Using One Strip to Cover Two Areas Saves Wallpaper

This wallpaper is 20″ wide . My next strip to the left needs to be 20″ wide above the window – but only 1.5″ wide down the side of the window. I hate to use a whole 6′ long strip for this area. Because, as you can see, most of the strip will be where the window is, and will be cut off and thrown away.

But here’s a plan. The same thing is happening on the right side of the wall, on the window to the right. About 10″ of the wallpaper has extended over the window, leaving about 10″ of the lower portion to be cut off and thrown into the trash.
NNo! Since I need a 1.5″ width of a right edge to finish my area on the left side of the wall (see previous photo), I can use this discarded lower 10″ of wallpaper to cover that 1.5″ to the left.

Planning ahead and measuring carefully, I removed the lower section of wallpaper that would have been hanging over the window / shutters . I left plenty of overlap to allow for trimming along the top and along side the window molding. Added bonus – because I’m now not wrestling a 20″ wide strip of paper next to this window and shutters, it keeps a lot of paste from slopping onto the window molding and shutters .
zin this photo, you see the 10″ wide strip I’ve removed. And also the 1.5″ wide strip from the left right edge, that will be put against the strip to the left.

Here’s my 1.5″ wide strip.

And here’s where I’m going to put it. Note that I cut a short strip to fit over the window . It’s 20″ wide – the width of the roll of wallpaper . I cut it long enough to come down the side of the window to where there’s a design element – in this case, a horizontal branch – to disguise the juncture of these two pieces of wallpaper .

About to go into place .

Positioned. Note the overlap of the branch, trimmed along the lines of the motif. This makes the overlap way less noticeable than a straight horizontal patch, or even a splice.
Note: I don’t like to splice / double cut in situations like these – cuts into the wall surface below and can cause the paper to come away from the wall. I don’t mind overlaps in these situations. They’re up high where no one can see, and also much stronger and more stable than a butted edge .

Teimming off excess along the window molding / trim .

Doone!

The tree and leaf pattern is called Twining and is by Graham and Brown . Like most of their materials, it’s a non-woven material and can be installed by pasting the wall – although I usually paste the paper . It is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate . The seams are invisible .

Finishing Touch to an Exercise Room Remodel

This is a detached room with separate entrance adjoining a home in the Rice Village neighborhood of Houston. It could be use as a home office, but the lady of the house has claimed it as her private space, complete with exercise equipment and large TV. 🙂

She was originally looking at a Farrow & Ball pattern, but after I explained my disappointments with the quality of that brand (do a Search here), I was pleased that she changed to this design by a more reliable company.

This pattern is called “Bananas,” and is by Graham & Brown. They are one of the first companies to start using a non-woven substrate, which they put their vinyl top layer onto. They’ve created a really nice product.

The substrate has a lot of fiberglass, rendering it dimensionally-stable, meaning that it won’t expand when wet with paste nor shrink when it dries. It will also strip off the wall easily when it’s time to redecorate.

In this case, I used the paste-the-wall method, which you can do with the non-wovens, and which saved me lugging in my huge work table.

In the third photo, I have cut my strips and placed them along the wall in the odd-even order in which they will be hung. Before I start, I will re-roll the strips backwards, so the backing is facing out. This helps reduce the “curl” or “memory” of the paper that wants to retain it’s rolled-up shape. And it helps keep the surface of the paper from bopping into the pasted wall. I secured the rolled-up strips with elastic hairbands from the dollar store.

Pasting the wall is a very clean way to work, because no paste gets onto the moldings or ceiling, and no paste sticks to the excess paper that is trimmed off at the ceiling and floor – less mess to clean up.

In the fourth photo, I have positioned my first strip with the design centered in the middle of the wall, using my red light laser level as a guide to keep the strip plumb.

Balancing the Pattern in a Bookcase

A little tricky and time consuming, but fun, to plot the layout so this wallpaper pattern was centered in each bookcase, and also on the wall as a unit.

This is a Super Fresco Easy Wallpaper by Graham and Brown

Manufacturers Can’t Cut Their Paper Straight

See the little bit of gapping in both these photos? In some areas, the wallpaper strips butted together nicely; in others, there were gaps.  (The pattern mis-match is another issue, and is addressed in another post.)

Thisgapping/overlapping is pretty common, because most manufacturers can’t cut their papers absolutely straight. In fact, I once called a manufacturer and asked why they didn’t cut their striped papers along the stripes, because then you would never see a seam. The reply was that they can’t guarantee that they can cut the paper straight!

In this case, the gaps were a bit more noticeable than usual, because the paper was made from a non-woven substrate, which is one of the new “green” innovations dreamed up by manufacturers of late. These papers are also attractive to DIY’ers because they strip off the wall in one piece. But they are thick and unpliable, which makes it difficult to push seams together or manipulate the paper to minimize this gapping.

So, you are left with small gaps here and there between strips. In this case, in a kid’s bathroom, with a busy family that’s not too picky, it’s not a big deal. But with a darker paper or a more fastidious client, these gaps could be cause for concern.

This is an Amy Butler design #50-152 for Graham and Brown wallpapers.

A Jolt of Color in a Teen Girl’s Bathroom

This fun wallpaper is by Graham & Brown, pattern #50-152

20.5, 27, & 10

Aviso:  Somewhat technical.  But it will give you a feel for what mental gymnastics we paperhangers go through every day.

There are two standard widths for wallpaper – 20.5″ and 27.” The 20.5″ wide bolts are 33′ long, and the 27″ wide ones are 27′ long; they both contain the same number of square feet, which is 56 (but you allow for only 44, due to waste in matching the pattern, trimming at the ceiling and floor, banged up ends, etc.).

