leave this client with an unpapered room, and no viable solution or direction . But better that than to take on something that I can’t assure will look good. I hope she tells me what she ends up doing and how all this turns out.

Defects in Today’s Wallpaper

Pattern mis-match at seams.

Faint vertical lines running through both the left and right sides of an entire bolt.

Brand is Exclusive Wallcoverings. This is a non-woven material. It’s rare to have defects from this company.

Because of the configurations of this room, I was able to weedle and deedle and place these flaws in areas where they were not noticeable. This took a lot more time, but yielded a pleasing finished look.

Printing Defects with Schumacher – Again

Have I mentioned that I dislike the brand Schumacher? Well, yes I have! – plenty of times. This ‘high-end’ brand seems to have a problem with their quality control, especially when it comes to printing defects.

So – here we go again. I lost a day of work, and another homeowner didn’t get her room decorated.

Two things are going on here. First, along the seam running down the center of the photo, you can see that the pattern matches in some areas but not in others. Obviously, the material was either mis-printed, or mis-trimmed at the factory.

It’s kinda a busy pattern, and you might not notice this at a distance. But – at Schumacher’s prices, why accept flaws like this?

The next is probably an even more noticeable defect … Hard to see in the photo, but this would show up very jarringly on the wall. Look closely and you will notice a slight color difference between the two strips. The strip on the right is darker than the strip on the left.

On the wall, this would present as sort of vertical strips every 27″ apart.

I was lucky to notice these issues before cutting any of the paper. I told the homeowner to send it back.

I don’t believe that a different run will solve these issues, because the problem is inherent to the printing press or trimmer. The homeowner will have to select a whole new wallpaper pattern (and hopefully a different, better, manufacturer).

Geometric Pattern in a Powder Room – Flooded Home

This home in the Energy Corridor area of Houston was flooded during Hurricane Harvey last August. A lower section of drywall had been cut out and replaced. The contractor’s wallpaper hanger put up this identical pattern. The homeowner wasn’t pleased with the job. To be honest, the installer did a pretty good job, in a room that was very difficult to hang. There were a few minor things that could have been done differently.

But what bothered the homeowner most was that the walls had not been smoothed properly before the paper went up. With that west-facing window blasting angled sunlight into the room, those irregular surface flaws were quite obvious. See the top two photos. (You may need to enlarge them.)

I stripped off the original paper and skim-floated the walls to make them as perfectly smooth as possible. I followed with a primer. (The previous installer had not primed the walls.) See third photo for walls that are ready to go.

This room was a major bugger bear to hang. For starters, there was a large metal mirror that protruded about 4″ from the wall, that could not be removed. This was directly over a pedestal sink. (The previous installer had the luxury of hanging the room before the sink was in place.) It’s hard to explain, but the logistics of winding wallpaper around these three-dimensional objects, preventing the paper from tearing, having the ridged and unforgiving pattern match on all planes, keeping the edges plumb, and keeping the edges straight so they would butt up with the next strip, all while fighting edges of the wallpaper that wanted to curl backwards, were extremely difficult.

In addition, the corners of the room were out of plumb, which pretty much guaranteed pattern mis-matches in all the corners. On a wild floral pattern, no one would notice. But with a geometric pattern like this trellis, the eye would catch even minor mis-matches.

Compounding all of that was the fact that nothing in the room was centered. The window was not in the center of the wall, nor was the toilet – and they were not aligned with each other, either. The sink was not centered on the mirror, the faucet was not in the center of the sink, and the spout was off-set from the handle. I finally decided to balance the trellis design on the mirror, and it did fall perfectly symmetrically on either side. The kicker is that the room is so narrow that you can’t stand back far enough to appreciate all my efforts. 😦

I probably spent 40 minutes plotting how to tackle the first wall, and then a full two hours hanging the first two strips (the ones around the mirror and sink) (sorry – the room was too small to get good pics). The longer I worked, the more appreciation I had for the previous installer and the job she had done.

In the end, the walls I had prepped were smooth, and there were no objectionable bumps or gouges showing under the paper. I pulled some tricks out of my hat and got the pattern to match in the corners pretty darned well.

