Bringing India to Houston

One of the homeowners has familial ties to India, and he wanted their new home to reflect that feel. Presenting “Peacock Garden,” which perfectly conveys the feel of rural parts of that country, while complimenting the colors of their dining room.

This wallpaper is 54″ wide – which is about as wide as I am tall! Since I don’t have scaffolding, I used two ladders, set close together (not pictured), so I could walk back and forth between them to augment my wingspan.

The paper was untrimmed – had a selvedge edge that had to be roughly trimmed off by hand. Next, a perfect pattern match was achieved by overlapping the seams on the wall and double cutting – an industry term for splicing. The process requires special tools, and takes a good bit of additional time. Do a Search here to find related posts.

The material is a durable non-woven, which meant that I could install via the paste-the-wall method. Eliminating paste from the back of the paper made each 54″ x 10′ strip much lighter and easier to get to the wall.

The contemporary home is a new build in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston.

This wallpaper pattern is by Zoffany, and was bought from my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price – Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.

Bringing Indonesia to Houston

“Sumatra” by the House of Hackney (a British company) includes images of historic or important buildings and monuments in Indonesia, as well as native flora and animals. Note the monkeys and tigers.

This product comes as a 4-panel set, much like a mural. Essentially, the design is a multiple-drop pattern repeat. Which are really mind-boggling to work with. But since the manufacturer set this up as a 4-panel mural, they took the confusion and math and head-scratching out of the equation.

The powder room required 13 panels, so four 4-panel sets were required. Only one panel of the fourth set was needed to finish the room (Panel 13).

BUT – I was glad we had the additional paper. … I used two of the “extra” panels from that fourth set to achieve perfect pattern matches in the two corners. (Too complicated to explain here – but the point is, always buy a little extra paper.)

The material is a non-woven, same as yesterday (same home). But today, instead of the paste-the-wall method of installation, I opted to paste the paper. This works better in more complicated rooms, and rooms with difficult access areas, such as behind the toilet.

The home is a new, contemporary build in the Montrose neighborhood of central Houston.

This wallpaper pattern is by House of Hackney, and was bought from my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price – Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.

Bringing the Jungle to Houston

Another new “contemporary” styled home where everything is white. I’m here to change that! 🙂

One of the homeowners has ties to India. He wanted this breakfast room to be fun and cheerful, while reflecting his heritage.

What a dramatic change – all for the better! I especially like how the dark paper plays up the black frames of the windows.

I hung this same pattern a few months ago in a lighter color. https://wallpaperlady.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/playful-jungle-animals-for-baby-girls-nursery-accent-wall/ That was OK for a baby’s room. But in this modern home’s main living area, I like this dark version much better.

This wallpaper is by Milton and King, and comes in a 2-roll set. Each roll contains 2-3 strips, depending on the height of your walls. In order to match the patter correctly, you alternate strips between the “A” roll and the “B” roll.

This is a non-woven material, and I installed it via the paste-the-wall method.

This wallpaper was bought from my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price – Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.

The home is in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston.

Teal and Peach for 5-Year Old Girl’s Room

For a 5-year old girl, you can’t beat the color combination in this room! .. .. Peach walls, a floral wallpaper in teal and peach on an accent wall, and other accents not pictured, like twin teal shelves and chest of drawers, and a turquoise scrolled-metal headboard.

She can live with this pattern and these colors well into her teen years.

In the first photo, I have skim-floated to smooth over the textured walls. My three fans (plus the ceiling fan and the home’s A/C system) are working hard to dry the smoothing compound. I also engaged the services of my heat gun, to speed drying along.

This wallpaper is by Eijffinger, a Scandinavian company. It is a non-woven material, with a high fiberglass content, and won’t expand when wet with paste. Also, it is designed to strip off the wall easily and cleanly when it’s time to redecorate.

These qualities mean that it was possible to hang it using the paste-the-wall method. That made me happy, because I did not have to lug in my heavy and cumbersome trimming / pasting table.

The home is a newish townhome in the Montrose neighborhood of central Houston.

Colorful, Tribal, Fun – All In One

The owners of this newish townhome in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston spend much of their year in Africa (oil patch). The wife had a few goals for enhancing the all-beige space.

She wanted color. She wanted to tie in with some bright artwork the couple had collected. And she sought to bring a little of the African / ethnic feel they have come to love into their Houston home.

To me, the fun turtles on this wallpaper pattern look like batik-dyed pagne fabric. The teal is a wild jolt of color in an unexpected place – the master bathroom water closet.

The homeowner loves it so much, she is already thinking of adding more bright wallpaper to a more visible space – the adjoining master bedroom.

This wallpaper pattern is by Thibaut Designs, and was bought from my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price – Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.

Wild Bursts of Water-Colory Hues!

Oooooo …. Here’s something fun!

This 5-year old townhome in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston is typically all pale grey and tan. The homeowner wanted to brighten it up, as well as pull in some colors that coordinate with vivid artwork they have collected in Africa.

