Challenges With Moody Jungle Powder Room

Yesterday’s install was quite fun, but there were some unusual or challenging features to the room. Here are some of them.
First, in most areas, the chair rail had a sort of gap between it and the wall, probably then filled in with caulk. I used some craft paint from Texas Art Supply to color that in, so there wouldn’t be white showing between the dark green paint and the black wallpaper.
My usual trim guide (not pictured) is thin, designed to allow you to cut very close and tight to the edge. But in this case, I was afraid it might leave some of that gapped area showing between the paper and the wood trim.

So I used this steel plate tool, which is thicker and would allow me to get a fat cut – just enough paper left to wrap a teeny bit onto that gap area. Note that before I trim, I’m going to press that edge into the corner. I couldn’t hold the camera and hold it in proper position at the same time.
Also, you’ll notice the rolled edge at the top of the tool. That’s thicker, and allows for getting an even fatter cut, for instance, when you want just a tad of paper to wrap around a corner . Do a Search to see my previous post about this technique.

Here I’ve made the trim cut and am peeling away the excess that was trimmed off at the bottom.
See how the bottom edge of the wallpaper now wraps a tiny bit and fills the gap neatly?

Next issue – wall height. On this wall, the height is 3′ + 30.5″

But on the opposite wall, the height is 3′ + 29.75″.
This means that you can expect the ceiling to move up or down, which means that a pattern motif – let’s say one of those cute chameleons – could get his head chopped off by the descending ceiling.

Next issue – bowed wall. Here my yardstick is sitting pretty squarely against this wall, in a corner .

But as I move it up the wall a little further – wow! – that wall takes a dip to the left. And it’s quite a dip! The wall has a bow in it.
I can get my next strip of wallpaper to cover that space. But the fallout will be that pattern motifs will hit the wall at different points, which means that the next piece to be placed after that, the pattern will not match perfectly at all points.

All right. So that previous corner had a bow. This one is out of plumb. Here you see my laser level showing that my wallpaper strip is hanging nice and plumb.

But move the laser to the corner and you see that it’s out of plumb .

Here’s a better example. Again, this causes the pattern to not match perfectly in the corners.

Another shot of the bowed wall, which, for various tech reasons, due to Word Press ‘s crappy New Editor , this shot got out of order and I was not able to place it with the others under the topic.

Papering around the electrical outlet , I had to unplug my light source. There was light coming in from the hall. But this paper, as well as the paint, were so dark that I couldn’t see well to work. Enter my Big Larry flashlight .

Small enough to fit in my toolbox , but really bright and dependable for when you need it.

The pattern is called Fantasy Tree and is by Breeze and was purchased through one of the showrooms in one of Houston’s decorative / design center s. It’s a nice non-woven material , easy to hang , easy to remove , durable and stain-resistant .

Dark and Moody Jungle Theme for Powder Room

Before. Heavily textured wall has been skim-floated with smoothing / joint compound and then sanded smooth , and then primed with Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime wallpaper primer . I’ve run a narrow line of dark green craft paint along the top of the chair rail / wainscoting , due to uneven edges . More on that in a soon-future post.

Sink wall is done. Pattern is centered nicely on the faucet and in between the electrical boxes for the new sconces – They haven’t arrived yet and will be installed in a few weeks .

The homeowner’s carpenter created this beautiful wainscoting out of 3D block paneling , and then painted it a rich dark hunter’s green . Right now there’s some sanding dust collected on it, plus bad lighting . In person, it’s gorgeous . The same company did a fantastic paneled wall / fireplace surround in the family room (not pictured) .

Back to wallpaper … This shot is pretty color-accurate. I love the way the dark wallpaper coordinates with the green paneling . The pink and orange flowers , as well as the row of purple foliage , really stand out against all the dark .

Close-up looks like an artist’s painting . Besides centering the pattern on the sink wall, the dimensions worked out so that I was able to balance the chameleons between the ceiling and chair rail , one just below the ceiling and the one here just above the chair rail. So no critter got cut in half .

This product comes as a 2-strip (roll) set , with an “A” strip and a “B” strip in each box. Together, the two strips equal just a hair under 6′ wide , and a little over 9′ high . Here I’m rolling out the two strips so I can gauge the pattern , measure width and height , and plot the layout on the wall.
Sobering fact: Each 2-strip set (one “roll”) cost about $500. This room used four of those sets. I always try to keep that in mind when working with people’s purchased wallpaper .

OK, this damned Word Press blog account has AGAIN (2nd time in two nights!) deleted paragraphs that I spent a lot of time typing. I can’t recreate all the info I put into that lost post, but below I will try to include some of the important points.
First and foremost – since the switch to the New Editor back about 2015, I pretty much HATE WORDPRESS .
Anyway, here the company is providing a mock-up of what the “A” and “B” strips look like. The mock-up above shows the two panels next to each other.
Since this is essentially a mural and the pattern doesn’t repeat vertically as more typical wallpapers do, you can plan on getting only one strip out of each panel. These walls are 6′ high , and the panels are 9′ high. So you’re losing 3′ with every strip.
Further, the area over the door needed one panel that’s 2′ high. But an entire 9′ panel was needed for this, to get the 2′ high strip. So 7′ are going into the trash. Add to that, since this product comes as a 2-panel set , the homeowner had to buy a 2-panel set (at $500), even though only part of one panel would be used. This means that 1 + 2/3 9′ long panels were purchased but not used.
Also, because this comes in panels instead of traditional rolled goods, there are no “extra” strips. This means that I can’t make any mistakes.
Nothing like a little pressure while trying to install wallpaper !
No fears … this pattern and material went up nicely, and we had just enough paper to git ‘er done.

