Beautiful symmetry … But look closer – those intertwining lines aren’t fronds of vegetation – they’re snakes ! The wall before. It’s a mid-century home, but the drywall here is new. Per my request, the contractor left it taped and floated , but not painted or covered with any coating . I had planned to simply prime this wall. But after examining it more closely, the surface was a little grittier than I like. So I ended up applying a very light skim-coat and sanding it smooth . Here the smoothed wall has been primed with Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime . I’m plotted out the center of the wall and am using my laser level to ensure that the design in my first strip falls right along the center, and also is nice and plumb . My work table with two strips of wallpaper . Spoonflower packages its wallpaper differently from other companies. It comes in widths of 24″ and lengths of your choice of 3,’ 6,’ 9,’ or 12.’ Get their Pre-Pasted Removable Smooth option, which is water-activated , and is wonderful stuff. Do NOT get the Peel & Stick , nor the Traditional Pebble . The P&S and the Traditional are both very difficult to work with, and can lead to bubbles and creases on your walls , plus cause damage when the wallpaper is stripped off later. Back to the photo – the blue cube thing in front is my laser level , shooting its red line at the wall. Close-up I’m using this blue plastic tape on the edge of this strip of wallpaper. This will prevent paste from getting onto the wall or ceiling. The accent wall stops in this left hand corner, so I need to trim off the excess. But I don’t want to get paste onto the un-papered wall. Paste can cause the wall paint to crackle and flake off. So here you see how the blue tape is keeping paste off the wall. Once I finish trimming, I’ll check the back to make sure all of the blue tape has been removed. Any areas where the blue tape might be still on the back of the wallpaper , the paper won’t adhere to the wall . This tape is available to paperhangers / installers . If you’re interested, shoot me an email wallpaperlady@att.net Another thing about Spoonflower , the seams are meant to be overlapped, by 3/4″ . Note that this does create a ridge that runs vertically the length of each seam. In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t very noticeable. Actually, there are advantages to overlapping seams in this manner. No worries about white substrates showing at the seams, nor the paper shrinking and leaving gaps at the seams. Also, in case of unstable walls that might come apart ( delaminate ) under the tension of the drying / shrinking wallpaper, overlapping disperses the tension and helps prevent wall failure. This pattern is called Serpents and Apples and is by Spoonflower . Spoonflower has a lot of cute designs , and also a good number of fun avant garde patterns like this one. The homeowners have some other non-typical décor that will meld perfectly with this wallpaper. Think life-sized skeletons . … Notice how that light fixture hanging in the center of the wall kinda looks like a skull ? … The home is in the Oak Forest area of northwest Houston .
Here’s an unusual but clever use of under-the-stairs space. It’s a series of three rooms, pretty much intended for storage / closet area. The height of the walls gets shorter / lower as you move further under the stairs. The homeowners decided to use the outer / taller room as a lounge for their dogs. As you can see, plain old tile floors and wall paint don’t quite cut it … These pooches get their own room, complete with wallpaper !Looking from taller, outer room into middle and then into the inner, smallest room. Only the outer, taller room gets wallpaper. Lots of angles, under the stairs.2 1/2″ wide space between door moldings.I had fun choosing which part of the design to slip into this narrow area, to ensure we’d see the most dogs and with the least parts cut off.Design is called Doggies and is by Milton and King . They make really nice wallpaper , although some patterns can be tricky to measure for, so consult your installer before ordering. This is a non-woven product, and can be hung via the paste-the-wall method of by pasting the paper.
It’s hard to get a shot of this room, but here we are, looking from the family area through the entry vestibule toward the front door. The sliding barn door on the right leads to the husband’s home office. Here the walls are primed with my favorite Pro 977 Ultra Prime by Roman, and ready for wallpaper. Paper’s up! Lighting and shadows are playing across the walls in some areas. Opposite wall, west wall, primed and ready for wallpaper. Done!An interesting focal point in this room is this set of 100+ year old doors, reclaimed from a building in Arizona. The homeowner tells me that the door has been preserved from rot by the dry / arid climate in that state. The dealer stripped the doors of years of paint and stain, and shipped them in their most “raw” state. The doors were then fitted onto a track and hung to slide back and forth over the opening to the home office. I love the way the weathered wood coordinates in color and texture with the wallpaper pattern. It took a lot of measuring, trimming, engineering, and plotting to get the pattern so it aligned inside these two wall panels as if the pattern were continuing from the area outside the panels. Close-up of the wallpaper design. This material by Milton & King comes as a 2-roll set, consisting of one “A” roll and one “B” roll. This entryway took four of the 2-roll sets. Due to logistics, more strips from the “A” bolt were used than from the “B” roll. Another reminder to always buy a little extra paper. Milton & King makes some mighty fun wallpaper patterns. Visit their website! The material is a washable vinyl on a soft and flexible non-woven substrate. The material goes up on the wall like a dream, flexible and manipulable (is that a real word??!) and with seams that are invisible. When it’s time to redecorate, this non-woven material is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece, with minimal / no damage to the wall.