This pattern with bold swipes of primary colors in a sort of faux-finish design is perfect!

I hung this in a large powder room, as well as two walls in the adjoining bar area (no photo yet – see separate post).

This wallpaper is by Wallquest, and was sold by my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price – Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.

French Toile Wallpaper Marries Beautifully With French Antique Furniture

I hung this classic French toile pattern a few years ago in a 4th-floor bedroom in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston. I will be doing a few more rooms for the homeowner, and was able to get a shot of the finished room.

The homeowner is a former antiques dealer, hence the gorgeous 19th-Century French bedroom suite.

The room itself was quite complicated, with its ultra-high ceilings (requiring an extension ladder), sloped walls, multiple dormers, odd angles, and huge size.

The wallpaper is by Cole & Son, and was bought from Dorota at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet at Kirby. By appointment (713) 520-6262

Roiling Clouds Wallpaper in a Montrose Bathroom

Historic British manufacturer’s Fornasetti Line “Nuvolette” wallpaper pattern… I have long wanted to hang this paper, and finally got my chance today!

The walls in this first-floor bathroom of a newish contemporary styled home in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston were textured and covered with a semi-gloss paint. (top picture) It took me a day and a half to skim-coat the walls with smoothing compound, let dry, sand smooth, vacuum up the dust, wipe dust off the walls, prime, and let the primer dry. (second photo shows the smoothed and primed walls)

You would see this pattern better in a larger, less broken-up room, but here you can tell that it is a powerful depiction of roiling thunder clouds storming powerfully toward the west.

The product is unusual, in that it comes in a 2-pack set of “A” and “B” rolls. Each bolt is the same width and length as many Cole & Son papers. But the pattern is placed on those bolts very atypically, and the pattern match is equally unexpected.

Usually, wallpaper patterns match straight across from strip to strip. (straight across match) This means you see the same design element at the top of the wall on every strip. Or they drop down bit on every other strip, then pop back up to the top of the wall on the third strip. (drop match)

A much less common and much more complicated patter match is when the pattern motif repeats itself at the top of the wall only on every fourth (or more) strip. It can take a lot of mind-bending to figure out how to get the pattern placed correctly, and without wasting more paper than necessary.

Look at the upper left of the label, and it says that when placing the A strip to the right of the B strip, it’s a straight match. But when you position the B strip to the right of the A strip, it’s a drop match. This makes everything even wackier and more complicated!

What helped me here is that this home had plenty of room to roll out the bolts of paper, and plot out how the pattern would fall. (see photo) No one was home, so I had peace and quiet to concentrate and get my head around the intricacies of the pattern.

It turned out that the “straight match” indicated on the label was an error – no strips featured a straight match. Good thing I had all that floor space to roll the bolts out, so I could determine that.

Because the pattern match was so unpredictable, it was not possible to cut all of the “odd” and “even” strips ahead of time. And the very unlevel / unplumb qualities of the room also stepped in to make this impossible.

One thing that helped was that this was a non-woven material, which meant that the wallpaper did not need to be booked (left to sit and absorb paste and expand) before hanging. So as soon as I was able to figure out the pattern match for the upcoming strip, I was able to paste and hang the strip-in-hand.

If I had had to figure, measure, plot, paste, book, and then finally hang each strip individually, it would have taken a lot more than the eight hours it did take me to hang this 8-roll bathroom.

A big help on this pattern is that I belong to the Wallcovering Installers Association, and I check our Facebook page every day. (Sorry – it’s private … you can’t peek!) It was there that I learned about others’ experiences with this Nuvolette design, and how they tackled the pattern repeat and the install.

Textured Walls Show Under Wallpaper

The powder room walls in this ’90’s home in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston had a light texture. Wishing to conserve time, money, and mess, the homeowner chose to skip having the walls smoothed, and asked to have the wallpaper hung over the walls as they were.

The original wallpaper selection was thick and spongy and would have disguised the wall texture a bit. But the original choice was not available, and the alternate turned out to be thinner and smoother and glossier – all recipes for telegraphing the wall texture through to the surface of the wallpaper.

I admit, this does not look bad, and it is something that I probably notice more than the homeowners do.

But still, I don’t like the way it looks. Next time – even if it takes more time, costs more money, and results in a little dust – I will insist on smoothing the walls.

Fans on a TV Room Wall

This pattern reminds me of the marques and fanfare around movie theaters in the Art Deco period of the 1930’s. So it’s fitting to use in a large living room / TV room in this townhouse in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston.

Since the area where the pattern hits the edges of the paper is dark, and the paper is printed on a white substrate, I used dark chalk pastels to color the edges, to prevent white from showing at the seams.

The paper is by A Street Prints, and is a non-woven material, and I hung it using the paste-the-wall method.

The homeowners have a lot of artwork in the form of colorful glass plates and other pieces, and this pattern will be a fabulous backdrop.