Plumbing Up Coming Out Of A Corner DRAFT

Here I’m hanging wallpaper, moving from right to left, preparing to turn this corner . You don’t wrap a strip of wallpaper around an inside corner (see previous post for more information). So I’ve cut a new strip, trimmed off excess on the right so the pattern on the new strip matches that on the existing strip, and am getting ready to proceed to the left.
But corners are never straight or plumb , and chair rail and ceilings are never perfectly level . So if I butt the new strip right up into the corner, if that corner is off-plumb , it will cause the new strip, and all subsequent strips, to be off-plumb. And that means that the design motifs will start tracking up or down hill as we move across the wall.
You want all the motifs to be at the same height along the ceiling and chair rail – within reason, of course, because if those features are not level, the motifs can’t help but move up or down.
Anyway, the best you can do is to hang your new strip perfectly plumb . So here you see I’ve shot my laser level at the wall at the far edge of the new strip. I’m butting my new strip up to that red line. I’m also using my 2′ bubble level as an extra guide.
Note that sometimes this means the new strip will not butt up perfectly in the corner, because it may tilt a bit to the left or right. When that happens, you just trim off the slight overlap. This means you may end up with a slight pattern mis-match in the corner. Usually not too noticeable.

Pretty Floral Mural for 1-Year Old’s Nursery Accent Wall

In anticipation of this accent wall mural, the parents had the three other walls painted a soft salmon-y pink.

Finished! I love the way the pattern ” crescendos ” toward the center and top…. perfect for cradling the crib.
The blotchy look will disappear as the wallpaper dries, and the background will become more bright white.
The mural came a set size, of 12.5′ W x 9′ H. The width fit the wall with just a few inches extra, which was perfect. But the wall was less than 8′ high and the mural was 9′, so we lost about 12″ of the mural. I brought the design as close to the ceiling as I could, while still preserving that light blue flower at the center top. This meant that most of the pattern lost was from the bottom, which has more stems and flowers – but not as pretty as the elements toward the top. And most of the bottom is going to be hidden by the crib and other furnishings, anyway.
Also note that the right side of the mural pattern does not match up with the pattern on the left. Meaning, the mural does not continue from one mural to the next. This means that, if you have a really wide wall, for instance, or a powder room more than 12′ wide, you cannot place two or more murals next to each other and have the pattern continue uninterrupted.
This is pretty standard for Anewall murals. But there are tons of other mural manufacturers who do make products that will accommodate wider spaces. And that are also custom-sized to your rooms’ specific dimensions.

Close-up looks like a translucent watercolor painting.
The pattern is called Wildflower .

Cute hidden creatures like this snail.

On her own, the mom originally purchased a peel & stick mural. Once she contacted me, I set her straight on how … err … awful that stuff is. (Click the link on the right to read my page about this material.)
The company allowed her to send the P&S back and exchange it for this better quality pre-pasted option, which I like a lot. (I’m not fond of their traditional which is vinyl and requires special install techniques).
Still, we had some issues which I’ve come to expect from Anewall, such as gaps and overlaps at the seams, and some minor pattern mis-matches at the seams .
This is a newish home in the League City area of Houston.

Eliminating a Vertical to Side-Step Poor Placement

Here we are, at the last corner of the room, in what we call the kill point. If I hung this last strip as the pattern normally fell, there would be a white vertical shelf support much closer to the one to the right of it than the pattern designer wanted it to be, presenting a crowded look. Also, a portion of the white vertical shelf support would end up falling down along the left side of that narrow space between the two door frames. I thought that area would look better if it held just books, and no white shelving.

So I decided to eliminate that white shelf support, from both the area above the door and the space next to the door molding. To do that, I took my next strip and used a scissors to cut off the left shelf support. I needed a 6″ wide piece, so I counted how many “books” got me to six inches, then cut off the paper vertically along the right edge of those books. I positioned the piece to fill the space over the door, overlapping the left edge of the new strip onto the right side of the previous strip (the side with the white vertical shelf support).

There were a few little pattern mis-matches, but nothing that anyone would complain about while gazing up from the floor 12′ below. 🙂

Next I cut a strip to fill the narrow space between the two door moldings. That part was easy – but trimming around the decorative woodwork on top of the doors, with precious little space to work (the tops of the door moldings had only 1/4″ gap between them) was tricky and time consuming.

The last photo shows it all finished. I think it looks better without the white vertical shelf support, and it was worth the time it took to make this work.

Nifty, Fishy Kill Point Disguise

When you wallpaper a room, you work your way around the room, until the last strip meets up with the first strip. This is usually placed in an inconspicuous corner or behind a door, because in this last corner, the pattern will not match.

This large powder room did not have any “inconspicuous” corners. Any mis-match of the pattern in a corner would be very obvious. So I chose to put this last mis-matched junction above the door. The wall area over the door was only 12″ high, which helped.

In the top photo, the first strip is on the left, and the last strip has come around from the right. The pattern motif that ended up in this spot just happens to be the same on both the left and the right strips. The problem is that there is a 1″ gap between the two strips.

To bridge this gap, and to disguise the resulting pattern mis-match, I took a scrap of paper that would match the pattern coming from the right side. (Note, this would not work coming from the other direction, because the koi fish would be harder to alter in a pleasing way.) I trimmed along the design in an irregular line. See second photo.

When I butted this against the existing strip to its left, the pattern matched at the seam. The irregular cuts that I made along the pattern meshed with the design on the strip to the right. It’s not a perfect match, but it’s enough to fool the eye, and from the floor, no one would notice. See the last photo.

And it’s a heck of a lot better than having the pattern down a whole 8′ corner not match.

Can You Spot the Pattern Mis-Match?

See the seam? (Color differences are due to the paper not being dry yet.) What you don’t see is the mis-matched pattern.

This paper is 20.5″ wide, and the strip over the door would have extended a few inches to the right of the door. That meant that I would have to use a full 8′ of paper to cover those few inches to the right of the door, and lose most of the strip where it hung over the door.

If I could make the strip less than the width of the door frame, I could save a whole lot of paper. But if I cut a few inches off the right side of the wallpaper, it would no longer match the left side of the next strip.

So, what I did was – invent my own pattern match.

I found about the width that I wanted the paper to be over the door, and then looked along the left side of a fresh roll of wallpaper, until I found a part of the design that pretty well lined up with the design on the short strip. Once the two strips were up on the wall, it was a small matter of taking a pencil and drawing vines, stems, and leaves that connected the pattern on both strips.

Voilà! Saved a whole lot of paper, and no one is the wiser.

This trick worked because of the loose nature of the floral pattern. If it had been a more structured pattern, such as where you have to see the same diamond, for instance, at the top of each strip, it probably would not have worked. But in this case, since the eye can’t really tell one flower from another, it was the perfect opportunity to do a little fiddling, save 8′ of paper, and save me work, too.