Improperly Prepped Paint Peels Off Easily

this vanity was originally white . To update the powder room and coordinate with the new wallpaper , the vanity cabinet was painted this rich green . When hanging wallpaper , some paste will get onto the woodwork or cabinetry . Usually, it’s a simple matter to wipe this paste off with a damp rag (we like microfiber cloths ).

But as you can see, even gentle wiping with a damp cloth has taken some of the new paint with it. This is usually because the new paint was applied without having properly prepped the original surface. The original paint has a gloss / sheen , which makes it attractive , as well as resistant to dirt and stains . But new coatings (be they paint , latex paint , wallpaper paste , etc. ) won’t adhere tightly to a glossy surface .

So it’s imperative that the original surface be prepped correctly , before the new paint is applied . This means de-glossing . Deglossing can be done by sanding the surface to scruff it up, which will give a bit of “tooth” to the surface for the new coating to stick to. Or you can buy a chemical de-glosser from a good paint store like Sherwin-Williams or big box store like Home Depot . This is simply wiped on with a cloth . You can also use what’s called a bonding primer , which is formulated to adhere to just about anything , and then provides a surface that paint or other coatings can grab a hold of and stick to .
Once the original surface is properly de-glossed and primed and prepped , the new paint can be applied . Once that dries and cures , you can put stress on the surface, such as rubbing or wiping , without fear of the new paint peeling off .

Another weird thing is that the green color came off on my microfiber rag . I’ve had this happen with water-based / water-borne paints – but not with the old-fashioned oil-based paints . Not a big deal. Not enough of the color wiped off to cause any lack of color on the painted surface of the vanity . install

William Morris ‘ Fruit ‘ on Master Bath Accent Wall

A cozy nook. The homeowner likes to spend time here, soaking and relaxing. And recovering from supervising high school athletic activities !
This is a 1939 4-plex in the Montrose area of Houston that was beautifully renovated into a single-family home. So this entire master suite is carved out of what was originally one 1- bedroom apartment .
Note my white 2′ x 4′ sheet of plywood over the claw-foot tub , so I can safely access the wall above.

The wallpaper was placed on just one accent wall , above the tile wainscoting / chair rail . During the initial Sunday afternoon consultation , both the homeowners and I felt that this pattern on all the walls of this large master bathroom would be too overpowering . So they opted for just one accent wall .

The design doesn’t have a strongly noticeable secondary or vertical pattern , but I still took the time to center the most dominant feature (the pomegranates) on the tub faucet . The faucet guy , tub guy , and tile guy didn’t get everything perfectly lined up – but nobody’s even noticing. What matters is that the finished nook looks fantastic!
Also of note is that, in this near-100 year old home, the wall was bowed , and it wasn’t possible for the tile to lie flat against the entire surface. So there were some areas where the grout was 1/4″ wide, and some areas where the wall actually overshot the tile, leaving no visible grout at all. So at the area where the wallpaper met up with the top of the tile and the uneven grout line, I made a fat cut , to try to disguise the uneven line. Do a Search here to see previous posts on fat cuts .

This wallpaper design is by William Morris , who was a strong force during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s , in the Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts movements . His work is having a resurgence in popularity right now. Most are more symmetrical and repetitive than this example ( Google Strawberry Thief ) , but, true to the design aesthetic , all of them involve natural elements , such as plants , flowers , fruits , birds , and animals .
In this close-up shot, you can see the raised ink of this print , which gives a slight textured feel .
The manufacturer is Morris & Co. Usually M&C prints on a user-friendly non-woven material . But in the last year or two I’ve come across more and more M&C that are printed on the old-fashioned, traditional, what we call a British pulp substrate .
Non-wovens are strong , durable , stain-resistant , humidity – resistant , easy to install , and easy to remove when you redecorate . Pulps , on the other hand , are just the opposite . Do a Search here to see my previous posts.
None of this is a deal-breaker. The installer just needs to know what he’s getting into, before taking on the project.
We hunted. This particular pattern was not available by any vendor in the NW material. Maybe it’s COVID , or supply chain issues , or maybe it’s a British thing (even though many American and Canadian companies are printing the Wm Morris designs ). Couldn’t find any outfit offering Fruit in non-woven.
At any rate, the paper went up beautifully, and the basic paper material will hold up well, even if the homeowner steams up the room on her long tub soaks , and the pattern is lovely in the vintage home with new tile , tub , and faucet .

Gold Geometric on Black Accent Wall in Kitchen Area

” Floating ” accent wall between kitchen and dining room . The homeowners originally considered a mural for this area . But with help from the wallpaper sales guy, they landed on this.

Both husband and wife love this. The black color plays beautifully off the black cabinets in the kitchen , butler’s pantry , and mud room . The gold geometric lines keep everything lively .

