The powder room where I’m to hang wallpaper is under renovation , and so the sink has no faucet . I need water for both prep and installation . The homeowner told me I could use the tub in the master bathroom . Can you say, “Got little girls?” LOL!
Arrgh. This last strip of wallpaper in a master bathroom ended just shy of the shower tile surround . That’s a 1 3/8″ gap that needs to be covered with wallpaper. I’ve filled in pieces narrower – like, 1/2″ or less. But, still, it’s a PITA, and takes a lot of time. And it will require a full 9′ strip of paper, just to cut off this 1 3/8″ wide bit from the right side. So a whole lot of unused paper is going in the trash can. As I like to emphasize, always purchase a little extra. I don’t usually pre-trim strips in this situation, because walls are never straight so it’s hard to get the width perfect. And the fact that wallpaper expands when it gets wet with paste , so your pre-trimmed strip may end up wider than the space. And because trimming the piece while it’s on-site gives a better, tighter fit. Anyway, this time I did pre-trim. I measured carefully, and found that most of the space was 1 3/8″ wide. But three artichoke motifs up from the floor (about 2 1/2 feet), the width widened to 1 1/2.” So I used my straightedge and fine ruler and trimmed accordingly. The pasted it and let sit for a few minutes. Here I’m smoothing the strip into its little narrow gap. Finished.
This bathroom is part of an addition to a 1940 home on the near east side of Houston. The drywall is new. As I requested, the painters did not apply any coatings . Here you see I’m priming the walls with my primer made specifically for wallpaper – Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime . Done. The vanity will be pushed against this wall , and lighted mirrors will be hung over it. Keep fingers crossed that the electrician doesn’t mess up the wallpaper while installing the mirrors . I think this pattern looks like a tapestry .This paper went up beautifully . The seams are practically invisible from a foot away. I love the slight raised ink texture of this surface print wallpaper . Artichoke is made by Serena & Lily . I really like just about all of their papers .
An interesting feature to this master bathroom is this recessed wall niche . But you just can’t have a niche. You’ve gotta have something in it! The color scheme of this home is grey , neutral , and white . The homeowners were originally considering a similarly-hued nature – themed Chinoiserie mural by RebelWalls.com . But it wasn’t scaled to fit their space , and other factors weren’t feeling right. So they opted for this instead. Way more dramatic , but still coordinates with the home’s color scheme . The branches have a light gold sheen .Interestingly enough, this is the same paper used on the backs of their bookcases (see post a day ago). They realized there was left over paper , and it was enough to do the back of this niche. Win-win!The wallpaper has a lightly textured vinyl surface on a non-woven backing material . I hung it via the paste the wall method . Non-wovens will strip off the wall easily and in one piece , with no damage to the wall , when you redecorate. The manufacturer is York , one of my favorites . The modern / contemporary style home is in the Spring Branch neighborhood of Houston .
You don’t see it right away when you’re close, but when you stand back and view a larger expanse of paper on the wall , OR pull the pattern up on your phone, it’s evident that this pattern has a strong central image (the red roses in a circle ) , as well as a secondary image , which is the heart-shaped blue green leaves . Here I’ve centered the ring of roses in between the two medicine cabinets , as well as between the light sconces. This makes for a pleasing look of symmetry in this master bathroom . Something that most people would not even notice concretely . But there would still be a feeling of equality and balance as you spend time in this bathroom .
I tweaked things a bit, to make this scheme work. Then I got the design centered on the wall seen to the left in this photo . The pattern also landed pretty near centered over the door . Additionally, I love the way it looks, peering from one room into the other , all nicely lined up . But ” balancing the pattern ” is much more than futzing with the vertical elements. For instance, there are also horizontal motifs to consider. With this “Wildwood” wallpaper pattern , I wanted to place the red flower “circles / hayloes ” where they would be evenly distributed ” ) . So, as you can see, I have “balanced” those red circles (three of them) evenly between the ceiling and the wainscoting. In addition, the homeowner worked hard to find a fun and fresh wallpaper pattern that included colors that worked well with the glossy murky blue tile and chairrail . This design is called Wildwood and is from York (the company who makes Rifle Paper material ).