Manufacturer is Breeze and the pattern is called Fantasy Tree . It was purchased from one of the show rooms in one of the Design / Decorative Centers in central Houston. It’s printed on the user-friendly / DIY – friendly non-woven material , which can be hung by pasting the paper (which I prefer) or the paste-the-wall method . It’s designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece with no damage to the wall when it’s time to redecorate . Definitely better than peel & stick (click my link on the right to read more about P&S ).
The home is in the Oak Forest / Garden Oaks / Heights neighborhood of Houston .

Slight Problems With Katie Kime Wallpaper

There were eight double roll bolts of this wallpaper , to cover a large powder room in Houston.
Four were rolled so the pattern came off the top of the roll, and four were rolled the opposite way, with the bottom coming off first. This Katie Kime brand is custom-printed , so you can assume that all these rolls are from the same run , or batch . But maybe not - why are some forward and some backward ? Possibly the company substituted some returned goods, or some old stock they had sitting around the warehouse, for half of this order.
I didn't want to risk putting strips of slightly different shades on the same wall. So I had to carefully plot the room so I used the "forward" rolls on some walls, and the "backward" rolls on the others. This does eat up additional paper , so good thing I always have the homeowner purchase a little extra.
Also note the crease in the roll on the right. There were a few other creases in other rolls.

I have no idea what happened to the font in the section above, nor do I know how to get it back to the original. All I know is that I HATE this “New Editor” that WordPress foisted on us a few years ago. Perfectly HORRIBLE. And their Customer Service doesn’t care. Anyway … moving on …

Note the horizontal smudge next to the top of the capitol. Since this Austin Toile pattern has a 25″ pattern repeat, discarding this piece ate up minimum of 2′ of material (x 24″ width = 4 square feet) and potentially more, to get the correct pattern match.

Usually this brand prints on a nice non-woven / paste the wall substrate. But, like other manufacturers, Katie Kime has had supply issues obtaining raw materials . During the height of the Pandemic , they resorted to printing on some positively awful stuff. Extremely heavy , thick , un- pliable , stretched to the extent that the pattern wouldn’t match properly, and more. One was completely un-hangable and had to be sent back. I can’t find all my posts re those challenges, but here is one:
https://wallpaperlady.wordpress.com/2021/07/21/katie-kime-tough-install-today-draft-messed-up-delete/
But they’ve since gone back to printing on their usual stock, and I’ve not had problems lately. So when I first picked up this box of 8 double roll bolts, I was surprised at the weight of it. Also the paper had a shiny surface and was obviously composed of vinyl . I couldn’t tell if the substrate was non-woven or paper . I feared they had gone back to printing on that bad material , or perhaps were using up what they had in the back of the warehouse .
There were no instructions included, nor any information at all – not even a brand name! Although I could find instructions on-line, you can’t be sure these are current and applicable to the rolls in the box. KK has amazingly good customer service , and you can usually get intelligent answers via phone or on-line chat … but my call to them went to voice mail , and then we got disconnected, so I gave up.
After hanging the first few strips, I figured out that this was a flexible vinyl on a non-woven substrate, so that part was good. However, the thickness of the material interfered with getting good, tight, flat seams , as you can see somewhat in the photo. The seams aren’t horrible, but a better non-woven without the vinyl usually produces almost invisible seams.
The surface was shinier than usual. Shiny tends to show every imperfection in the wall underneath. Here the thickness was a bit of a help, as it helped cushion any slight dips or pimples on the wall.
There was also an odd orange discoloration about 1.5″ long on the edge of one strip. Very faint, but I could see it, and sometimes these things end up catching your eye. I also worry that it might be some substance that will bleed into the paper and cause a larger stain over time. Of course, this popped up after I had hung a very difficult piece in a tight spot, and then hung the subsequent strip. In other words – no way was I taking it off the wall and re-doing. I cut out a design motif and pasted it over the area.
Another thing I was unhappy with has happened a number of times with KK paper. The pattern will match perfectly at the top of the wall, but begin to slide up or down, creating a mis-match , as you move down the wall. I think that a lot of it has to do with the vinyl material, because it’s stretchy. The weight of the paste and the vinyl will cause the bottom section of the strip to sag. This simply doesn’t make sense, though, because, if the paper is going to absorb moisture from the paste and expand (which many papers do), each strip should do so at the same rate, right? But not.
I finally deduced, correctly or not, that the pattern gets distorted as it’s wound into a roll. So my theory is that if you take your 10′ strips from the same position in each roll, the pattern should match. In other words, take a 10′ strip from the top of roll #1. Take your next strip from a brand new roll #2. Third strip from roll #3. Obviously, this leaves a whole lot of unused paper. For shorter areas like over doors, where it’s harder to see, and where you can fudge the pattern a bit, I used the paper from the insides of the rolls, again, roll #1 next to roll #2, etc. But this doesn’t work on every instance, so you’re gonna be stuck with many areas where the pattern doesn’t match perfectly across the seams. The solution is to match the pattern at eye-level , and then allow it to go off as it moves toward the ceiling and floor.
There were other issues with this paper that were disappointing to me. But not overwhelmingly awful. Most homeowners would not notice. But I sure hope that this was a one-time issue, and Katie Kime will go back to its former good-quality, non-woven material.