That window with it’s danged strong light still was a foe, though. The wallpaper seams butted together just about perfectly. Yet because of the way the edges curled back when they got wet with paste, I fought to keep them down tight to the wall. Once dried, they were nice and flat. I was pretty content. But when the sun moved and light came through that window from a different angle – some of those seams looked positively horrid! The light was casting shadows and making it look like the seams were overlapped. Yet they were perfectly flat. The inclination is to go over and over the seams with various tools and try to “force” them to lie flatter – but this can burnish or otherwise damage the wallpaper or the underlying surface. The good news is that as the sun moved, and as the louvers on the shutters were adjusted, the shadows disappeared and the seams looked good.

Let’s hope that the homeowners see this room only in the most positive light. 🙂

This wallpaper is by York Wall, one of my favorite brands. Interestingly, the paper came with the correct label, but the instruction insert was for another line made by this same company. I’m glad that I was familiar with both products, and had the sense to disregard the info that was not relative.

EDIT:  Fast forward to 2021 … the homeowner was ready to redecorate, so I got to strip this off and hang something completely different.  Do a Search on ” Katie Kime powder room “

Nicely Packaged Wallpaper – For a Change

Digital Image

There can be all kinds of flaws and defects with wallpaper, but mostly I complain about banged up edges, which happen during shipping. Most manufacturers put ship their merchandise in cardboard boxes with no padding. Some even send it in paper envelopes, with no cushioning whatsoever.

Today, I arrived at the job site and saw this. Wow!

Maybe someone in the Powers That Be got the message ? … These four double roll bolts came packaged in a custom-sized box, with just enough room for bubble wrap on top, on bottom, and on either end. That bubble wrap effectively did the job to cushion the ends of the wallpaper from dings during shipping.

Way to go, Schumacher! 🙂

What Do Grasscloth and Dog Food Have in Common?

When they’re made in China, they can be of POOR QUALITY.

I’ve been doing a lot of grasscloth lately, and every now and then we run into problems, almost always with the very finely textured goods with very thin grass reeds.

The problem is that the dyes in the paper come off if they get the slightest bit of moisture on them. Well, in installing wallpaper, it’s vital to keep tools and hands clean, and that means rinsing rags and hands frequently. In addition, you have to remove paste from seams and woodwork, which means wiping with a damp cloth or sponge. In some cases, simply putting weight on the grasscloth once it’s pasted, for instance, to slide it around into position on the wall, can cause moisture to come through the stock and mar the surface.

Most grasscloth products do not have this problem. In fact, you can get them as wet as you want, they’ll look horrible, and when they dry, they look perfectly fine.

We’ve decided that the problem is due to a recent change in manufacturers of these papers. Recently, some companies bought and sold other companies, and in the process, manufacture of some goods moved from the U.S. to China.

Now, just like the dog food and glass bakeware, it’s believed that the problems are coming from poor quality in manufacturer.

A darned shame, because it’s so easy to make a quality product. What’s even more maddening is that I make a point of contacting the sales reps to let them know about these flaws, in hopes that the message will be relayed to the designer and the manufacturer. Unfortunately, it appears that the message hasn’t gotten through. Or that they simply don’t care.

The bottom line for my readers is, before choosing a grasscloth, please talk to me (or Dorota – see “Where to Buy Wallpaper in Houston” on the right of this page) to see which brands are good and which have been problematic.

Defects in Wallpaper!

I prepped a bathroom yesterday, and this morning got set up to install some beautiful chocolate brown paper with a mottled silver lattice-and-fleur-de-lis pattern.

While rolling it out on my table, I noticed a small-but-noticeable flaw. There a very slight abraision all along most of the left edge of most of the double rolls, leaving a white edge showing. This happens from time to time, and it’s not usually such a big deal. But on a dark paper like that rich brown, the exposed white on the left edge of each strip butted up against the dark brown on the right edge of the next strip would be very visible, in my opinion, catching your eye every 27″ (the width of the paper) down the entire length of each strip.

This is a high-end Thibaut paper, and generally a dependable brand of good quality. But
I have been encountering problems with this brand more and more recently, and that’s a shame. It stresses the client, delays the job, and messes up the installation schedule for other clients.

People pay a lot for the paper, and for labor, and they’re going to live with the finished room for many years, so they should have as perfect a job as possible. When I detect defects, I usually won’t put it up.

I recommended that the designer return the paper, and have Thibaut replace it with a different run. Workers at the company should HAND CHECK the new paper before sending it out. They should roll out several yards from several different rolls and butt them against each other, to be sure the new run is free of the same defect.