Tropical Foliage Re-Do – Peel & Stick Debacle UnDone

Re my previous post about an under-the-stairs powder room that the homeowners attempted to install an argumentative peel & stick material … here is the finished room after I stripped off the P&S, smoothed the walls, and hung the new wallpaper choice. I engineered to place the sole philodendron leaf down the center of the ceiling.

Where the under-the-stairs ceiling met the area over the door, the two surfaces came together in a very sharp angle. It was difficult to get in there and work, and to get the paper tight into the joint. Fingers can be too fat, so this is where tools can squeeze in there and save the day. This is also my kill point . Do a search here on that term for more info. A long story and maybe an hour or more of work, but you will note that there are no pattern mis-matches here. The homeowners were out of town, so I felt unpressured and could take as long as I needed to make these three areas look seamless.

I love the hand-painted, water colory look of this pattern.

This photo shows the joint where the walls meet the sloped under-the-stairs ceiling. A wallpaper pattern will never match perfectly in these situations. At first, I tried a few tricks to ” fool the eye .” But I decided it looked crisper and less distracting to just trim the two papers where they met. Here, we had the advantage that the tropical foliage pattern was busy enough that, I mean, really, when you step three feet back, who’s gonna notice a minor pattern mis-match, anyway? The pattern does match in the corners on either side behind the toilet, though (see photo). Even though this only 4.5″ high, it does lend subtle continuity to the room.

When I see Candice Olson, I fast forward to glitz and glam and glitter and shimmer. Here her tropical foliage design is a bit more main stream. York is the mother company, and I love their products.

This home is in the Heights neighborhood of central Houston.

Pewter Cork in West U. Powder Room

Before

Finished

Looks super with antiqued brass faucet and handles. Notice metallic flecks of copper within the pewter surface.

Looking up at corner over the toilet and under the stairs. Notice that the material is made up of 7″ squares of cork. A 3′ x 3′ swatch of ceiling was left white; the dark cork material over every square inch of space would have made the room dark and claustrophobic.

When it’s got her name on it, you know it’s going to be glam and glitz! The Candice Olson line is made by York, one of my favorite brands.

At first, I didn’t think the contemporary feel of this metallic wallpaper would look good with the homeowner’s traditional style furniture, including this family heirloom console vanity base. But once the room was finished – it’s darned handsome!

Hard to see in the second photo, but there was a gap of only about 1/4″ on either side of the granite countertop. And about 1″ between the wooden cabinet and the wall. It definitely took some gymnastics and ingenuity to get the wallpaper into those spaces and smoothed against the wall.

Cork is a natural material, and you should expect some inconsistencies in color, pattern, and texture. It’s also lots thicker than most papers, so seams will be more visible.

The home is in the West University neighborhood of central Houston.

Stormy Texture on Master Bedroom Accent Wall

This homeowner is all about glitz and sparkle and glitter, and originally she sought something of that ilk for the accent wall behind the headboard in their master bedroom. But she realized that if she toned down the wall, then the other aspects of the room (furniture, bedding, artwork) would stand out more.

So she went for this. I think it looks like roiling storm clouds rolling across the room. There is just enough glitter to make the wall sparkle in a subtle glow.

The pattern is by Exclusive Wallcoverings. It is an embossed (textured – see close-up shot) vinyl on a non-woven backing. I used the paste-the-wall installation method.

In the “before” photo, you see me rolling out the bolts to get a bead on the design, as well as the pattern match and placement, and measure out and cut my strips.

With PTW, it works best to roll your strips backward (from bottom up, and with the substrate facing out). Then, when you take these to the pasted wall, there is little chance of paste getting on the face of the wallpaper.

The home is in the Heights neighborhood of Houston.

Faces in Unexpected Places

How’s this for something no one else is gonna have?! The homeowner of this Galleria-area home in Houston is a big-personality gal, recently divorced, and she wants her new home to reflect who she is. Everything in the house that could have glitter, shimmer, mirror, or glitz does – including the dog bed and the kitchen backsplash.

This wallpaper in the adjoining powder room (with a huge crystal chandelier!) fits right in with that new life.

This is a sort of mural, composed of rectangular panels about 3′ wide x 2′ high. It was bought on-line, and came with no information or installation instructions.

It was a paper substrate, and was meant to be butted at the seams, as opposed to overlapped, as many mural panels are. After experimenting, I found that a powdered wheat or cellulose paste hydrated the paper best, and that a little of my traditional wallpaper paste added to the mix helped hold the paper tightly to the wall and minimize shrinkage as the panels dried.

The paper curled badly when it was wet with the paste (see third photo), which made it difficult to paste it, book it, and then get it to the wall.

It also expanded a lot when it got wet – almost an inch in each direction. Uneven expansion meant that it developed large wrinkles and warps that were difficult to remove.

In addition, the walls were bowed and uneven in the corners, the walls were not plumb, the ceiling was not level, the crown molding was at different heights on different walls, and we didn’t have a lot of paper to play with.

It took a lot of work to keep the pattern matched as well as possible in the corners, to keep the pattern running at the right point below the crown molding, to eliminate the aforementioned wrinkles, to butt the panels, to minimize white showing at the seams due to the panels drying and shrinking, the paper getting saturated and tearing or dragging when I tried to trim it, and lots more challenges.

All this could have been easier if the manufacturer had chosen a better substrate to print on. But – well, hey, we’ve got a digital printer, so let’s just dig up some paper stock, print cool designs on it, and market it as wallpaper.

Actually, this material worked out pretty well in this small powder room. But I would not want to paper a large, wide wall with it.

Most companies who make murals like this, on this type of thin paper substrate, allow for the edges to be overlapped about 3/8″ at each seam. This allows the installer to make adjustments for wonky walls and ceilings, and it eliminates the gapping at seams as paper dries and shrinks. It does, however, leave a ridge along each seam where the edges are overlapped.

Overall, though, I was not unhappy with this product in this room. And working out all the challenges was mighty fun. I was glad to have a nice, quiet, empty house to do all this in. All in all, this medium-sized powder room that I had prepped the weekend before, took me nine hours to hang.

Textured, Copper Colored Paper on a Closet Ceiling

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

I don’t wallpaper many ceilings, but when I do, I prefer small areas that are not too high. Here is a closet in a home in Bellaire (Houston) that has been decked out to fit the needs (lots of handbags and shoes!) and taste (glam, glam glam!) of the homeowner.

The room boasts some fancy wall light sconces with large crystals, and this huge chandelier with the same mega-crystals. The only thing that could stand up to all this glitz and glamor is a very dynamic wallpaper!

So here you have the perfect foil (pun intended 🙂 ) – a deeply textured, copper / gold embossed vinyl wallpaper. Light bounces off the metallic surface and brightens the room. But shadows are caught by the deep texture of the material, and the perimiter of the ceiling holds shadowy secrets.

This wallpaper is a textured embossed vinyl on a non-woven substrate, and is by Clarke & Clarke, a British manufacturer. The interior designer for the project is Martha Holmes, of MPH Designs, in Houston. I have worked with Martha for nearly two decades, and really love her classic-yet-livable style, and find her upbeat personality a joy to work with.