The specs say this is is a 25″ pattern repeat. But from looking at it, you’d think it was much shorter … the narrow lines match up with the narrow lines, and the fat sections line up with fat sections. Maybe 4″ repeat. But – not. I’ve hung this before, so I was already aware that those lines and sections are not all the same distance apart. It’s essential that you lay your strips next to each other and make sure you’ve got the pattern match correct. Because if not, you could end up with tiny 1/8″ mis-matches across the seams between some of those gold lines .

This is a Jaclyn Smith design by Trend . It’s a paste-the-wall / non-woven material , and is strong and durable , and resistant to stains and tears . Flexible and easy to install . Will strip off the wall easily and in one piece when you redecorate .
It has a raised ink / lightly textured surface .
The wallpaper was purchased from Calico / Calico Corners on W. Alabama in Houston , with the expert knowledge and interior design assistance of Ron Dillon , whom I’ve known for about 25 years .
The home is in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston.

Apothecary’s Garden in Powder Room – Fairy Tale Floral

Deep green wainscoting at the bottom, and on the right is a 100 year old ” dry sink ” with coordinating colored tile backsplash turned into a vanity, with period-appropriate faucet .

Fresh and lively . But can you believe the design dates back about 100 years ? – same as the house!

Close up. Looks like watercolor paint . Birds , butterflies , plants , flowers , and grasshoppers !

C.F.A. Voysey is a male designer who worked around the turn of the last century, late 1800’s through about the 1920’s , and was part of the Arts & Crafts decorating movement . Most of his patterns are somewhat symmetrical , as well as whimsical and fanciful , with heavy emphasis on nature .
This is a non-woven material , can be hung via the paste the wall method , although I prefer the paste the paper installation . It has a 20% polyester content and is thus more resistant to stains and humidity than traditional papers . And it’s designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece with no damage to your walls when you redecorate .
The brand name is Lord Twig and it comes from Finest Wallpaper , which is in Canada.
This went in the rear powder room of a beautifully renovated 1926 4-plex apartment that has been artfully converted into a single family home , in the Woodland Heights area of Houston .

Shells / Fans in Master Bedroom Closet

Left side of entry wall primed and ready for wallpaper.

Starting the right side of the wall.
Instead of laying a 9.5′ length of wallpaper down along the door frame and wrestling it around the tops and bottoms of several fixed-in-place shelves, I used a razor blade and my straightedge to slice the strip horizontally into sections, measured carefully to coincide with the position of the shelf brackets.
This way I was working with much smaller and more manageable chunks of paper.

Entry wall finished.

Entry and side walls finished.

Opposite, window wall finished.
This closet, with 20 single rolls (10 double roll bolts) of wallpaper, several fixed shelves to wrangle paper around, support brackets to trim around, and two windows to wrap wallpaper inside, took me two 10-hour days to prime and paper.

Here’s a close-up, with a light switch for perspective, to show the lightly textured surface of the wallpaper.

BN European brand of wallpaper.
This is a non-woven material and could be hung via the paste the wall method or the paste the paper installation process.
Pasting the material made it much easier to work around all the obstacles and tight areas.
The paper was very soft and pliable. It is an embossed ( textured ) vinyl and will be more resistant to stains and dings than most traditional wallpapers.
This home is in the Heights neighborhood of Houston.

Stains on Wall Next to Powder Room Sink

Look closely and you’ll see streaks running down the wall, obviously from liquids that have been splashed out of the sink or while someone reached for the faucet handles. This is a semi-gloss paint, so you’d think it would be more resistant to staining.
Two things concern me. First that whatever substance this is, may come back back to haunt us by bleeding through the new wallpaper. Oil, which can be found in soap, cleaning supplies, and fragrances, for instance, is one culprit.
Second is that, if the walls got this much splatter before the paper goes up, sure hope that the household will take more care once the wallpaper has been installed.

Softening A Heights Dining Room; Wonderful Faux Grasscloth

The original dark paint was bold and beautiful. But the homeowners wanted something softer and textured. They listened to my “rant” about color variations in grasscloth (see link at right), and chose this embossed vinyl replica instead.

They couldn’t have chosen better!

We were worried about the usual very visible vertical seams in grasscloth, and how they would juxtapose with the vertical boards in the wainscoting at the bottom portion of the walls. The spacing between the boards did not sync at all with the width of the wallpaper. If the seams in the paper were visible and did not coordinate with the vertical elements below, it would have ended up a very visually confusing room.

Luckily, and very surprisingly, this material turned out to be wonderfully homogeneous, and the seams are virtually invisible.

What you do see is the is the very soft, muted texture and warm color that envelope the room. I like to say that this sort of pattern emulates a finely tailored man’s suit.

That last photo is distorted a bit, so ignore those wavy, swirly lines.

