Leopards Prowl Inspired Powder Room

Vanity wall was originally textured and painted with a semi-gloss . Here it’s been skim-floated , sanded , and primed – ready for wallpaper.

Finished. There’s a cool light-up mirror that will hang on the brackets under the light fixture .

Opposite corner before.

Finished. This room wouldn’t have half the impact without the black moldings and ceiling. The homeowner said she envisioned a jewel box – all tufted and lined with velvet . Well, I’d say she nailed the look!

As the dark and mysterious wallpaper moved from left to right, the room began to take on a mood . I love the juxtaposition between a clad wall and a bare wall.

Close-up.

Detail.

The husband is handy, and I really appreciate that he removed the vanity and sink . This made it a lot faster and easier for me, and ensured better adhesion of the wallpaper around the plumbing pipes . And also eliminated stress and creases on the paper that can happen when bending and folding to work it around obstacles.

Here is the modern looking vanity that will go into the powder room .

To keep white primer from showing at the seams , I striped black paint on the wall under where each seam would fall. Do a Search here to read previous posts about this technique.

I use matt finish craft paint from the hobby store , a scrap of sponge , and a bottle cap full of water . Do a Search here to read previous posts about the process and materials .

I also run chalk along the edges of the wallpaper, to cover up the white substrate , to ensure there will be no white peeking out at the seams . Again, do a Search on key words to learn more about this technique .
Dang it! I forgot to take a picture of the label! But this wallpaper is by York and is called On The Prowl .
It’s vinyl on a non-woven backing . The instructions said you could paste the wall for installation . But I pasted the paper, and I think with this product it’s better, because it did seem to want to expand a bit. If you paste the wall and then the paper stretches, you’ll end up with buckles at the seams or bubbles within the strips .
The material was fairly flexible , which was nice because it allowed me to “mush” the paper to conform to some pretty un-plumb walls.
Although York is one of my favorite brands , I wasn’t real crazy about this particular wallpaper. Still, it seamed up nicely, didn’t shrink, has a vinyl surface that will resist splashes and fingerprints , and is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate .
This is a townhome in the Rice Military area of central Houston .

Paint Doesn’t Stick to Plastic

You are looking a the plastic escutcheon / decorative cover to hide plumbing pipes under this pedestal sink.
Someone painted it the same color as the wall, and with the same wall paint.

Only problem is, most paints won’t stick to plastic. Plastic is too slick.
That’s why now the paint is peeling off with just the slightest tug or tension. It’s peeling away like a snake shedding his skin.

There are some solutions for this. For starters, the plastic could have been sanded, to give the paint some “tooth” and something to grab ahold of. There are also primers that will adhere to plastic and prepare it to take the paint.
Even simpler, there are paints formulated to stick to plastic. Krylon makes some, and I’ve used it on my outdoor lawn chairs; it’s held up nicely for about 20 years.

Making the Best of Plumbing Problems

OK, so this master bathroom suffered a water leak, and the plumber had to cut through the drywall in the potty room in order to access the shower fixtures.
Here the contractor has replaced the cut-out piece of Sheetrock. He did a really nice job. For the most part. Of course, he didn’t bother to remove the wallpaper before doing his repairs. This is vinyl paper (thick, slick, slippery, backing absorbs moisture) and really should have been removed first.
But I was able to work around the patched-in area.

The prep for this small room was a lot more involved than I anticipated, and required an extra day. Too complicated to get into, but there were two layers of wallpaper, and no primer by either of the previous installers. Original install dates back to the ’80’s. It took me a day and a half just to do the prep on this small commode room.

The room finished. Note the stripes centered nicely on that back wall.
The pattern and material were chosen to coordinate with the green stripes in the main area of the master bathroom.

Kill point (final corner) over the door. I “shrank” some sections in order to get even widths and maintain the pattern repeat and match.

The plumbing problem also damaged an area on this wall outside the water closet. So this area around the door needed to be replaced. The homeowners didn’t have any left over paper, so they chose something similar in color, style, and composition to the green striped paper you see to the right.

Here is that transition door wall finished.

