A Narrow Strip and a Teeny Strip

I wanted to center this wallpaper pattern so the palm tree / banana leaves would fall nicely over the sink and in between the light sconces. That took a lot of measuring, plotting, planning, and time, But it gives the wall – and the whole room – a nicely balanced feel.

Unfortunately, due to the dimensions of the room and the width of the wallpaper, it also led to some difficult, time consuming, and downright PITA logistics. Oh, and ate up a lot of wallpaper, too.
For starters, note the narrow gap on the left that needs to be filled with wallpaper. That 1″ wide strip along the linen cabinet requires a full 7′ length of wallpaper. That’s about 12 sq ft of wallpaper needed to cover the 1/4 sq ft of gap.
Moral: Always buy a little extra paper!
Note: I did other sections of the room before going back to fill in this gap, so was able to use a scrap from another area, rather than cut up a new 7′ long piece.

Here it is with that 1″ wide strip pieced in.

Arrrgh! Here’s another one. A gap between a strip of wallpaper and the door molding, that tapers (thanks to un-plumb walls) from 1/4″ down to nothing.
Thankfully, here again, I avoided cutting up a 7′ long strip of wallpaper by using scraps.
No pic of the finished placement.

Handsome Tailored Men’s Wear Powder Room

Vanity area before.

Vanity area after.

Vanity from the front. Note the stripes perfectly centered / balanced on the wall, both above and below the sink. The wall-mounted faucet and handles, along with the stuck-to-the-wall mirror made this wall challenging. In fact, this one wall took me two and a half hours.

Stripes on the toilet alcove are also nicely balanced.

Looking up past the linen cabinet.

Close up. The wallpaper looks textured, but it’s just fooling your eye. It has the look of fabric.

This is a semi-contemporary new home in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston.

The manufacturer is Wallquest, one of my preferred brands, and the pattern # is MS91603.

Innovative Kill Point – Between Moldings

Digital Image

Digital Image

The kill point is where the last strip you hang meets up with the first strip you hung. This virtually always ends up in a mis-match of the pattern’s design. This is usually in a corner, and the paperhanger will try to place it in an inconspicuous location (such as behind a door).

But not all corners are hidden behind a door. In such cases, and depending on the design, the pattern mis-match will be noticeable, even eye-jarring.

Sometimes it’s possible to get creative and hide that kill point where it will be less visible. That’s what I was able to do today.

The first photo shows you the Chinoiserie pattern, so you get an idea of what it looks like. In this room, because all four corners were very visible, I wanted to keep the pattern intact in the corners. So I needed somewhere else to hide the kill point.

The room had a spot where the molding around the door came very close (6″) to the wall-hung linen cabinet. This was a good option to place the kill point, because it would be only 6″ wide, vs. my other option, which was a corner that was 5′ high. I’ll take a 6″ mis-match over a 5′ mis-match any day!

By manipulating the wallpaper pattern a little, it was easy to disguise the kill point and the mis-matched pattern. It’s there, in the second photo – but I’ll bet you will have a hard time spotting it.