This wallcovering is by Warner, in their Textures VII, Grasscloth Resource book, on page 32, a lightly embossed (textured) vinyl on a scrim (woven fabric) backing, and is a random / reverse pattern match (meaning, there is no pattern to match).

It comes either 26″ wide or 52″/54″ wide. Lil’ ol’ me can’t wrangle that extra-wide stuff, so I asked the homeowners to buy the 26″ option.

This type of vinyl is way more resistant to dings and stains than most traditional wallpapers. The scrim backing also makes it easy to strip off the wall later, and with minimal damage to the wall. The embossing adds just a touch of texture.

Best of all, because it is man-made instead of a natural material, there is none of the displeasing shading and color variations that are so prevalent in real grasscloth.

The home is a relatively new build in the Heights neighborhood of Houston.

Special Coating Supposedly Makes Wallpaper Fire-Resistant

I’ve heard of coatings to make wallpaper water-resistant. But this is the first time I’ve seen a company claim to be able to make their wallpaper resistant to fire.

This brand is Farrow & Ball, and the material is a typical British pulp substrate.

Warming Heights Living Room With Faux Grasscloth

Top photo – you’re looking at a living room in a beautifully renovated 1910 home in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston. The bottom 3/4 of the walls are clad in beautiful white board-and-batten paneling. I skim-floated (smoothed) the upper 2′ of wall space a few months ago – and, due to construction delays, the poor family has been living with these uninspiring grey walls ever since.

Today I was able to finally get their paper up on the wall. This is an embossed vinyl faux grasscloth product by York. It is good quality, and the close-up shot shows that it does a good job of mimicking real grasscloth in texture and design. Unlike real grasscloth, because this material is vinyl, it will be resistant to stains. And because it’s man-made, there won’t be the sharp color variations from strip to strip.

However, like real grasscloth, this particular product does not have a pattern match (some by other manufactures, like Thibaut, do have a pattern match). No pattern match means that you will see a visible pattern break at every seam, every 27″ apart.

The homeowner knew immediately that she would not be happy with that. So she suggested running the material horizontally instead of vertically (called “railroading”). The width of the wallpaper accommodated the height of the wall space wonderfully, and we had just enough yardage to cover each of the four wall areas without having to splice any paper.

Another benefit is that, with the “grass” in the design directed vertically, it correlated nicely with the vertical paneling below.

And … the room has special tiny LED lights running along the top of the wainscoting. When turned on, they light up the wallpaper in a beautiful way. If the texture had been running horizontally, those lights would cast some really disconcerting shadows. (Remember when you were a kid and held a flashlight under your chin?!)

The true colors don’t show up well in the photos. This material mixes strands of murky blue, navy, mossy green, and gold. These colors coordinate sooo nicely with the deep blue ceiling, the navy paint in the adjoining dining room, and the tiles in the era-accurate fireplace.

The wallpaper manufacturer is York. The interior designer is Stacie Cokinos of Cokinos Design. She works mainly in the Heights area, and mostly on new builds or whole-house renovations.

A Really Nice Vinyl Faux Grasscloth

Originally, this downstairs bathroom in a newish home in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston was painted a mocha brown. It looked OK, but lacked luster and life. The homeowner envisioned more texture and color, plus a tiny bit of dazzle. She was considering grasscloth.

During our initial Sunday afternoon consultation, luckily she heeded my warnings about the problems with grasscloth – visible seams, color shading differences between strips, staining from water splashes or little ones’ hands, etc.

She chose this textured vinyl faux grass pattern by York instead. What a winner this turned out to be! Because there is no pattern that can be matched, you still see the seams. But, because the color is so homogeneous, there are no jarring shade differences. In the sink photo, note that you are seeing a shadow, not a shading of color.

The color variations within the grass-like design are more pronounced than in other brands (for instance, the Thibaut versions), and so it looks more like real grasscloth, and you can see the various colors even from a distance.

There is a pleasing texture that can be seen and felt. And, because the material is a heavy vinyl, it’s quite durable and water- and stain-resistant. What’s more, because there was no pattern to match (that’s called a random match), there was very little waste – in a room with a tad less than 9′ ceilings, I got three strips out of a 27′ long double roll bolt (usually you only get two strips).

I did follow typical grasscloth-installation techniques for this product.

Because the lack of a pattern match meant that the seams were visible, I took precise measurements and “balanced” the width of the strips in the various areas in which they were hung.

Because there was still a bit of a color difference between the right side and the left side of each strip, I also reversed the top and bottom of every other strip – a little trick that minimizes visible color differences by placing the right side, for instance, of each bolt of paper next to itself on subsequent strips. That sounds confusing, but it’s valuable trick of the trade.

The navy blue brings a welcome shot of color into the room. The gold metallic touches add sparkle, and coordinate smartly with the light fixture (not shown). The homeowner will soon trade the chrome faucet for one of brushed gold.