Tucking Wallpaper Behind Pedestal Sink

Pedestal sinks (and toilets ) are tricky to hang wallpaper around and behind .  Over-working or manipulating the paper to fit and then trim around curves like this can cause tears , creases , or burnishing , among other issues .  Also, if there’s a cut edge along the top of the sink / vanity , if water splashes , it can be wicked up by that cut edge , sucked up into the wallpaper, which can cause curling at the seams and / or delaminating of the paper .  So , instead of being trimmed / cut along the top, best if the wallpaper can go behind the sink / backsplash.

Here’s the 1/4″ or so gap that I’m going to work the wallpaper into.

 Rather than trying to wrestle a 9′ strip of 27″ wide wallpaper down the wall and around this sink , it made sense to cut the strip horizontally at a point just below the top of the sink . I’ll piece the bottom section in shortly.

Sometimes, pedestal sinks are adhered to the wall with caulk , and cannot be moved.  But today I got lucky.  I was able to go under the sink and loosen the bolts , one on either side, ( see photo ) holding it to the wall .  This is not easy – you’ve got to have small hands , good eyes , good light ,  a plumber’s wrench , a box wrench , or a pliers – whatever works!  And not undo too much, because you don’t want to dislodge the  system ( toggle bolt ) that’s holding the bolt in place.
After all that, loosening this bolt gave me about a whole ¼”  area of play .   Still, I was able to carefully and slowly work the wallpaper behind and around the sink , without significant creasing or damage .  See second photo .

The pattern is called Cornflower and is by Rifle Paper , a brand by York , one of my favorite manufacturers. Rifle Paper is usually a user-friendly non-woven material , also called paste-the-wall …. although can sometimes surprise you with traditional paper wallpaper instead of N-W .

Splitting a Strip to Ease Installation

Here I’m about to place my last wallpaper strip, which will run from the ceiling to floor, about 5” wide strip along the cabinet (in this photo this strip has already been placed – just imagine it as being blank wall).  And then the area under the cabinet, about 20” wide x 4’ high.
It’s awkward to handle a strip that’s 20” wide x 9’ long, if you only need to cover a 5” wide area.  Also it slops a lot of paste onto the cabinet, that you then need to wipe off.  So normally I would split this strip vertically, from ceiling to floor, to 6” wide, enough to cover that 5” wide area next to the cabinet, plus underlap the cabinet by 1”.  This 1” provides stability in case of shifting, and also in case the wall isn’t exactly straight or my measurements a tad off, or paper expands, etc. 
After that 6” wide strip was in place, I’d take the left side of the split strip (remaining 14” wide piece) and put just the bottom 4’ of that into place. 
But I realized that it would be simpler in this instance to cut the strip horizontally, a little above 4’ high.  There was a conveniently placed tree branch that disguised my cut.

Here’s the upper 5” wide section in place. 

Here is the bottom section going into place.

Tree branch meets tree branch, the joint is invisible.  Next the excess under the cabinet will be trimmed off, as well as where this strip meets the existing piece in the corner, at the far left.  This corner will be hidden behind the dryer in this laundry room , so was chosen to be the kill point / mis-matched corner . 
The pattern is called Fruto Prohibido and is by Cole & Son . It’s a nice non-woven / paste the wall material , although I usually paste the paper .

More William Morris Strawberry Thief in Houston Heights Hall Bathroom

Because I feared unstable walls in this 1920’s bungalow in this neighborhood (do a Search for previous posts), before hanging the decorative wallpaper, first I hung a non-woven liner paper on all the walls. That’s the white material you see in the photo.
The liner was hung horizontally so its seams can’t line up with the decorative paper. The idea is to disperse tension from drying wallpaper and changes due to humidity and etc., so as to deflect tension away from sketchy wall surfaces, and thus prevent delamination of multiple unstable layers deep inside the wall. Again, do a Search here to learn more.

Finished vanity area, with pattern centered on the light fixture.

Corner shot.

This colorful and symmetrical pattern is quite popular; I’ve hung it a number of times just this year.

Englishman William Morris designed wallpaper and fabrics during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
The styles then were Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts. This design reflects a bit of each.

Wallpaper expands when it gets wet with paste, and then can shrink just a tad as it dries. The liner helps prevent that, but you can still end up with teeny gaps at some seams.
To prevent the white backing from showing through, I run a stripe of dark paint under where each seam will fall.

I use matt finish craft paint from the hobby store, diluted with a little water (in the orange bottle cap) and smeared on the wall with a scrap of sponge. Use a ruler or level and a pencil to mark where you want to stripe the dark paint.
Remember to allow for that expansion as the paper absorbs moisture from the paste. Meaning, if the paper is 20.5″ wide, and expands 1/2″, you’ll want to run your line at about 21.” And make sure that your painted swath is about an inch wide.
I also run a bit of dark chalk along the edges of each strip, to prevent the white substrate from showing at the seams (no photo).

Morris & Co. makes this iconic Strawberry Thief.
Interestingly enough, most times when I’ve hung a Morris paper, it’s been a non-woven paste-the-wall material.
Today’s option was a surprise – a traditional British pulp . This is a pretty basic and somewhat old-fashioned type of substrate . Sort of like construction paper, or the pages of an old family Bible .
The paper is very fragile , and can tear easily. You have to keep using new razor / trimming blades, because the material dulls blades quickly, and when dull they will drag and tear the paper.
Pulp papers also require a soaking / booking time after pasting , to allow time for the material to absorb the paste , soften a bit, and expand . The edges of the strips like to dry out , so I’ve learned to dip about 1/4″ of the booked ends ( booked means the pasted side of the wallpaper strip is folded onto itself, bottom edge folded up and top edge folded down to meet in the middle), into a bucket of clean water.
Then it goes into a black plastic trash bag to soak and relax for a few minutes before hanging. I use this opportunity to paste the next strip.
Non-woven wallpapers have advantages, because they do not expand when wet, and therefor you can get accurate measurements. They also can be pasted and hung immediately, with no waiting time. Alternately, you can paste the wall .

