Symmetrical Leopards on Home Office Accent Wall

Moody and dark. A great, snug place to hunker down and spend the day on the computer , working from home . But maybe a little too much dark ?

An accent wall brightens the space and adds interest .  Makes a day at work more inviting.
BTW, those windows with their bull-nosed edges / rounded corners are a bear to hang wallpaper around, requiring special techniques.  I won’t go into details, but, after applying my wallpaper primer, just this one wall took me about six hours. 

Surprise! Look closely and notice the jungle theme , with palm trees and leopards .
I centered the pattern between the windows , for a balanced look. 

Close up.

See the fibers on the torn edge of the wallpaper strip ? This is a non-woven material , also called paste the wall , and has a 20% polyester content . Thus the fibers. This stuff is simpler to hang than traditional wallpapers . Also more washable and stain-resistant , and will strip off the wall easily and with no damage to the wall when you redecorate later.

These days, most people don’t use land lines or phone jacks .  So I removed the wall plate , and stuffed the connector into the wall .  Then I hung the wallpaper over the hole / box .  It’s right above the head of the cat on the left.  If the homeowners ever want to access the phone line , they can easily cut the wallpaper to open up the box , then reconnect it and then screw the wallplate back into place. 

The wallpaper is by York , under the designer Ronald Redding .   The label says it’s a paste the paper installation method , but in actuality, the instruction leaflet enclosed inside the roll is correct – it can be hung via the paste the wall method . Usually I prefer to paste the paper . 
This is a newish townhome in the Sawyer Yards area of Houston .

Monkey / Jungle Toile in Heights Hall Bathroom

Before. Good colors. But nothing inspiring.

Done. Boy, this paper really visually pushed the walls away and made the room look larger ! Easy on the eye tone-on-tone pattern , lighter colors , and a teeny bit of gold sparkle .

Note the 5/8″ high strip of wallpaper under the medicine cabinet on the left.

Because those faucet handles sit up so high above the backsplash , it’s likely that when people reach for the handles, water will get splashed onto the wallpaper . To prevent splashed water from wicking up under the wallpaper – which could cause the paper to expand and curl away from the wall – I ran a bead of clear siliconized caulk along the top of the backsplash .

The color is skewed in this shot, but you get an idea of the tropical foliage and pattern scale .
Toile is a French word for a sort of pen and ink drawing in one color on a background that may be colored or may not be.

Close-up , showing a truer color . Note the palm trees and the monkey . This material has a woven -look textured surface , and it mimics fabric . I almost felt like I was install ing linen , instead of wallpaper .

The brand is Rasch , a company out of Germany . Their papers are consistently nice to work with. This one was unexpectedly thin and flexible . It’s textured vinyl on a non-woven substrate . The vinyl makes it durable and stain-resistant , and the NW makes it easy to remove later when you’re ready to redecorate . The seams are positively invisible.

This powder room on the first floor just off the home office / study comes complete with a shower . Just for fun – one of the obstacles in this room was this rain shower head – sticking out right where I need to be on my ladder , and keeping me from reaching those walls . On top of that, the faucet handles also stuck out much further from the wall than most do. While priming the walls, as I was climbing down from the ladder , my clothing actually got entangled in the handles and – turned on the water !
Yes, I got a shower at work today !
The home is in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston .

From Humid Houston to the Sunny Shores of the Mediterranean

If you’re stuck in the city but long for the warm shores of an exotic land, what do you do? How about using a scenic wallpaper mural to fool the eye into believing you’re in Paradise?

I hung this on a wall in a garage in inside-the-Loop Houston near Montrose and downtown. It will be surrounded by automobiles, bicycles, lawn equipment, and all manner of “garage stuff” – but, boy – what a view! The homeowners plan to have a big party later this year, and will use the decorated garage as an extended dining area.

This is the typical, old-school, 8-panel photo mural that has been popular for decades. After the “palm trees swaying over a tropical white sand beach” scene, Mediterranean themes like this are the most popular. But these days, you can get just about anything, even custom made from your own photos, and sized to fit your wall.

Most of these murals are 12′ wide by 9′ high, but this one was 13′ 8″ wide by 8′ 3″ high. It was smaller than the wall all-around, so I placed it more or less in the center, and also balanced on the stairs to the left (not pictured).

The mural comes in eight panels, and is hung with four panels across the top, and four across the bottom. Unlike regular wallpaper, where the seams are butted, these seams are overlapped by about 1/4″. The top photo shows just four of the panels (two top and two bottom), rolled up and laid out on the floor. It’s essential to plot and double-check like this, before you grab pieces and paste them and go to stick them to the wall.

These murals are printed on a somewhat flimsy, plain paper type material. They come with special powdered cellulose paste. I’ve always used the provided paste with these murals. But since this was going in a garage and would be exposed to heat and humidity, I wanted something a bit stronger. The instructions mentioned that, alternately, a traditional pre-mixed wallpaper adhesive could be used. So I used my go-to, Sure Stick Dynamite 780 paste.

The 780 is not as liquid as the cellulose, so it wetted-out the material differently from what I was accustomed to. It is also more aggressive, so it was a bit harder to unfold the booked sheets; too much tugging could cause the delicate paper to tear.

The cellulose paste always causes bubbling. (These disappear as the mural dries. But, still, they are unsettling.) I was happy that the pre-mixed paste did not produce any bubbles, and also allowed the paper to be more stable, with fewer wrinkles and waves. The paper did expand once it got wet with the paste, as much as a full inch per panel, so even with the 1/4″ overlap at seams, it ended up being nearly 14′ wide.

This is a paper mural, and not very durable. The homeowners plan to use a sealant, or perhaps will cover it with huge sheets of Plexiglas, to protect it. How it holds up in the humidity and heat of Houston remains to be seen. They had a similar mural (different scene) up for close to 10 years. I didn’t hang it originally, but I did some touch up and repaste a few years ago. Eventually, though, it succumbed to the elements and had to be removed. This time around, I’m hoping that my use of a wallpaper primer, along with a stronger paste, will help keep the mural nice and tight to the wall for many years to come.