Very Pretty Bird Pattern in Garnet and Gray

Pretty birds , nicely spaced branches , and lovely colors for this master bedroom in the Heights neighborhood of Houston .

This accent / headboard wall is even prettier from a distance .

Here’s the wall before. The other three walls are painted a complementary grey .

From a distance. I’ve got one more strip to hang , on the far right.

Close up . The background is silver with a little gloss to it, but not so much as to be glitzy or garish . I mean, a guy sleeps here, too. So it’s gotta be a bit subdued .

This wallpaper is made by Graham & Brown.  G&B is a good quality , mid-price range company. Like most of their papers, this is a non-woven / paste the wall material .  Much of G&B’s paper is thin and flexible .  But this particular pattern came on a thick and stiff substrate .  N-W’s contain a minimum 20% polyester content, and I suspect this has a higher percentage .  The stuff is somewhat akin to fiberglass .  Look closely at the bottom of the photo, and you can see the fibers .  This makes it good, and easy for DIY ‘ers , on simple installations like accent walls / feature walls .  But it can be trickier when you have to trim around obstacles like windows , decorative moldings , vanities , toilets , and the like.  
Non-woven wallpapers are designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate , with minimal or no damage to your wall (assuming proper prep was done before installation ).  A much better choice than peel & stick . 

Loose Wallpaper; Wall Layers Delaminating

Look closely between the seam of the wallpaper in the top photo. You can see little crumbly things. In the second photo, the issue is even more pronounced; you can see bits of paint coming away from the wall and stuck to the back of the wallpaper.

This is in the upstairs bathroom of a 1950 house in central Houston. Over time, compounded by humidity, poor air circulation, poor air conditioning / heating, and possible influences from the outdoors, various layers inside the wall have let loose of one another.

What are these layers? Originally the walls were probably painted with oil-based paint. Over the years, layers of latex paint, gloss paint, joint compound, dust, and etc. were piled on, probably without proper prep between coats.

Some of these materials are not compatible with one another, and, over time and with stressers like humidity, along with the tension / torque caused by drying wallpaper, they can let go of one another.

If just the wallpaper has come loose, it can be pasted and re-adhered.  But we’re seldom that lucky.  When the wall itself is coming apart, there is no fix, other than to scrap everything down to the original drywall (huge mess) or go over everything with 1/4″ drywall.  Sometimes a liner paper can be used with success.

In this case, the homeowner had me repaste the few loose areas of paper, and then chose to live with the other visible cracks, chalking it up to an old house full of character and quirks.