Sometimes, the amount of paper you need to buy has less to do with square footage and more to do with the number of drops you can get out of a double roll (bolt).

On a job I’m doing this week, one narrow accent wall at the top of a stair landing, it’s a relatively small square footage – about 50. Since there are about 44 USEABLE square feet on each double roll, normally I would tell the homeowner to buy two double rolls.

But, trying to save the homeowner some money, as well as avoid unnecessary waste, I counted how many strips would be needed.  The wall is 45″ wide by 10’1″ high, and the wallpaper pattern she was looking at is packaged 27″ wide and 27′ long.  Two 27″ strips would be plenty wide enough to cover the width of the wall, and I could easily get those two 10′ 5″ strips (allowing 2″ for trimming at top and at bottom) out of the 27′ long double roll, with 6 feet left for matching the pattern, placing the main element of the pattern at a nice point on the wall, etc.  So, all she needed to buy was one double roll.

BUT…. When I got to work yesterday, it turns out that the paper that was ordered was not 27″ wide, but instead it was 20.5″ wide.  Now, this could pose a problem.  Two 20.5″ wide pieces side by side only equal 41″, and I had 45″ of wall to cover.  However, since the paper is narrower, each bolt is also longer, in this case, 33′.  Sounds good, right?  I should be able to get my three 10’5″ strips out of that 33′ long bolt, right?

WRONG!  Now we’re trying to get 31.5 feet out of a 33 foot long bolt of paper.  It sounds plausible.  But remember – we have to match the pattern, and not just on two strips, as with the 27″ wide goods, but now we have to match three strips, which takes up considerably more paper than matching just two.  And what about the banged edges, or ends of the roll that have tape plastered on them, that cause me to routinely cut off and throw away several inches or more?

In addition, I like to have the flexibility to be able to put a particular figure from the pattern at the top of the wall.  In other words, if the pattern has a monkey on it, you don’t want to have to cut off the monkey’s head!  Keeping the monkey’s head attached to his torso could eat up quite a bit of paper – and we have precious little paper in this case.

Luckily, this particular pattern is pretty much a bunch of swirls.  While I would like to put a whole swirl at the top of the wall, I quickly decided that it was more important to get ANY part of the pattern on the wall, rather than worry about a half swirl 10′ up.  It’s also not important to center any particular swirl on the wall, so that frees up a little paper, too.

This particular pattern spans the entire width of the paper.  If, instead, it were smaller and there were two or more of the pattern side by side on the strip, I would have the option of  splitting the strip vertically, being careful to keep an absolutely straight edge, and then splicing the pieces together, to make a full-length strip, which is what I did two weeks ago with some grey paper that had defects in the printing (see previous post).  Unfortunately, that is not an option in this case.

Depending on the length of the pattern repeat, I MIGHT be able to get the three strips I need.  With it so close, the only way to tell was to unroll the paper, measure out each strip, figure the repeat for all three strips and both matched seams – and keep my fingers crossed!

After carefully unrolling the entire double roll, measuring, marking, plotting, my consensus is that there WILL be enough paper to get my three strips.  There will be a lot of waste – 16.5″ wide by 10’5″ long, because the third strip will be only 4″ wide, but that’s how it goes.  Left on the roll, after I take those three strips, if I figured and measured correctly, we will have about four whole inches left!

Tomorrow I hang the paper, so tomorrow will tell!

Here is the pattern, by Graham and Brown:  http://www.grahambrown.com/us/product/20-010/Saville%3A+Black+Wallpaper

Metallics are Hot!

Metallic papers are all the rage right now. I’ve done a hot pink damask (see the Gallery on my website http://www.wallpaperladyhouston.com/ ) on a silver background, and then two months later the same paper in a black on gold. I did a silver metalic cork in a powder room, and then a month later did the same paper with a gold metalic damask overlay in a River Oaks dining room.

 

In April in the mirrored area surrounding a bar’s glass shelves I put up York #670103 from their Bling collection – black metalic background with gold and hot pink balloons  http://interiorandgarden.com/bling-32.aspx –

More:

Earlier in the year, in a young familie’s dining room, one wall in York Como Circle glass beaded paper swirly circles by York:    http://www.yorkwall.com/CGI-BIN/lansaweb?webapp=WPRDDET1+webrtn=LWBOE07D1+ml=LANSA:XHTML+partition=YWP+language=ENG

Last week, for a young couple in the Heights, their newly-renovated bathroom, an Art Deco style suited to their older cottage home:  Graham and Brown’s Cinema  http://www.grahambrown.com/us/product/31-253/Cinema+-+Midnight

Two weeks ago in a young single guy’s bedroom just east of downtown, an accent wall in the bedroom in charcoal, taupe, and silver:  Graham and Brown Hicks  http://www.grahambrown.com/us/product/30-161/Hicks%3A+Taupe-Charcoal-Silver

Frames Wallpaper by Graham and Brown

The April 2011 Issue of Family Circle magazine had a spot on this unique wallpaper. Interestingly, I have intalled this same paper in a client’s home, and an interior designer whom I know had it in her previous house.

The paper is white and has what look like various sizes and shapes of picture frames drawn on it by hand with a black ink pen. The idea is that you then hang your own framed or unframed pictures or snapshots in the openings. CUTE!

grahambrown.com

And here’s the paper itself:

http://www.grahambrown.com/us/product/52050/Frames+%3A+Black+%26+White+Wallpaper