Grasscloth is made from natural fibers, and you never know quite exactly what you will get from bolt to bolt, and even from strip to strip.
In the first photo, you see a lot of “nubs” or knots – where the individual grass fibers have been tied together. You also see a seam, and see how uniform this particular material is. Quite often, the seams are a lot more visible. (see previous posts)
Back to nubs … In the second photo, a strip taken from the same bolt, there are far fewer knots.
Nothing right or wrong with either scenario – just showing how the material can change in appearance, even within the same bolt.
Personally, me, I prefer the more nubby texture.
Just an aside – most of this stuff is made in China. It is made by hand. And there really are workers who harvest tall reeds of grass, lay them in the sun to dry, and then come the little ladies who sit all day and grab handsfull of the grass and knot the reeds together, so these can then be sewn onto the paper backing and turned into wallcovering.
I love the way the iron headboard looks against the nubby, earthy grasscloth.
This is the 1st floor master bedroom of a nicely-remodeled-but-still-retains-many-original-details-and-all-its-original-charm 1920 bungalow in the Heights neighborhood of Houston.
The textured walls started out dark green. I skim-floated and sanded them smooth. The new wallpaper is a brown grasscloth with a faint greenish tinge, and it has a nubby texture with a lot of knots (more pics tomorrow!)
The homeowner ordered her paper before I measured the room, and I told her to get two additional double roll bolts. In the 4th photo, I am checking labels to be sure we have all the same run / dye batch; we lucked out and the new bolts were the same run as the original lot.
In the 5th photo, I have cut strips for a wall, and have them lined up and ready to paste and trim. In the background, you can see how I place bolts against each wall, as a way of keeping track of how many strips I need and which bolts I will take them from.
Because there are shading / paneling issues with grasscloth (do a Search here on those terms), it’s important to not mix strips from different bolts. That way, if there are slight color differences between bolts (as there usually are) these differences will be minimized. Still, as you see in the third photo, the three strips on the right came from one bolt, and the strips on the left came from another bolt – and there is a noticeable difference in shade. This is not a defect – it’s simply the nature of grasscloth – a product made from natural materials.
This one long wall used seven strips from three bolts, so a color difference could be expected. On the other, narrower, walls, all the strips came from the same bolt, so the color differences were minimized. When I had to use different bolts on the same wall, I was able to place the “break” over a door or window, with only 1′ of color difference. That’s a lot less noticeable than the 8′ you see on the long wall in the photo.
This wallpaper was bought through Sherwin Williams. There is no brand name on the label.
More photos tomorrow!
You can get away with a lot of avant garde-ness in small areas. This home in the Kingwood community of northeast Houston is mostly traditional in floor plan and décor. Yet the homeowner has found a few places to inject a little playful personality.
One is the backs of these cabinets in a butler’s pantry (but they are using it as a bar).
The lightly textured, indistinct smeary dots spread in a diamond pattern are nothing short of fun!
What’s especially clever is that the homeowner found a colorway that coordinates with not just the wall paint and furnishings in the home, but also with the weathered chandelier in the adjoining dining room, the nubby rug, and other furniture.
These are the little details that “pull a look together” – and this homeowner did it all on her own, acting as her own interior designer!
This wallpaper pattern is by A Street Prints, which is by Brewster. It is a non-woven material that has a high fiberglass content which prevents expansion and shrinking, and makes removal at a later date easier. I hung it using the paste-the-wall method.
This is a somewhat nubby silk fabric mounted on a non-woven backing. The soft blue coordinates nicely with other elements in the room, and makes a lovely backdrop for the books and decorative items that will fill the shelves.
Silk wallcoverings are much like grasscloth, because the pattern cannot be matched. You will see all the seams. And there will be color variations and irregularities. This is all expected with these natural materials.
I was pleased with this one, because it was fairly homogeneous in color.
I used the paste-the-wall installation method. Silk, like grass, stains easily, so you have to keep your hands clean and dry, and don’t let any paste get onto the surface or ooze out at the seams.
The manufacturer is Schumacher, and the interior designer is Stacie Cokinos of Cokinos Design. She works primarily in the Heights, Oak Forest, and Garden Oaks, and mostly does new builds or whole-house remodels.
This 1960 ranch style home in the Westbury neighborhood of Houston is like a time capsule of Mid Century Modern design. The doors, windows, moldings, cabinetry, and even most of the bathrooms are original – and in mint condition. The homeowners love the look, and wanted to honor that, while updating some of the rooms. Grasscloth was all the rage in the ’60’s, so it was the perfect choice for the backs of these bookshelves in the family room.