OK, so this master bathroom suffered a water leak, and the plumber had to cut through the drywall in the potty room in order to access the shower fixtures. Here the contractor has replaced the cut-out piece of Sheetrock. He did a really nice job. For the most part. Of course, he didn’t bother to remove the wallpaper before doing his repairs. This is vinyl paper (thick, slick, slippery, backing absorbs moisture) and really should have been removed first. But I was able to work around the patched-in area.The prep for this small room was a lot more involved than I anticipated, and required an extra day. Too complicated to get into, but there were two layers of wallpaper, and no primer by either of the previous installers. Original install dates back to the ’80’s. It took me a day and a half just to do the prep on this small commode room. The room finished. Note the stripes centered nicely on that back wall. The pattern and material were chosen to coordinate with the green stripes in the main area of the master bathroom. Kill point (final corner) over the door. I “shrank” some sections in order to get even widths and maintain the pattern repeat and match.The plumbing problem also damaged an area on this wall outside the water closet. So this area around the door needed to be replaced. The homeowners didn’t have any left over paper, so they chose something similar in color, style, and composition to the green striped paper you see to the right. Here is that transition door wall finished. We decided to use the stripe to define the ‘break’ between the two patterns. The alternative would have been placing the stripe against the door molding … but I felt that would be too repetitive, plus it would have left a cut-off section of flowers running along the side of the green stripe, and same on the opposite side of the door frame. And, yes, the wall definitely is not straight, square, or plumb. And here is that opposite side of the door frame, with the stripe running nicely along the shower tile. Some overlapping was involved in this job. Since the wallpaper is vinyl, and vinyl is slick, you need a special paste to be able to grab ahold of the glossy surface. These days, I sure don’t use often border paste, also sometimes called VOV or Vinyl Over Vinyl . But I was mighty glad to find this 10+ year old container deep in the bowels of my van. Still fresh and sticky, too!Besides borders not being popular today, these “satin” and “silk” look wallpapers are not very common. But this is exactly what the homeowners were looking for, to coordinate with the existing, 30-year-old paper in their master bath. Saved them having to replace all the wallpaper in both rooms! This paper is very economical, too. The couple shopped with Dorota at the Sherwin-Williams in the Rice Village, and she was able to track down the perfect material, pattern, and color. Now, aside from all the positive things I just said about this paper in this current application, I do want to make clear that I am not at all fond of this type material. Without getting into a long schpiel here, please click and read the page link to the right “Stay Away From Pre-Pasted Paper-Backed Solid Vinyl …. ” I will also add that I’ve developed a technique to work with these materials, and so far the installs, including today’s, have been going nicely. One double roll bolt had some of these blue mark printing defects running through about half of it. Luckily, most of these were on a section of paper that was cut off in order to turn a corner, so was discarded and not put on the wall. Exclusive Wallcoverings is the manufacturer. Usually I work with their non-woven or traditional paper products, which are quite nice. The home is in the West University area of Houston.
Potty room prepped and ready for wallpaper.Finished. This textured vinyl product had no pattern repeat or match. I used the reverse-hang method, which is where you hang one strip right side up, and the next strip upside down. That way the same edge is being placed next to itself – hard to explain. But the purpose is to reduce the chance of color variations at the seams. Here you see the true color and texture of the material. York is the manufacturer. I like just about everything they make.Just for fun, here is the coordinating paper that’s going in the adjoining master bathroom. Fine Wallpapers is also by York. Both these papers were purchased from Ballard Designs, their new brick-and-mortar store on W. Gray in Houston.
Whoa-ah! I was rolling out my very first strip of wallpaper for this master bathroom in the Rice Military neighborhood of Houston, and discovered this.
This err of the printing press meant the loss of almost an entire double roll bolt (33′). That is two and a half strips of wallpaper.
In addition, this wallpaper pattern had some additional printing faux. No pic, but there were some minor pattern mis-matches across the edges of the strips. This was a relatively busy pattern, so these were not all that crucial.
In other areas, a black “accent” line got shifted to the left, making it more of a shadow than an accent. Again, this was very difficult to detect, and didn’t grossly affect the look of the project.
From these, it was obvious that the printing press had gotten off-register, and was stamping certain colors about a quarter inch to the left.
As far as that swervy line in the photo, I have no idea what went wrong at the factory. But it rendered a significant amount of paper unusable.
Another reason to always buy at least one extra double roll bolt of paper.
I hung this Bradbury & Bradbury digitally-printed wallpaper from their new ’20’s Vintage collection yesterday. When I left, the seams were perfect, and the job looked super.
Yet overnight, the paper dried and shrank, and that left some gaps at the seams. In the top photo, you can see the white primer peeking out from underneath. (Note: I have not had any opened seams when I hung their more traditionally-printed papers, including a dark brown paper in my own master bathroom.)
If the paper is allowing of it, it is possible to use craft paint or chalk pastels to color in the open space between the edges of the two strips of paper.
You have to test before moving forward, because some papers have a porous surface that might absorb the colorant and leave a mar or smudge on the surface. Usually, chalk is the safest way to go.
David Hicks’s “Hexagon” pattern by Cole & Son is a well-loved design. I’ve hung it a number of times. Here it is in a large master bathroom in a very Mid-Century Modern home in the Piney Point (Villages) neighborhood of Houston.
Just this bathtub alcove, along with two small mirror walls over the his-and-hers vanities, received wallpaper.
Just the tub alcove by itself took me over six hours to hang (six single rolls). The complicating issues were unplumb walls, unlevel ceiling and soffit, a geometric pattern that the eye wants to see marching evenly across the walls, thick stiff paper that is hard to manipulate, ink that wants to crack and flake off the paper, complicated room lay-out, and … squeezing behind that tub to put wallpaper on the walls around it!
There are some spots where the pattern match is off a bit, and some areas where the crookedness of the walls is very evident (meaning that the pattern goes off-kilter). But overall, the room turned out great.
The design is called “Hexagon,” and is by David Hicks, designer for Cole & Son, a British company who has been manufacturing wallpaper for way more than a hundred years.
It’s a non-woven material that can be hung by the paste-the-wall method, but I chose to paste the paper, which made it more pliable, and which made it easier to get paste where it needed to be when going around the window areas and behind the tub.
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