Kill Point Over Door

aaHere’s what this flowing viny wallpaper pattern looks like in this dining room in the Garden Oaks / Oak Forest neighborhood of Houston . The bottom 1/3 of the wall is block paneling / wainscoting , so the wallpaper on just the area above is not overwhelming .
A kill point is the place in a room where your last strip of wallpaper meets up with the first strip you hung . this virtually always results in a pattern mis-match . So we try to hide that in an inconspicuous place, such as in a corner behind a door .
In this room, all of the corners are very visible . A mismatched corner of 7′ high would be very noticeable .

So in this room, I was able to cleverly disguise the mis-match in a much shorter area, over a door . This is only 6″ high . Here my first strip is on the left, and my last strip is on the right, with two short strips needed to bridge that gap .

Here the strip on the right has been put into place.

Here’s the piece that will butt up against the strip on the left. Eeek! It’s 1/2″ too narrow to cover the gap. Also, as you can see, there is an obvious pattern mis-match at that seam on the right.

look at this tree branch . I’m going to use that to my advantage.

Here I’ve taken another piece and have matched the pattern on the right side. Note that it’s not matching on th left.

Here I am, back to that strip we saw a few photos ago, that will match with the strip on the left. Remember tha tree branch I pointed out? Here I’ve trimmed the wallpaper vertically along that tree branch .

Here I’m putting it into place, butting it up against the strip on the left, and overlapping the strip on the right. But that’s going to leave a vertical ridge under this strip, where the strip underneath it ends on the left.

But you won’t notice that overlap if it runs under a design motif . Here I’m using a pencil to trace the outline of that tree branch, bringing it in so that the tree branch will overlap just 1/8″ – 1/4″ over the strip on the right.
Note that since the surface of this paper is vinyl , and wallpaper paste doesn’t always adhere well to slick plastic , I’ve used a special border paste or vinyl over vinyl or seam repair adhesive just on this small 1/8″ overlapped area .

Strip on the right trimmed to conform to the curves of the tree branch.

Tree branch piece being put into place.

Tree branch strip trimmed and finished.

SDone and viewed from below. OK, so the pattern doesn’t match 100% perfectly the way the designer intended. Some of the motifs are closer together than they “should” be. From here, who the heck is going to notice?! This looks pretty darned good – and it looks way better than having a 7′ long mis-match in a very visible corner .

The pattern is called Twining and is by Graham & Brown . It has a very light texture , and also a slight
metallic sheen on the branches . It’s a non-woven / paste the wall material , and will strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate . I like their papers a lot .
You can purchase G&B from Dorota at the Sherwin-Williams in the Rice Village . Call first, as hours vary. (713) 529-6515 .
Here’s another cool thing … Go back to that first photo. Since I started hanging paper by centering the pattern between the two windows on the wall to the right (not visible in the photo), by the time I worked my way around to the wall between the windows you see in front of you, the pattern was not going to be centered in between the windows. I thought it would look better if it was balanced symmetrically. So I positioned the dominant part of the tree branches in between the windows. And then I used the same overlap-and-disguise trick over the window on the right.

Slightly Mis-Matching Pattern to Maintain Ceiling Line

When people talk about wallpaper, they often mention matching the pattern. Well, that’s the obvious element. But there is a whole lot more going on, and a lot of factors need to be juggled in order to make the finished room look good.
Here, I’ve opted to mis-match the pattern a little across the seam. You can see that the stripes on the trunk of the palm tree are aligned one notch off. This then throws off the match of the cat’s tail. Not much, though.
Why did I do this?

Blame it on old houses, shifting foundations, un-level ceilings and un-plumb walls.
In order to get the pattern to match perfectly in the corner (not shown), it threw the subsequent strips of wallpaper off-plumb. This in turn caused the motifs (the white leopard’s head) to start moving higher up on the wall toward the ceiling. Eventually, the leopard’s head would be cut off at the ceiling.
By dropping the pattern down just very slightly, as seen in the top photo, I was able to keep the cat’s head below the ceiling line, for uniform look as you look at the wall from a distance (second photo).
The minor pattern mis-match at the palm tree, cat’s tail, and a few other design elements were not readily noticeable. And it looked a whole lot more pleasing than a cat without a head!

“Etched Arcadia” Mural in a Powder Room

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

This young family lives near Rice University (Houston), on South Boulevard, a street revered for its huge Live Oak trees that meet and canopy over the street. The homeowner wanted her traditional style home to carry on the look of this historic neighborhood. She had a vision of bringing the beloved trees into her home, while maintaining the old-world feel.

She could not have found a better choice than this mural. It combines the feel of aged trees with the look of centuries-old etchings. Because it’s a mural, the pattern plays out as one large picture, with no repeating elements.

I have done murals like this on single walls, but this is the first time I’ve put one on all four walls of a room. I have to say, the homeowner had a great eye, and the finished room is stunning.

The first photo shows how many murals come; in panels. This one was packaged as one large bolt, and I had to cut the 8 panels apart, then lay them out and line them up to be sure the pattern matched and that the sequence was correct.

The mural was 9′ high by 12′ wide (pretty standard dimensions), and the room was wider than 12′, so two murals were needed. Originally, I thought that the right side of one mural would match up with the left side of the other mural, so that the two murals could be joined seamlessly – but that was not the case.

In addition, the homeowner favored the trees more than the sky, so, since the walls were 7 1/2′ high, I opted to move the pattern up, to cut off more sky but reveal more trees. A vanity that rose 32″ off the floor further complicated the pattern placement.

Without going into mathematical or geometrical details, I spent a lot – a LOT – of time plotting the room’s layout, so that we would see more trees and less sky, and to avoid a mis-matched seam where the two murals met, and to disguise the one mis-matched corner that could not be avoided.

The pattern was forgiving, the paper was lovely to work with, and the finished room looks fantastic. This was one of my favorite projects this year.

In addition, the homeowner didn’t like the A/C vent and the exhaust fan leaving big white blobs in the middle of the wall. So I covered these with scraps of wallpaper, too. This is more tricky than it sounds, because wallpaper doesn’t like to stick to plastic or metal (too slick), and especially not metal with air blowing past it, possibly carrying along condensation / humidity. So special adhesives are called for, and you have to have a back-up plan, in case the paper detaches over time.

Also, because murals don’t have repeating pattern motifs, there were no scraps of paper that I could use to cover these objects with a matching pattern. So I found scraps that had reasonably similar designs.

In the end, I could not get the paper to conform to all of the many curves on the exhaust fan cover, so I opted to leave the outer area as-is, and just covered the inner, flat area with paper. This doesn’t totally disguise the white cover, but it sure does minimize it.

This mural is by Sure-Strip, a York brand that I love working with, and is on a thin, non-woven material, which should – “should” – strip off the wall easily when it’s time to redecorate.