We decided to use the stripe to define the ‘break’ between the two patterns.
The alternative would have been placing the stripe against the door molding … but I felt that would be too repetitive, plus it would have left a cut-off section of flowers running along the side of the green stripe, and same on the opposite side of the door frame.
And, yes, the wall definitely is not straight, square, or plumb.

And here is that opposite side of the door frame, with the stripe running nicely along the shower tile.

Some overlapping was involved in this job. Since the wallpaper is vinyl, and vinyl is slick, you need a special paste to be able to grab ahold of the glossy surface. These days, I sure don’t use often border paste, also sometimes called VOV or Vinyl Over Vinyl . But I was mighty glad to find this 10+ year old container deep in the bowels of my van. Still fresh and sticky, too!

Besides borders not being popular today, these “satin” and “silk” look wallpapers are not very common. But this is exactly what the homeowners were looking for, to coordinate with the existing, 30-year-old paper in their master bath. Saved them having to replace all the wallpaper in both rooms!
This paper is very economical, too. The couple shopped with Dorota at the Sherwin-Williams in the Rice Village, and she was able to track down the perfect material, pattern, and color.

Now, aside from all the positive things I just said about this paper in this current application, I do want to make clear that I am not at all fond of this type material. Without getting into a long schpiel here, please click and read the page link to the right “Stay Away From Pre-Pasted Paper-Backed Solid Vinyl …. ”
I will also add that I’ve developed a technique to work with these materials, and so far the installs, including today’s, have been going nicely.

One double roll bolt had some of these blue mark printing defects running through about half of it. Luckily, most of these were on a section of paper that was cut off in order to turn a corner, so was discarded and not put on the wall.

Exclusive Wallcoverings is the manufacturer. Usually I work with their non-woven or traditional paper products, which are quite nice.
The home is in the West University area of Houston.

Patching a Hole Around a Pipe

You’re looking at a water supply line underneath a pedestal sink in a powder room.
This hole is a little wide, and offers the wallpaper nothing to adhere to. In addition, there is no escutcheon (decorative plate) to hide the hole.

I took some special paper and cut a ” collar ” to fit around the pipe and also cover the hole.

I dipped the “collar” into Gardz . This is cool stuff. It soaks in to porous surfaces, adheres to surfaces, and dries hard.

Here is the patch in place. Once it’s dry, I’ll skim-float with joint compound (” mud “) and then sand smooth.
The finished product will be a smooth, intact surface for the wallpaper to adhere to, with only a tiny gap around the plumbing.

Wallpapering Under a Console / Apothecary Sink

Ugh. Who invented these things? Whoever did, obviously never had to work wallpaper behind the metal legs and around the exposed plumbing.

It took a lot of time and patience – but I got ‘er done!

Disguising a Plumbing Access Door

This is the trap door that leads to the plumbing for the tub on the other side of the wall. The homeowner didn’t like the big white blob in the middle of the wall. Wallpaper won’t stick to enamel or gloss surfaces, so I coated it with my Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime primer.

Even with the contoured molding uncovered, this door now blends into the wall much better.

Bridging A Gap

These are the plumbing stems for wall-mounted handles and faucet in a powder room in the Heights neighborhood of Houston. The homeowner had the fixtures removed to make the wallpaper installation easier and with fewer ” relief cuts ” in the paper. This helps to eliminate chances of splashed water hitting open edges of the paper and wicking up inside, which can cause curling at the seams.
But the holes were a tad too big for the escutcheons (decorative back plates) to cover. The hole around the left handle gaps about a half an inch outside the plate (not pictured).

I wanted to close that gap a little bit, and also to provide a firm surface for the wallpaper to stick to. I cut ” collars ” out of scrap non-woven material. This material is very strong, and won’t stretch or warp out of shape. Non-woven makes a fine substrate for today’s wallpapers. In the photo, I have placed them around the plumbing stems.

I impregnated the “collars” with Gardz, which is a penetrating primer which soaks in and binds surfaces together, and then dries hard – a lot like varnish or shellac.

Then I skim-floated the area with drywall joint compound (” mud “), let dry, sanded smooth, wiped off dust with a damp sponge, and then primed with Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime, my favorite wallpaper primer. So this photo shows the finished task. When the plumber comes to re-install the faucet, etc., if the holes are too small, he can simply cut some away.

