Turbulent Intertwined Arboreals

I love this pattern. It’s swirly and ominous and woodsy and fun all at the same time. I hung it in the black and white colorway not long ago. It’s very similar to “Daintree” by Thibaut – As I like to say, for every cool pattern, there is someone making a knock-off.

This one is by York, one of my favorite brands, and is in their Dwell Studios line. It is a non-woven material, and can be hung by the paste-the-wall method or the paste-the-paper method (I used the latter). Non-woven does not expand, and can be hung immediately after pasting (as opposed to having to sit booked for a few minutes). I colored the edges of the paper with chalk before pasting, so the white backing would not show at the seams.

This went in the powder room of the same MidCentury Modern house as my three previous posts. The walls were equally unplumb, and the ceiling off-level, so it’s good that the pattern was forgiving.

Narrowing a Strip of Paper Over a Door

Here I am working my way along the wall from right to left, and am hanging short wallpaper strips over the door. The strip above the door is 1/4″ wider than the door, so it would continue down the left side of the door – but only about a 1/4″ width of it. It would me a major pain to deal with a strip this narrow – try to keep it straight, try to keep it plumb – not to mention using a full 9′ length of paper just to get this 1/4″ strip….most of it would end up in the trash, a real waste of paper.

In addition, the ceiling is not-level, so the wallpaper design is starting to track off-kilter (a particular motif in the design is not staying at the top of the wall, but is moving downwards).

I wanted to avoid having a skinny 1/4″ strip down the left side of the door, and I wanted to pull the design back up to the top of the wall. My plan was to position a new strip of paper along the left edge of the door molding, placing the design motif at the top of the wall. You can see how this is causing the short piece over the door to buckle, because of the 1/2″ excess paper.

The pattern is matched from this new strip to the short strip over the door. But, because of the un-level ceiling and the design tracking downward, the pattern on the short piece over the door does not match perfectly with the piece to the right of it.

I had a couple of options, but the solution I chose was to cut along one of the tree trunks vertically, slicing the short strip over the door in two. I then slid the right portion of this cut strip down, so the pattern matched the strip to its right. Then I smoothed both cut portions to the wall, overlapping that 1/4″ of excess.

Even though the paper is shimmery, the slight overlap is not noticeable, because it’s high overhead, and also because it follows the line of the tree trunk, which disguises it. See final photo.