Handy Motif Placement by Mfgr

It’s nice when a manufacturer does this.  Notice that all of the pattern motifs are contained within the width / borders of this strip of wallpaper.  Nothing passes across the seam.  There is nothing to match from strip to strip. 

Even if the walls are out of plumb , or the ceiling is not level , this allows me to keep the same design element at the same spot below the ceiling, all the way across the wall or around the room .  See photo.  All seven strips across this nursery accent wall have the design motifs at the same distance below the crown molding.  Not having to connect a pattern motif to another across each seam means that I can pull each strip up to where I want it under the crown molding.  No going off-track or sloping / tracking down or up. 

This cute pattern of pastel hot air balloons is by Caitlin Wilson and is in the Sure Strip line of pre-pasted , easy to install and easy to remove wallpaper s made by York .  I like this material a lot. 

Peek-a-Boo Bear for New Baby Girl’s Nursery

This design is called “Surprise.” Once I got it up on the wall, I realized why – there are only two of the cute bears, and they pop out unexpectedly from behind random fan motifs. This is the wall where the crib will be placed, and the bears will cradle it nicely, while peeping down once in a while to keep an eye on the little one.

This is a good example of why you should see your pattern choices in a room-set photo, before ordering. The mother-to-be had seen a portion of the design on the company’s website, and they also sent her a 6″ x 8″ sample. Both of these led her to believe that the bears were more predominant in the design.

Another thing to note … The 6″ x 8″ sample had a much smaller scale of “fans” and bear faces than what the homeowner received. This is because the mural is custom digitally printed to order to fit the dimensions of the specific wall / room where it will hang. So stretching the pattern to fill a full wall enlarged both the fans and the faces.

Another opportunity for me to get on my soapbox … Always have the paperhanger measure and figure what size to have the mural printed, BEFORE you order. And remember to add 2″ to EACH side of the mural, to accommodate trimming and un-level ceilings / un-plumb walls.

This company normally does add a little “bleed” area. But only about one inch – to be divided between two sides. This one-half inch at the top would not have been adequate to accommodate the un-level ceiling line in this room. Good thing I advised the homeowner to add 2″ to each side.

Even so, I had to deal with the mural the way it was printed. If this had been regular wallpaper, I would have pulled the design up to where the top of the fans met with the crown molding. But the manufacturer did not place the pattern on the panels to where I could do that, so I had to drop it a little below the crown molding.

This probably worked out for the best, because the ceiling line was not level. If I had placed the fans at the top of an unlevel ceiling, they would have worked their way off-track and you would see a sloping motif line at the top of the wall.

Since the tops of the fans had to be dropped down a little, now you see a vertical column instead of a fan top. You don’t notice a small fluctuation in the height of the column, as you would if the fan tops didn’t hit the crown molding at the same spot all across the wall.

On to more simple concepts …

This product came rolled up as one long piece, which I cut into eight individual panels, each having been printed to fit the dimensions of the wall. I spread those out on the floor of the empty room, to be sure each panel matched correctly to the next one, and to get a grasp on how the pattern would span out across the wall.

After measuring the wall and the panels, I plotted where I would place my first strip. MuralsWallpaper prints on a non-woven substrate, which can be hung using the paste-the-wall method. For one accent wall with no fancy turns or cuts, this is an ideal installation method.

To keep the surface of the paper from bopping into the pasted wall, I roll each strip backwards, with the top coming off the roll first, and secure with a Dollar Store hairband. See photo.

After the wall has been pasted (taking care to use a brush to cut paste in to the edges and corners), when I am up on the ladder, I remove the hairband and let the paper unfurl. You have to take care while positioning the strip to not allow the edges to come in contact with the paste on the wall, as this could cause dark edges or staining.

This mural by MuralsWallpaper.com went up very nicely. The finished wall looked super. It is ready to welcome the newest member of the family!

I stay pretty booked up with work, and originally wasn’t able to get this room done before the baby came. But I had a schedule change, and was able to move this job up, so the young family could get their nursery decorated in plenty of time for the baby.

I’ll bet they spend tomorrow assembling the crib and arranging other accessories for the room!

Playful World Map With Fun Animals for Baby’s Nursery

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

Digital Image

Couples love this mural for their new baby – I’m betting it’s all over HOUZZ and Pintrest, and that’s where web surfers are finding it. This is the third time I’ve hung it, each time in a different color. The seams were much better this time, having been cut straight so there were not gaps of overlaps, and lying down better. (Search to read my previous posts.)

The mural came from Portugal, and was custom-sized to fit this accent wall in the nursery. The homeowner did the measuring, and he did a good job (as opposed to a prior install – read previous post), and the manufacturer also added a little around all the edges, to allow for trimming at the side walls, floor, and ceiling.

Now, if the homeowner had called me before he ordered that mural, I would have had him get it a little larger. The manufacturer’s guidelines allowed for a scant 1″ at the ceiling and baseboard. In a perfect world, this would be fine.

But in this room (in a beautifully renovated 1940 bungalow in the Houston Heights), the walls were not plumb, and the ceiling was not level. If I had hung the mural true-to-plumb, it would have started tracking off-kilter along the ceiling and floor lines, quickly eating up that 1″ allowance, and quite possibly ending up running out of paper at the top of the wall or at the baseboard. The same thing could happen at the corners, too. (That did happen on one of my other installs.)

Before I pasted a piece, I did a lot of measuring and plotting, to be sure I could position the mural so it would cover the entire height and width of the wall space. Much too complicated to explain. But, in a nutshell, what I did was to hang the mural off-plumb, but parallel with the un-level ceiling.

I started with the center panel, to minimize any tracking on either the left or right sides. I also made sure that the strips falling on either side of that center piece would be wide enough to reach the two wall corners, even if they hung crooked.

My strategy worked, and I ended up trimming off 1 1/4″ from the top, and 3/4″ from the bottom, on each strip. This meant that the mural was running parallel with the ceiling and floor, which was more important than being perfectly plumb. (Note: Usually you’re trimming off 2″ at both top and bottom, so today we were really cutting it close.)

Another complicating factor to this install was that, while most wallpaper widths are 20.5″, 27″, or 36,” these three mural panels were each 4′ wide. I’m 5’3″ tall, and my arm stretch is probably not a full 4,’ so handling, positioning, manipulating the pasted 9′ long strips was very difficult.

Additionally, it was important to “work clean,” because the surface is textured and it’s not easy to remove any paste that might get on the front of the wallpaper.

There’s more: My work table is 33″ wide, so pasting and booking the 48″ wide x 9′ long strips was a challenge. And the pasted strips, which I booked in accordion folds, were heavy and unwieldy.

All that mental plotting and physical gymnastics were worth it, though, because the finished mural looked fantastic, and the mom-and-dad-to-be loved it.

I have a pretty long lead time (4 months), but this couple called at the moment when another job had just postponed due to construction delays, so I had an open day and could get them done right away. That’s really good, because the baby’s coming, and the parents want to get the room furnished and decorated and ready.

I’m glad I was able to help them. 🙂