Shells / Fans in Master Bedroom Closet

Left side of entry wall primed and ready for wallpaper.

Starting the right side of the wall.
Instead of laying a 9.5′ length of wallpaper down along the door frame and wrestling it around the tops and bottoms of several fixed-in-place shelves, I used a razor blade and my straightedge to slice the strip horizontally into sections, measured carefully to coincide with the position of the shelf brackets.
This way I was working with much smaller and more manageable chunks of paper.

Entry wall finished.

Entry and side walls finished.

Opposite, window wall finished.
This closet, with 20 single rolls (10 double roll bolts) of wallpaper, several fixed shelves to wrangle paper around, support brackets to trim around, and two windows to wrap wallpaper inside, took me two 10-hour days to prime and paper.

Here’s a close-up, with a light switch for perspective, to show the lightly textured surface of the wallpaper.

BN European brand of wallpaper.
This is a non-woven material and could be hung via the paste the wall method or the paste the paper installation process.
Pasting the material made it much easier to work around all the obstacles and tight areas.
The paper was very soft and pliable. It is an embossed ( textured ) vinyl and will be more resistant to stains and dings than most traditional wallpapers.
This home is in the Heights neighborhood of Houston.

Railroading and Fudging the Pattern

Well, dang it! Not all my pictures turned out, so you will have to use your imagination to visualize as I try to explain.
This room had two long doorways that had only about 5″ above them where the wallpaper would go. In the photo above, look to the right and see this narrow space.
It would take about four strips of wallpaper to get across that width of space. With the pattern match being about 2′, that would eat up about 8′ of wallpaper, with most of it going in the trash. It also would take a lot of time to hang those four strips, and create seams which always present the potential to come away from the wall at some point.

This wild floral pattern allowed for some playing, so I decided to railroad the material (run it horizontally) over the doorways. This was quick and eliminated seams. Best of all, I could use some scrap wallpaper from the trash pile. In the photo I am using my straightedge and a razor blade to trim a strip that is just 3/4″ higher than the height of the wall space over the door. That extra 3/4″ will accommodate any irregularities in the height of the area, and will be trimmed off once the strip is in place.

Here the strip has been installed over the doorway to the left. I butted it against the crown molding and then trimmed off that extra 3/4″ with a trim guide and razor blade.
Because I cut this strip from a random scrap, and because I ran it horizontally, the flowers didn’t match the pattern on either wall – neither the wall on the left nor the wall on the right. No big deal. As I said, the pattern was forgiving and easy to disguise the mis-match. All I did was to cut around some of the flowers and leaves and then overlap them onto the paper on the wall. In the photo, in the top left corner, it’s the grey peony and the green leaves above and to the right of it, and also the green leaf under it. Trimming around the shape of the flowers looks so much better than making a straight cut.

Renegade Angled Screws

A lot of us contractors face the slots in switchplate screws facing either vertically, or sometimes horizontally.

Every now and then, I run into some renegade who positions the slots at an off, yet precise, angle.

There just can’t be many people doing this, so I believe I am working behind the same guy in various homes across the Houston metro area. Crazy coincidence!

A Kaleidoscope of Mid-Century Modern, Frank Lloyd Wright – Wild

What a fun pattern from Bradbury & Bradbury, in their newish line of “Atomic Age,” Mid Century Modern, in the theme of architect and designer Frank Lloyd Wright!

The young couple that bought this mint-condition, Mid-Century home in the Medical Center / Reliant Stadium neighborhood of Houston is way crazy about the modern look, and wanted an accent wall in the kitchen breakfast nook to both play up that theme, as well as bring color into the room.

There are four bright orange molded plastic “mod” chairs that will ring around that round table.

The pattern is called Kaleidoscope. The wallpaper is custom made, but is not outrageously expensive. It comes with a selvedge edge that has to be trimmed off by hand. (Do a search here for pics and more info on this process.) The paper is normally hung vertically, but the homeowners liked the design better run horizontally (called railroading in wallpaper terms).

It took a lot of trimming, plotting, planning, and engineering, plus plenty of time with the laser level (see second photo), to get the pattern matched correctly and then laid out on the wall so everything lined up perfectly. I also took steps to keep as much paste off the woodwork and shutters as possible. Yeah, it wipes off relatively easily. But always best to keep it off in the first place.

Silver Cork Wallpaper in a Galleria-Area Water Closet

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This water closet in the master bathroom of a newish home in the Galleria area of Houston was originally papered with an olive green grasscloth, which was then painted over with flat, boring, tan paint, as you see in the top photo. It was bad enough as it was, but when the homeowners renovated the bathroom and changed to a sleek, modern look, that painted grasscloth just hurt to look at it.

The wife loves this silver cork wallpaper by Thibaut Designs. In fact, last year I hung the same thing in their downstairs powder room.

The cork, with it’s bright metallic surface, brought a whole lot of light and life to the enclosed, window-less room. It looked better than I anticipated, and we all were amazed at how large and vibrant the room became.

Because the room had some curved walls, I railroaded the paper (hung it horizontally instead of vertically), and that proved to be a good choice. It also used a little less paper.

The wife loves this paper so much, she is thinking of putting it in a third space in their home – an accent wall in the master bedroom.

This wallpaper pattern is by Thibaut Designs, and was bought at below retail price from Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her