Dramatic Background for Bathtub Wall Niche

An interesting feature to this master bathroom is this recessed wall niche . But you just can’t have a niche. You’ve gotta have something in it! The color scheme of this home is grey , neutral , and white . The homeowners were originally considering a similarly-hued nature – themed Chinoiserie mural by RebelWalls.com . But it wasn’t scaled to fit their space , and other factors weren’t feeling right.

So they opted for this instead. Way more dramatic , but still coordinates with the home’s color scheme . The branches have a light gold sheen .

Interestingly enough, this is the same paper used on the backs of their bookcases (see post a day ago). They realized there was left over paper , and it was enough to do the back of this niche. Win-win!

The wallpaper has a lightly textured vinyl surface on a non-woven backing material . I hung it via the paste the wall method . Non-wovens will strip off the wall easily and in one piece , with no damage to the wall , when you redecorate. The manufacturer is York , one of my favorites .
The modern / contemporary style home is in the Spring Branch neighborhood of Houston .

Picasso Slept Here – Crazy Pattern in a Complicated Powder Room

This is a fairly large powder room with a sloped ceiling, as it is situated under the stairs. You can see a bit of the ceiling at the top of the photo. The room also had this odd recessed niche with “columns” on either side, and a door leading to a closet.
In addition, there were tons of the rounded / bull-nosed edges that have been common in new homes in the last 10 years or so. These are tricky to wrap wallpaper around, and equally difficult to trim wallpaper to the edge.

Here is the niche area done, with wallpaper wrapped around the columns, and cut neatly along the horizontal bull nosed edge above the entry.
Wrapping the wallpaper around this edge and onto the ceiling of the niche would have made the area way too busy and claustrophobic. Because these edges are never perfectly straight and level, it’s also quite likely that the wallpaper will go crooked, and you’ll end up with gaps or overlaps at the seams.
A better option is to paint that ceiling area. I suggested the murky green color that’s in the leaves on the wallpaper pattern.

Here’s the east wall of the room. The vanity and sink are at the bottom right.

Here it is finished. In this case, the fir-down underside was only about a foot deep, so less chance of the wallpaper going crooked, so I did wrap it around the rounded edge and underneath. Still, one of the wallpaper strips did twist askew, and there was a small gap at one seam. With this pattern, no biggie – I just cut out a leaf and pasted it over the gap.

I told you the room had crazy angles!

Note that in papering angled areas like this, you can match the pattern in some places, but there will be mis-matches in others, such as where the sloped ceiling meets the fir-down. This wild pattern is perfect for disguising any mis-matches!

Rolling the paper out on the floor, to get an idea of the pattern’s layout .

Closer look at the lemons and leaves . And angles .
It looks like a Picasso painting, don’t you think? The homeowner wanted something wild and fun , to set off the white minimalism in the rest of the home .

The pattern is called Citrus and is by A Street Prints . It’s a nice non-woven material , doesn’t expand , and can be hung by the paste the wall method , although I opted to paste the paper , as I usually do.
Non-wovens are designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece, with no / minimal damage to the wall when you redecorate . They’re usually a pleasure to install . They’re more stain resistant and more able to withstand humidity than many traditional wallpapers .

The home of this busy young family is in the West University area of Houston .

Horizontal Cut To Ease Installation in Tight Spot

This is an under-the-stairs cloffice ( closet turned home office ). Wallpaper needs to go along the wall on the right. Over the top of the shelf alcove on the right, over the top of the shelf on the left, down the center, into the niche above the desk area on the left, and then down and under into the knee / kick area under the desk on the left.
Easily accomplished with paint. But tricky with wallpaper – which can twist, crease, tear, buckle, etc. Not to mention paste getting slopped onto all that nice newly-painted woodwork.

The part above the desk is not so horribly tricky, but this portion under the desk is, mostly due to the narrow transition point.

Another issue is that the strip of wallpaper is set to extend to the right about 5″ over the shelf alcove. This means that paste will be getting onto the woodwork, as well as adding weight and stress to the whole strip.
Since the wallpaper comes in a rectangular strip, a whole lot of the top section is going to overlap onto that sloped ceiling area, getting paste on that, too.

To make all that easier and cleaner, here I have roughed in some cuts, measuring and templating ahead of time, to reduce the amount of paper that will overlap onto the shelf woodwork and the ceiling.
Once this strip is pasted, I’ll use my blue plastic tape on the pasted side of the paper, to keep paste from getting on to the navy blue paint. No photo of that, but you can Search on ” blue tape ” to see previous posts about that cool stuff.

As mentioned above, it was going to be really difficult to manipulate the wallpaper down the wall and then down and under the desk area without damaging the paper.
So I decided to eliminate stress on the paper by cutting the strip into two sections – one for above the desk and one for under it. I used my straightedge and a razor blade and cut along a horizontal element of the design.

Here I have the top section in place. No need to wrestle a 24″ wide strip down that narrow area and then down and underneath the desk.

Here I’m about to position the bottom piece.

Here it is in place.

All finished! No stress on the paper, no creases or tears. And no swearing during the installation!
This wallpaper pattern is called Florida Toile and is by Katie Kime in their very popular Cities Toile collection .

Grasscloth on Several Bookshelves Today

Home office work station niche primed and ready for wallpaper.

Done. Grasscloth comes 36″ wide, and this niche was about 39″ wide, so it required two strips, both trimmed down to 19.5″ wide. Generally, design-wise, you try not to put a seam down the center. But in this case there was no other viable option. This seam was practically invisible.

In the photo, the seam is a little to the right of center. You always see the seams in grasscloth, and this is about as perfect as it gets.
The homeowner, who is an interior designer, did a superb job of finding a grasscloth that’s murky blue hue coordinates perfectly with the color of the cabinetry.
Unfortunately, I don’t know the manufacturer of this material.

