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 .
No, this large room with sink and counters isn’t a kitchen. The family loves to entertain both family and friends, so included this “bonus” room in their new home’s plans. It’s used for both entertaining and crafting. The wall facing you was originally painted a semi-gloss navy blue. In the photo, I’ve applied my wallpaper primer. It will adhere to the glossy paint, and provide a matt finish for the wallpaper paste to grab ahold of. Taking measurements and plotting the layout. This paper has a selvedge edge , which has to be trimmed off by hand with a straightedge and razor blade. The manufacturer has not provided trim guide marks , so I am using a ruler and my eye. The new look is so dramatically different I couldn’t resist taking a photo mid-hang. As you can see, I’ve used dark paint to stripe under where the seams will fall, to prevent any of my primer from showing through at the seams. You can see the ceiling line starting to track upward on the right portion. More on that below. Finished. Perfectly centered.This is the mounting hardware for the big screen TV . I asked them to remove the TV, but we left the mounts in place. In order to support the heavy TV, they are placed quite securely into the wall , and I feel it’s best not to jimmy around with that. Rather than have the first strip straddle the TV mount, I plotted to have my first seam fall down the middle of the wall, placing a seam in the mid point of the mount. This meant I had to hang four strips instead of three, but it made it a whole lot easier to work around the TV mount, as well as to keep the left and right edges of the grasscloth straight and plumb. Close up showing the texture of this grasscloth material. It’s atypical to have grass cloth printed with a pattern , and I rather like the way the ink looks somewhat scratchy against the rough background. Because it’s Schumacher, you can expect printing defects . The slight pattern match doesn’t bother me, as there were many more places along each strip that matched up perfectly. Nor do I mind the different intensity of ink on the two strips. That’s all part of the look of grasscloth. But I wasn’t pleased with the white ink out in the middle of nowhere, as seen about 1//3 down the center of the picture. This isn’t considered a defect , and from a distance it’s not really noticeable. But it bugged me. So I used some water-based paint and a very small brush from the craft store and lightly touched up the spots. I also softened the mis-matched edges a bit. There’s a fine line between covering the white spots and staining the material, so use a light hand. And never permanent ink or oil-based markers or pastels.Likewise, the ceiling line was not level, so as I moved from the mid-point out to the right, the ceiling rose above the geometric motif’s top edge, and a white line began to be visible, but only to the right of the centerpoint. So I used the black paint to cover up that extra bit of white. This increases the width of that horizontal navy blue line from 1/4″ to about 1/2″. But from down on the floor you can’t tell, and it looks a whole lot better than having white on the right side and none on the left. The brand is Schumacher and the home is in the Garden Oaks / Oak Forest area of Houston. The interior designer who came up with this bold and lively look is Clayton Brooks .
For various reasons too complicated to explain here, the pattern working its way across the top of this window, and then down the side with the goal of placing a full flower in the narrow space between the window and the shower tile, was not moving in sync with the pattern underneath. My job was to make it look like everything matched up.
I had about 3 1/2″ of excess paper horizontally that I needed to eliminate. I was able to take my straightedge and trim 1 1/2″ off one side of one strip, and another 1″ from the side of another strip. Then I split one piece in the middle, and removed a 1/2″ wide section. I was able to do this because there were a few areas in these short strips that had no flowers – so there were no design motifs that got chopped off.
Thus, I had removed 3″ of material. To get the left side to match up with the right side, I still needed to loose 1/2″ of paper. You really can’t measure precisely enough, nor trim straight (or at an angle, if need be), to get these strips to butt together perfectly.
So I opted to use an overlap to ease out the excess paper. I cut the paper in two vertically, following along the lines of the flower pattern (top photo). Note that the flower reaches from the tile to the window molding, so the printing disguises the cut area. This would be much more visible if you did it in an area where there were no printed motifs.
Then I positioned the two pieces of wallpaper next to the existing paper on the wall, and overlapped the center sections with the flowers. A half inch or so of pattern has been lost – but no body’s going to notice that. And even though there is a slight ridge where the overlap is, in a 4″ high section under the window, no one is going to notice that, either.
Another cool thing is that, because the pattern did not have to match any elements at either seam, I was able to raise the flower design up, so that you see as much of the flower as possible (instead of half the flower being chopped off where it hit the top of the tile).
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