Cole & Son Acquario – Super Cool in a Powder Room

This is a powder room off a TV / game / great room in the home of a family with school-aged kids. They had just done updates to the room (built in shelving and TV niche, carpet, pool table, huge snuggly sofa), to make it a family hang-out spot. The small adjoining powder room got an update with tile on the sink wall.

What a dramatic and shockingly fun wallpaper design! – This is called Acquario, and is in the Fornasetti collection by Cole & Son. I just call it “the Puffer Fish.”

Wallpaper shrinks as its paste dries, and so you can expect to see teeny gaps at the seams. This is normal. But since this wallpaper is dark, the white edges of the substrate, as well as even a minute bit of the wall under the seams, might be more prominent as the dark paper dries and shrinks.

In the top “before” photo, you see where I have used diluted craft paint to run a dark stripe along the wall where the wallpaper seam will fall. This, along with having colored the edges of the wallpaper strips with near-black chalk, pretty much eliminated any visible gaps at the seams.

This small powder room took me nearly 12 hours – to smooth the textured walls, prime, and hang the 6 single rolls (3 double roll bolts) of wallpaper.

The home is in the Pasadena area of south Houston.

Transforming a City Home Into a British Pub

This Memorial-area couple had a vision, and, boy, did they make it happen. This is the dining room of a ’60’s ranch-style home. But they wanted to use it as a pool room / man cave / pub. Friends kept telling them to make it sleek and contemporary, as is in vogue right now. But the homeowners followed their hearts, and created this very unique and authentic room.

That is real brick applied to the far wall. There is a dark, rustic wooden floor, and dark brown crown molding that resembles old wooden beams. The same dark paint covers a chair rail. Below the chair rail is a thick texture that resembles the stucco on homes in 1500’s Sherwood Forest.

Next came the wallpaper – a classic toile of a hunt scene, in a reddish brown on cream, which perfectly compliments both the paint color and the brick wall. I totally love the way this room is coming together – all they need to do is add the pool table, maybe some tarnished brash light fixtures, haul in some comfy leather chairs, and then light the cigars!

This wallpaper is printed on a pulp stock, and is by the British company Sanderson, from the Toile Collection (“Toile” means a line drawing in one color on a plain background, usually depicting blissful scenes from rural life in Jolly Ole England.), pattern # 47-63268 “Fox Hunting.”