Close-up showing the texture.

Twin bookshelves flanking the fireplace wall in the family room, primed and ready for wallpaper.

Grasscloth has been installed. It’s nice to not have the shelves in place – so much easier to get that paper up!

Bookshelf niche on the right.

Bookshelf niche on the left. Note the slight shading and color variations . These are typical of natural products like grasscloth, and are not considered a defect. As the manufacturers say, these variations are ” part of the inherent beauty of these natural materials .”
Shelves will go in these niches and decorative items will obscure these slight imperfections.

TV room bookshelf niche. Yes, t’was I who swiped the smiley face and the horse head into the primer. 🙂

Done. This niche is a tad less than 36″ wide, so only one strip was needed, hence, no seams. Any color variations you see are due to shadows.

Close-up.

Closer-up. Scissors for perspective. These days, people are loving the subtle texture and warmth of grasscloth , paperweaves and other natural materials .

The manufacturer of the grasscloth in both the family room and TV room is Schumacher . The home is in the far west area of Katy , a suburb west of Houston.

Cole & Son Acquario – Super Cool in a Powder Room

This is a powder room off a TV / game / great room in the home of a family with school-aged kids. They had just done updates to the room (built in shelving and TV niche, carpet, pool table, huge snuggly sofa), to make it a family hang-out spot. The small adjoining powder room got an update with tile on the sink wall.

What a dramatic and shockingly fun wallpaper design! – This is called Acquario, and is in the Fornasetti collection by Cole & Son. I just call it “the Puffer Fish.”

Wallpaper shrinks as its paste dries, and so you can expect to see teeny gaps at the seams. This is normal. But since this wallpaper is dark, the white edges of the substrate, as well as even a minute bit of the wall under the seams, might be more prominent as the dark paper dries and shrinks.

In the top “before” photo, you see where I have used diluted craft paint to run a dark stripe along the wall where the wallpaper seam will fall. This, along with having colored the edges of the wallpaper strips with near-black chalk, pretty much eliminated any visible gaps at the seams.

This small powder room took me nearly 12 hours – to smooth the textured walls, prime, and hang the 6 single rolls (3 double roll bolts) of wallpaper.

The home is in the Pasadena area of south Houston.

Out of the Bayou and Onto the Wall – Crocodile Hide!

There is a lot going on in the second photo.

After determining the pattern match – which was no small feat on this very eye-crossing design – I am measuring and cutting my strips.

Those that have already been cut are rolled up and placed in the order they will be hung.
There is a piece of dark chalk I am using to color the edges of the paper, to prevent the white backing from peaking out at the seams.

And to keep the white primer from doing the same, you can see that I have plotted out where the seams will fall, and have striped black paint on the wall.

I don’t need my work table for this job, because it’s a paste-the-wall material, so no need for a table to paste on. And there are no corners to turn, so no need for a table to trim on.

The pattern has a crocodile hide look.

This Superfresco brand is by Graham & Brown. It is an embossed (textured) vinyl on a non-woven backing – which has a fibrous, fiber-glass composition, and is made to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate.

This material was a lot more pliable than most non-wovens, so it was quite nice to work with. Although there was some stretching and warping. On a longer wall, that could have caused some panels to develop wrinkles.

I hung this wallpaper in a recessed headboard niche / accent wall in the master bedroom of a newish home in the Rice Village area of Houston.
installer   alligator

Bringing COLOR to Wine Niche Cubby Holes

Here’s a fun idea! Let’s pull color from the adjacent accent wall and put it in an unexpected place – on the backs of wine cubby holes in the home’s bar area.

This was more tricky to do than it would appear. Those triangular cubbies are NOT all exactly the same size. And the measurements from the front of the cubbies are not the same as at the back wall. So I couldn’t just make a template and cut 16 pieces all the same size and shape.

In addition, you have to take into account the expansion factor when wallpaper gets wet with paste. In further addition, it didn’t work to trim off excess paper as one normally would, because it was virtually impossible to get a hand and razor blade all the way to the back wall inside those tiny cubicles – and even more impossible to be able to maneuver the blade to make any trim cuts.

These 16 triangles took me about three hours, but, when it was all said and done – I got ‘er done!

And in a few days, the homeowner will stuff those cubby holes full of wine bottles …. Sigh …

Soft Geometric in Bedroom Niche

This is an alcove leading into a master bedroom in a new townhome in the Houston Heights. This niche is recessed between bookshelves on either side, and above.

The geometric pattern of blocks and angles with gold metallic accents adds a modern touch, and the soft color promotes the feel of calm relaxation. Brass sconces will be mounted over the electrical boxes, and the homeowner has a settee that will be placed in the center.

This was a non-woven wallpaper, and I hung it using the paste-the-wall method.

Large Arched Niche With Rounded / Bull Nosed Edges

This is a very large art niche in the entry I blogged about yesterday. The edges are not just rounded, but the top is arched, as well. Wallpaper might turn the rounded edges alright, but it will not handle the arch and wrap under it, too – at least, not without a whole lot of cuts and splices. Best to trim at the edge and leave the underside of the arch painted.

It’s a whole lot harder than it sounds, because, with the paper hanging over the edge, it’s impossible to see where you are trimming. I have a little gadget (not shown) that is made from the same plastic edging that is used on the drywall to form these rounded corners. It has a couple of notches cut into it at various spots. I place a pencil in a notch and run the gadget around the rounded corner, and that gives me a nice, straight line to use as a guide for trimming.

Personally, I’ll be glad when these bull-nosed edges fall out of style. In the meantime, I am happy I have my little gadget in my toolbox.