Geometric Grasscloth in Home Gathering Area

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 .

Probably No One Would Notice This But Me …

Digital Image

This was one of those six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other situations. The walls in this newish Montrose townhome had no real texture; just the little bit left by the painter’s roller. The wallpaper was thin, and had a lot of plain white areas, where the texture would show (telegraph) through. On the other hand, there wasn’t much texture to see, and it certainly was not really offensive.

If I were to smooth the wall by floating and sanding, it would add an extra day- and an extra day’s cost, plus dust from sanding. And you would still have a little texture, because I would be rolling on my primer, and the roller does leave a wee imprint behind it.

The homeowner went with my suggestion, to put the wallpaper up over the walls as they were, without smoothing. It turned out great.

The point of the photo, though, is to show just what a difference in texture looks like under wallpaper. On the right, inside the rectangular shape, is the paper applied over the painted wall, (which had also been coated with my favorite pigmented wallpaper primer, Roman’s Ultra Prime Pro 977.)

In contrast, on the left, inside the oval shape, you can see that the sub surface is smooth. How did that happen? This is where a towel bar had been hanging. When it was removed, a hole from the mounting hardware was left. I filled in the hole with joint compound, sanded smooth, and wiped on a sealer called Gardz. Because Gardz penetrates the surface, rather than sit on top of it, no brush or roller imprints are left behind.

Now, I do have to admit – hardly anybody would ever notice that. Except me. 🙂