Finished Wall Re-Do – See Previous Post

Here’s the wall after I stripped, sealed, skim-floated, sanded, and primed it.

Finished. The birds in the pattern balanced nicely with between the ceiling line and the wainscoting.
I had more success with this install than the previous guy, due to proper prep, and also the material used this time was the user-friendly non-woven , rather than the old fashioned pulp type wallpaper the other guy had to wrestle with.

Strawberry Thief is a very popular pattern right now, and comes in many colorways. Do a Search here to see my other installations of this design.

There were some issues at the top of the wainscoting where the painters had used tape to mask off areas, long with caulk, an it left a rather large (1/8″) unpainted area between the wood molding and the wall. I filled this in with joint compound and primed it, and wallpaper would have adhered just fine. But that would have left a white gap between the wallpaper and the green molding.
I rummaged in my truck for the best matching paint I could come up with, and painted over the white edge. This would have left a bit of a thin brown line between the wallpaper and the green molding. It would have looked OK, but I had an idea to get rid of the gap altogether.

If I had used my regular thin straightedge (the red one), it would have let me trim the bottom edge of the wallpaper nice and close to the wall. But that would have left the aforementioned brown line showing.
So I used the metal plate you see at the upper right of the photo as a trim guide. It’s thicker than my red straightedge, and so gives a fat cut that leaves more wallpaper and less of that brown line.
In fact, the left edge, as you can see, is rolled, and that creates an even thicker edge to trim against, leaving even more wallpaper at the bottom of the cut. See the photo just above, to see how the wallpaper now completely covers the brown line.
These metal plates have a lot of other uses. They are made and sold by a fellow member of the Wallcovering Installers Association . She makes a lot of other cool tools, too. If you are interested, send me an email. wallpaperlady@att.net

The wallpaper design is by William Morris , a famed artist of the Arts & Crafts / Art Nouveau periods . The brand is Morris & Co.
This label is EXACTLY the same as the pulp material the original installer worked with – save for that one word non-woven . Be sure you get the non-woven version, which is also called paste the wall .
The home is in the Heights neighborhood of Houston .

Sandberg Raphael in Heights Powder Room

Vanity area primed and ready for wallpaper.

Finished. The soft murky blues meld so nicely with the carrera marble countertop.

Opposite wall before.

The pattern has a strong upward movement, as well as lush fullness from the leafy areas.

Rear window wall. This room had a number of intricate moldings to trim around.

Close up.

Detail.

Raphael is a very popular pattern. Do a Search here (upper right corner) to see my previous installations of this wallpaper.
The material is called non-woven , and can be hung by pasting-the-wall or pasting the paper. I prefer to paste the paper, as it makes the material more pliable, and also gets paste to difficult-to-access areas, such as behind the toilet.
One big advantage of non-wovens is they don’t expand when wet with paste, and so you can get accurate measurements. And also there is no booking time, so you can paste and head straight to the wall to hang each strip.

Houston wallpaper installer