Now that the opening is smaller, the escutcheon easily covers it.

Kitchen With Burst Pipe Water Damage Fixed and Finished

This kitchen in the Spring area of north Houston suffered severe water damage from burst pipes during the hard freeze in February 2021. Nearly a year later, they are almost finished with repairs, including new drywall on bottom of walls, new cabinets, new plumbing, cabinets, electrical, and more. Here you see the contractor’s repair work on top of some of the original wallpaper, which dates to the early 1980’s! It was a good brand, and the installer did a great job. For various reasons, I opted to leave this wallpaper in place, and so skimmed over uneven areas and then primed on top of it with Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime.

The homeowner’s new choice is very similar to the previous paper, but with a more springy feel and a lot of upward movement. The area below the chair rail will receive another coat of paint to better define the correct yellow color. Or, the homeowner may switch to a green pulled from the leaves in the pattern.

This wall with the fir-down / soffit was a real bugger, for various reasons, and took me about four hours.

Looks so sharp against the white paint and tile!

The wallpaper was printed on a white substrate, so I ran black chalk along the edges of each strip, to try to prevent white from showing at the seams. Still, some of the strips shrank just a half a tad, and that did allow some white to show. This wallpaper is a non-woven material, which has a high polyester content, and is not supposed to stretch or shrink, so this is disappointing. Pasting the wall and dry-hanging the material would have probably helped. But the material was extremely thick and stiff, and plus the room had way too many turns and bends and angles, so pasting the paper made the most sense. These gaps are very minor, and only visible when viewed from straight on; from an angle you can’t even see them. On some papers, I can pull some tricks out of my bag and camouflage them. But with this non-woven material, don’t even try anything with paint, marker, chalk or anything else – it will surely stain the material.

The walls are smooth. The slight texture you see is the non-woven material. When an edge is torn, you can actually see the polyester fibers – a lot like fiberglass. This material is very strong, and is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate.

Manufacturer is Mind The Gap out of Transylvania (!), and the design is called Aquafleur, in the Anthracite color. The material comes as a 3-panel set, which they call one “roll.” The overall width of the A, B, and C panels side-by-side is about 5′, and the height is just under 10′. The height of the wall was less than 5,’ and the strips were nearly 10′ long, so at least 5′ was lost of each strip. Because the pattern was a mural type, rather than a typical repeating wallpaper design, even more paper was lost in working around the configurations of the room – for instance, a full 10′ strip would be needed to paper just one 9″ high strip above the door. So there was an incredible amount of waste – and this is a higher-priced boutique brand. But the lady of the house really loves it, and so she went with her heart.

Soaring Seagulls – Montrose “Burst Pipes” Home

I hung this same paper in this same kitchen not even a year ago. A few months later, the homeowners suffered “burst pipes” from the big freeze storm that hit Houston in February 2021. Consequently, their whole kitchen had to be torn out and replaced – drywall, flooring, cabinets, electrical, plumbing, and, yes – wallpaper.

They chose to go back with the exact same pattern they had used last year.

The manufacturer is Anderson Prints, it’s a traditional paste-the-paper product, and it was purchased from Stacey at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet.

More pictures tomorrow!

Lots of Color on the East Side of Houston

This is the first of four accent walls that I am hanging wallpaper on, in this newly-renovated and updated 1935 home in the Eastwood neighborhood of Houston.

No all-white or pale grey “farmhouse” style for this young couple!… Every room has bold, saturated color and lively wallpaper patterns.

This is an accent / headboard wall in the front guest bedroom.

The paper is by Rasch, a German company. It is an embossed / textured vinyl on a non-woven backing. You can see the texture in the last, close-up photo.

Rasch makes some of the nicest papers I’ve worked with. I did use red chalk to color the edges, so the white substrate would not peek out from between the seams.

Today, I used the paste-the-wall installation method. The material is flexible, instead of some of the stiff materials I have worked with (do a Search here). And the non-woven material is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when you want to redecorate.

Oh – that white door low in the middle of the wall, I think is access to plumbing in the adjoining bathroom.