Powder room before. Note the blue ceiling . I applied a white pigmented wallpaper primer ( Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime ) to the walls . Done! So cheery and fun and lively! These flowers just make you smile when you walk in here!Toilet corner before. I’m grateful to the husband for removing the toilet tank, as well as the sink / vanity. This sure saved me a lot of time and squeezing into tight spots. The red square in the back is wall area that was blocked by the toilet tank, so previous painters were not able to reach that area. It had a heavy sand texture on it, which I took a little extra time to skim-float and then sand smooth. Nobody’s going to see it, but it will help the wallpaper adhere better . Toilet corner after. The corner you’re looking at was off-plumb by about 1/2″ from top to bottom, so there is a bit of a pattern mis-match as you get closer to the floor. Not a biggie with this wild pattern, plus it’s mostly hidden behind the toilet.Hard to see, but the focus of the photo is an angled wall under the stairs . The blue ceiling coordinates perfectly with the colors in the wallpaper . This is by Rifle Paper , and is called Garden Party . Every Rifle Paper I’ve hung previously has been on a non-woven substrate , and could be installed by the paste-the-wall method. The label said this was a PTW (see diagram of brush putting paste on the wall) … but it surprised me, because it was NOT! It was on a regular paper stock, and I’m betting it’s the same material that York prints its SureStrip line as well as the Spoonflower brand. I assumed the directions and diagram were correct, so first I pasted the paper and then took it immediately to the wall, with no booking time. Lo and behold, I got bubbles on the wall. This happens because the paper is absorbing moisture from the paste and expanding. With no way to escape being trapped between the paper and the wall, the moisture ” off gas es” and pushes away from the wall ,,, resulting in those bubbles. My solution was to treat the material as a traditional pasted wallpaper. So I pasted the back, folded pasted-side-to-pasted-side (called booking ), and then placed it into a black plastic trash bag for a few minutes. This allows the paper to absorb moisture from the paste, expand, and relax , all before it goes onto the wall. This is a pretty sure way to prevent the appearance of bubbles or blisters or wrinkles. The townhome is in the Highland Village / Galleria area of Houston .
Powder room before.Powder room after the introduction of various bugs, insects, critters and creepy crawlers.The homeowner loves bugs. She likes this view so much that she said she might not cover it with a mirror. Who needs a mirror in a powder room, anyway?This powder room is under the stairs, hence the sloped ceiling. The wallpaper has the look of botanical identification prints, in a dreamy shade of blue. Mind the Gap is the manufacturer, and the pattern is called Entomology. The material comes as a 3- roll / strip set. It’s a non-woven product, so you can hang it by pasting the wall. Although I usually choose to paste the paper. Interestingly, this paper was lot thinner and crisper than the black Aquafleur by the same brand I hung a couple of weeks ago. In fact, it was quite translucent. I had to not make pencil marks on the walls nor on the back of the paper, for fear they would show through the front. This stuff is also very curly – meaning that it wants to stay tightly rolled up. Two days before the install, I asked the homeowner to roll the material backward and secure with an elastic hairband, to relax the curl. This worked wonderfully, and I had nice flat sheets to work with. The pattern is essentially a mural, spread across three strips that connect to the next set of three strips. The pattern does not repeat. That means that it takes one full ” roll” for each strip. Since the rolls are 10′ long and the walls in this bathroom were less than 8′, there was more than 2′ of paper cut off and thrown away, for each of 15 strips around the room. The two 8″ high strips over the door would also have each used up a full 10′ roll. But I did a little measuring and plotting and trimming and used scraps for this area. This also enabled me to put bugs that had not been seen on any of the other strips up over the door. Because this space was only 8″ high, I had to find insects that were small – didn’t want anyone to get his legs or antenna cut off! Sorry, I forgot to get a photo of that area. This room had some tricky spaces. Besides the sloped ceiling, which presented challenges of its own too complicated to delve into here, the 2″ gap you see next to the vanity in the top photo … the wide strip on the wall with the hand towel ring, plus the 2″ wide strip between the vanity and that wall probably took me a full 40 minutes to get in place. The townhome is in the Galleria / Highland Village neighborhood of Houston.
Such a beautiful pattern really transformed this dining room in the Highland Village area of Houston.
The homeowner started out wanting the whole dining room papered, but the material (by Peter Fasano, called “Meadow”) is crazy expensive. So she toyed with the idea of papering just the fireplace wall. Then she decided to paper that fireplace wall, and also the mirror-image fireplace wall in the living room directly across the hallway.
But as we approached the install date, she decided that she wouldn’t be completely happy unless she had what she really wanted, which was her original vision for the room – all four walls.
Now she’s crazy happy. And her husband is happy, too – he likes the wallpapered look so much that he is ready to do another room. 🙂
From my point of view, this is one of the nicest papers I’ve ever worked with. It had to be hand-trimmed to remove the unprinted selvedge, and the trim marks were spot-on. The paper took the adhesive well, and it was easy to smooth into place. It would stretch when needed, and wrinkles of excess paper could be eliminated, which helped a lot when accommodating for unplumb walls. There was minimal shrinking as it dried. It is thin and hugs the wall tightly, and was easy to turn corners.