I have to tell ya, covering this beautiful, original, perfectly maintained 1960 wood paneling with mud and a primer just about killed me. But since the wallcovering choice was grasscloth, the new look would be in keeping with the original feel of the house.
I don’t usually like grasscloth, because of the color variations (and many more reasons – do a Search – upper right corner) – But I was pleased with today’s product. The color was very uniform, and the material was very soft and pliable, as well as thin. It turned corners nicely and hugged the wall tightly.
This particular grasscloth has a bit more of a “nubby” texture than those with straight reeds, and this one had a nice sheen, too.
I wanted to avoid getting paste on that pristine wood, because I was afraid it might not wipe off without leaving residue, and also because I didn’t want to run a damp rag along the grasscloth, for fear of staining or bleeding. So I used my craft store cutting mat and a couple of different straightedges, to pre-trim the pieces to perfect right angels, so they would fit into the bookshelf alcoves, and also butt up against one another precisely.
I also used blue plastic tape (not shown) on the edges of certain pieces, to keep paste off the wood bookcase.
This grasscloth wallpaper is by Phillip Jeffries, a higher-end brand, and was bought at below retail price from 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.
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Often, grasscloth can be really hard to get off, because the grass fibers and the netting used to sew them to the backing separate from the backing and come off in tiny handfuls of fiberous messiness.
I was luckier today, because the top layer with the grass fibers and red ink came off the wall fairly easily, and in almost-intact 9′ strips. The paper backing was left on the wall (see 2nd photo). In some areas (see 3rd photo), bits of the red inked layer remained.
The next step was to remove the paper backing. All that’s needed is to use a sponge to soak the backing with warm water. Soak one section, move on and soak the next, then go back and resoak the first section, etc.
Water has a harder time penetrating the patches where the red inked layer was not removed. Soak it a little more, or use a putty knife to get under that layer and pull off the inked material.
Eventually, the moisture from the warm water will reactivate the paste. If you are lucky, you will be able to simply pull the paper backing away from the wall. But if not, all it takes is a little elbow grease and a stiff 3″ putty knife, to gently scrape the paper from the wall.
I was doubly lucky today, because whoever hung the original grasscloth did a good job, including the use of a good primer to seal the walls before he hung any wallpaper. His primer protected the walls, and all my water and tension as I soaked and pulled paper off the walls caused no damage to the subsurface.
All I had to do to prepare the walls for new wallpaper was to wash off old paste residue, and apply a primer, in this case Gardz by Zinsser.
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Here is the transformation, from nubby and dark and stained to crisp and bright and much more water-resistant.
The material is thick and stiff, and is just fine if you are only putting it on one wall, such as behind a headboard in a master bedroom. Working it around a whole room, with corners, was tough enough. But then maneuvering it around a pedestal sink, and then moving on to the (unstraight and uneven) curved wall to the left of the sink….Boy, oh boy!
All you are doing is looking at photos of a nice, beautiful finished room. But I can tell you that I was doing a whole lot of work to get the room, and that wall in particular, to look that good…. I won’t go into details, but that sink and that wonky curved wall were quite the challenge. I spent about an hour and a half on just that one strip.
In the end, it looks great, and the homeowners are thrilled. The room is bright now, and the new shiny chrome towel bars and light fixture will add more to the contemporary feel.
This wallpaper pattern is by Thibaut Designs, and was bought at below retail price from 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.
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The new owners of this home in Bunker Hill Village (Houston) inherited this wallpaper in their home office. It’s what I call “ditzy repetitive,” and was popular in the ’90’s – although there are plenty of current wallpaper sample books displaying this type of pattern. I, myself, have never been a fan. Well, neither was the lady of the house.
In the attic, she found scraps of a grasscloth that had been used in an upstairs room. The soft green / grey / brown color and nubby texture coordinated perfectly with colors and themes in the first level of the home, and there was enough to paper the backs of the bookshelves in the home office.
First, I stripped off the patterned wallpaper (3rd photo). To do this, I wet the surface of the paper with a sponge, then used a putty knife and my hands to remove the top inked layer of wallpaper, then used the sponge again to wet the backing, which then came away from the wall easily (because the previous installer had used a primer, like you’re supposed to do). I used the sponge to remove paste residue, then hung the new grasscloth.
The grasscloth is a pleasing update in this home office, and also coordinates nicely with the colors used throughout the home. The last photo shows you the nubby texture and visible seams typical of grasscloth.
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