Walls were originally a light tan , with a poor texture job , too much caulk along the top of the backsplash , and later it was discovered that someone had painted (several layers ) on top of wallpaper . Same area after I’ve skim-floated and sanded smooth , then primed with Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime made specifically for use under wallpaper . I have Murphy Brothers paint store add a little blue tint so I can see where I’ve rolled it on. Finished!Such a happy pattern to look at – swirly , nods to foliage and ferns , crisp . Yet not too busy , due to the 2-tone color palate and the tight, overall design .Close up. You get the feel of a watercolor artist / painting .The design matched up perfectly in the last corner . This only happens about once in every 10 years! In addition, what’s even more astounding is that EACH of the four walls in this powder room was EXACTLY the width of two strips of my Serena & Lily 27″ wide paper + expansion. The strips fell in EACH corner ABSOLUTELY tight and straight. I’ve had perfect kills before, but never had paper fall in the corners with no need to wrap or trim. I know that’s a little techy for the non-professional reader to grasp. But just know that it was a room and a day full of almost paranormal-grade coincidences , math , and execution . Pattern is Priano and is made by Serena & Lily , one of my favorite companies. This is the home of a young family in the Spring Branch area of Houston .
Originally, the whole room was this not-quite-milk-chocolate brown. Dark can look good in a small room like a powder room. But stark dark with no pattern is often claustrophobic. Since this is a 100-year old bungalow with many layers of paint and potentially incompatible wall coatings, I was worried about unstable conditions inside the wall. Long story short, these conditions can lead to stress on the wall and delaminating layers, which also mean wallpaper seams that don’t stay down. Do a Search here to learn more. So the homeowners agreed to have the walls lined, as a way to avoid these potential problems. Read previous post for more info. The photo above shows the walls covered in the white liner. Finished!William Morris’s designs, and Strawberry Thief in particular, have been very popular the last two years or so. His patterns are studies in symmetry and rhythm , and evoke the era of Art Nouveau and even Art Deco . Last corner magically ended up with virtually no mis-match. Morris & Co is the manufacturer. This is a nice, supple, non-woven material, and can be hung by pasting the wall , although I prefer to paste the paper. It has a vinyl coating and will be fairly washable – good for this family with a toddler. It’s also designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate. See previous post for a pic of the label of the liner paper.
BeforeFinished. I love the soft colors against the putty-colored woodwork and wainscoting. The red beam from my laser level helps get that first strip centered and plumb.Perfect!From a distance.Close up, you can see a very slight raised ink texture to this wallpaper. The last corner ( kill point ) matched almost perfectly. This rarely happens, so it’s always a thrill when it looks this good all by itself. The pattern is called Khotan and is by Zak & Fox. It’s a non-woven, paste-the-wall product. It was a bit thick and stiff to work with, and creased easily. But it went up nicely, and the seams were invisible. And, when it’s time to redecorate, this non-woven material will strip off the wall easily and in one piece, with minimal damage to the wall.
The kill point is your last corner in a room, where your last strip of wallpaper meets up with the first strip you hung hours ago. This virtually always results in a pattern mis-match, In the photo above, if I were to add the next strip of wallpaper to the right of the striped section, in the order it’s supposed to be hung, a mis-match would result when that design lands in the corner and bumps against the leaves and flowers to the right. I thought I could make it look better. Instead of matching the pattern in proper sequence coming from the left, I decided to cut a fresh strip and match it with the strip on the right.This gave me a perfect pattern match. But left me with a 1″ gap between the strips. I could fill that gap in with a strip of plain blue paper, cut from scrap wallpaper in the trash pile. But this particular pattern didn’t have any areas with 1″ width of unprinted paper. So I used my straightedge and a razor blade and cut two 1/2″ wide strips of paper the height of this area over the door. Here I have placed the first of these next to the strip on the right.Here I have butted the second 1/2″ strip up against the first one, and am tucking it underneath the striped strip to its left. The vertical lines in the design will disguise any ridges caused by the overlap. Besides – who’s gonna notice this 9′ up, anyway?Here it is, finished and smoothed into place. Note that these strips are still wet, and will be homogeneous in color once they all dry. Here’s the finished corner. Remember – it still needs to dry. You can’t notice that there’s an inch of extra blue space in there. From a distance.
When hanging wallpaper, the last corner (kill point) of a room virtually always ends in a pattern mis-match. That’s why you try to tuck it in an inconspicuous corner, like a short strip over a door.
In this case, I was going to end up with a medallion that got chopped in half vertically. Not horrible, because that is just the nature of the beast. But I had an idea to make it look better.
Using my straightedge, I sliced off the medallion. Then I found a scrap of wallpaper that was plain white (the background color) and trimmed that to fill the width where the medallion had been. Success!
But there was still a quarter medallion showing at the ceiling line on the adjacent wall.
My solution was to again take some left over wallpaper. I cut a shape that mimicked the motif on the wall, and pasted it on top. Nice!
Only problem is, the paper is somewhat translucent, and so a “ghost” of the image under the paper is showing through.
No problem. I cut another patch, just slightly larger to “feather out” the light bump from the difference in heights of the patches. Once it was pasted on top, it occluded the “shadow” of the medallion. From the floor, you can’t see a thing.
In the final photo, the distance between the medallions is wider than it “should” be – by maybe as much as 2.5″. But this is barely noticeable, and is way better than having a chopped-in-half medallion below plus a quarter medallion above.
The kill point is the last corner in a room, where the last strip of wallpaper meet up with the first strip. And here the pattern virtually never matches – it’s just the laws of geometry. I usually hide this in an inconspicuous place, like behind a door. But in this room, there was no out-of-the-way corner, so the pattern mis-match would have to be in a fairly prominent location, 10′ long, in the corner to the left of the toilet.
But, unless you study this carefully, you really don’t realize that this pattern does not match as it should. I wish I could take credit for how perfectly this last corner worked out, but, again, it is just the laws of geometry and physics that brought the half-ovals on the right to meet perfectly with the half-ovals on the left.
What I can take credit for, though, is for having kept the diamonds and other elements at the same level all the way around the room. With un-plumb walls and crooked ceilings, and etc., wallpaper patterns can start moving up or down the wall. Maintaining this horizontal line can be tricky, but it helps immensely to keep the room feeling balanced.
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