You usually don’t wrap a strip of wallpaper around an inside corner. You wrap 1/8″ around, slit the strip in two vertically, and then apply a new strip overlapping that 1/8″. The trick is getting the pattern of that new strip to match up with that on the original wall. And it helps if the walls are straight and plumb. Here I’ve done a great job of matching the pattern in the corner. This is the top 2/3 of the wall.But, as you move down the wall, it becomes quite evident the wall isn’t plumb. In fact, this wall had an actual bow in it, so it wasn’t flat or straight, either. So it’s impossible to avoid a pattern mis-match like this. The standard practice is to match the pattern at eye level. Then, as it moves up and down the wall, you’ve gotta accept any mis-matches that result. In this case, we’re lucky that the new vanity will block most of this. This is called Hick’s Hexagon and is by Cole & Son.
Porter Teleo is a custom-made, high-end wallpaper. Extra cool that it’s made in my home state of Missouri. So nice to see it getting exposure in Midwest Living (Jan/Feb 2022 issue).
Wish they had included some larger photos of the actual material, so y’all can get an idea of what their patterns look like.
Before.AfterThe colors coordinate beautifully with the deep blue/green of the wainscoting.I love these colors, and the soft matt surface.Manufacturer is GP&J Baker, a British company.
After 25 years in their Pearland (south Houston) home, the couple was ready for an update. Hubby got his new bathroom a couple of years ago. Today the wife got hers!
The room was ripped out down to the studs. Then they got new: deep soaking tub, shower with geometric tile, toilet, vanity with marble top, burnished brass mirror & light sconces, and … wallpaper!
I love traditional patterns like this. And the dark colors really stand out against the white tile and countertop and floor.
This is a non-woven (synthetic) material, and is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when you redecorate. It can be hung via the paste-the-wall method, or the paste-the-paper technique (I usually prefer this option).
This is my second time to hang this “New Orleans Toile” by Katie Kime in a year. That company has a number of toile patterns that showcase various major cities around the country. These are the kind of patterns that you have to look at “up close and personal” in order to see all the antics going on in the design.
This came as a printed vinyl surface bonded to a non-woven substrate. It was pretty nice to work with. I’m not usually fond of vinyls. But, since the room had numerous corners that were not even approaching being either plumb or straight, the vinyl material ended up being relatively simple to make conform to these variables, and to ease out wrinkles. I was also able to work the edges so that the next strip of wallpaper could butt against them.
Hygge & West, an on-line company, makes some darling wallpaper patterns. But I don’t enjoy hanging their papers. Because they use ink that fight the substrate it’s printed on, which causes curling paper and “pouched” seams.
Some inks smell like moth balls, and those tend to cause the curling problems. What happens is, the inked areas absorb moisture from the paste differently from the paper backing (substrate). The substrate expands, and that causes the paper to curl backwards. The second photo shows an extreme example of that.
Usually, once the paste dries, the paper shrinks back and the seams lie flat. But you can never count on that – the first photo shows a seam that has been on the wall for an hour or so, and the green ink is still curling away from the wall. The tendency is to keep pushing the seams flat – and that can cause overworking of the seams, stretching, burnishing, or other damage.
It helps to lightly sponge the face of the paper with water before pasting the back. This helps equalize the absorption of water, and evens out the expansion rate of the wallpaper. Make sure there is paste all the way to the edges of the paper – but not past the edge or onto the surface, which could cause staining. And use a little less paste on the edges, so it will dry faster and grab onto the wall. It also helps to stripe the wall behind the seam with a roller of paste – not much, but enough to put a layer of paste onto the wall, which can be drying and tacking up, ready to grab onto the edges of the strip of wallpaper.
I’ve had a number or clients express interest in patterns like this recently. A faux-finish or marbleized pattern.
I didn’t realize that this was a hot decorating trend, until I saw it in a nation-wide magazine.
This is a nice backdrop pattern. Nothing to jar the eye or steal the show … Just an easy pattern in a muted color scheme. A perfect backdrop for business or home.
I love old wallpaper, and it’s a real treat when I’m stripping off existing paper and discover the paper that was original to the house underneath.
It’s especially exciting if the house dates back to the ’20’s, ’30’s, or ’40’s, because the patterns back then were so delightful. Amazingly, the colors are usually just as bright as they were when the paper was new.
Today, working in a kitchen, I tore off the top layer and found a paper original to the 1968 ranch style house.
I can’t say I love the pattern or color, though. It was a dark brown paper with drawings of spice drawers, and other kitchen-related items, in a block pattern. Since the paneling at the bottom 1/3 of the walls was originally stained brown, the room must have been pretty dark overall. That’s common to the style home, and the time period.
The current home owner has painted the paneling bright white, and the new wallpaper will be a pretty medium-toned blue. Bye-bye 1968 spices and drawers!
The Wallpaper Lady's Blog 