The design is a soft black line drawing on a slightly off-white pearlized background.
Here is the home office of interior designer Layne Torsch, of Layne Torsch Interiors, in the Highland Village neighborhood of Houston. Her look is serene and simple, but livable for today’s busy families.
The walls and furnishings in this room are plain and clean, but the addition of light texture and color on the ceiling warms things up. The material is called “Bankun Raffia,” and is by Thibaut Designs. It is a scrim (woven fabric) backed solid vinyl product that is embossed with a texture that resembles woven grasscloth. It has a two-toned color.
Read my “Grasscloth Info Pack” to the right, and you will learn that I am not fond of real grasscloth, because of the color variations. But this is one of my favorite faux grasscloth products, because of the uniformity of color and because of the water-resistance and durability of the material.
Lucky little boy, who gets this high-end Rebecca Atwood “Dashes” wallpaper in his playroom. The design looks like someone took a tiny brush and daubed watercolor paint onto the walls.
This home is in the Highland Village neighborhood of Houston, and the homeowner is the interior designer. Layne Torsch Interiors.
The owner of this 1950’s ranch style home in the Highland Village neighborhood of Houston is an interior designer, and headed up the remodel of their hall bathroom. She found a perfect wallpaper to both imbue the room with a fun, crisp, contemporary feel, while coordinating precisely with the color of the glass shower tile.
The interior designer is Layne Torsch, of Layne Torsch Interiors.
This homeowner in the Galleria / Highland Village area of Houston is from Madrid, and had this wallpaper in her home there. She loved it.
When the family moved to Houston, she brought the paper with her. Well, first there was a detour to London, England, to pick up the paper from where it is made.
The new house is beautiful, but it was dark, with lots of grey and grey-based colors everywhere. The kitchen even had a wall painted in chalkboard paint – an oppressing mass of solid black.
The new wallpaper, called Madam Butterfly (by Designers Guild), adds a happy feel of uplifted cherry buds and blossoms, and a cherry color palate of both light and bold pinks.
The colors work together beautifully. There is just enough pink to compliment the grey cabinets, without being too cartoonish or girly. The design looks like swoops of water color paint – like a Japanese painting. And I love the upward movement of the tree blossoms.
In addition, the adjoining rooms all have accents of the hot pink color, from sofa pillows to artwork to vases to a divine hot pink divan sitting center stage in the family room.
Many of the higher-end wallpapers come with an unprinted selvedge edge, which has to be trimmed off, so that the seams can be butted together on the wall. The first photo shows this selvedge, along with the proofs for ink colors that are used in the design.
The second photo shows my straightedge, razor blade, and some of the selvedge that has been trimmed off. The trimming process is exacting, tedious, time consuming, and not always as accurate as I want it to be.
The third and fourth photos have poor lighting, but look closely and you will see the deep red dotted lines forming much of the pattern.
This wallpaper was bought on-line from Grow House Grow, and I hung it in a rear entry in a Mid-Century Modern home in the Highland Village neighborhood of Houston.
I love it when my clients listen to me. This couple near the Highland Village (Houston) was considering grasscloth for their dining room. I discouraged that choice, because of the color variations between strips, and even within strips (called paneling or shading) of natural products like grasscloth. Also, because grasscloth stains easily, it’s not a great choice for an active family with young children and a puppy.
I was happy when they went with this textured vinyl product instead. It has the texture and depth of color that people like these days, but none of the color difference problems, plus it is quite washable and stain-resistant. I think this looks something like a man’s tweed suit – in fact, it is called “Flanders.” The look is sleek and crisp and calming, and will look super with the family’s Mid-Century Modern dining table, buffet, and chandelier.
This is a thick, woven-fabric (scrim) backed vinyl product, and was a little difficult to fit tightly against the moldings; my angled steel plate tool (not pictured) helped greatly with this. I hung every other strip upside down, which minimized color variations by placing the same side of each subsequent strip next to itself.
The wall was lightly textured to begin with, so I skim-floated the walls to smooth the surface, to prevent bumps from showing under the paper and to provide a smooth surface for the wallpaper to grab on to. I also smoothed the wall area below the chair rail, which the family is going to coat with a semi-gloss paint, so it will look like wooden paneling. I primed both areas with Gardz, a penetrating sealer.
This wallpaper pattern is by Thibaut Designs, #T-14164, and was bought at a discounted price from Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.
Today I hung this bright, happy paper on an accent wall in a little girl’s bedroom, in the Highland Village area of Houston. It sure changed the all-white room into something cheery and fun!
The paper is in the EcoChic line of WallQuest. It was a little thicker and stiffer than most of the EcoChic papers I have worked with before, and I would have preferred the thinner paper. I also was not happy with the edges that got banged up in shipping – but they pretty well flatten out as the paper dries. The paper doesn’t have a coating, and it will stain easily, so the family will have to be careful to avoid touching it or splashing it. But since it’s behind the headboard, it will be well protected.
The paper was bought at a discounted price from Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.
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