The homeowner loved the new look, and said that having this one room decorated with some color and personality helped a lot to make the new house feel like a home. After the trauma she went through in recent months, it was an honor to help her new home become warm and welcoming.
This family in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston is all about their two young daughters. The wallpaper pattern they chose for their powder room could be called “fantasy personified” – perfect for kids! And adults using the room will be wowed by the visual impact of the bold black background and bright pops of color.
It may look like “just a bathroom” to you – but this took me more than nine hours to hang (I had done the prep yesterday). Intricate moldings to trim around, small spaces, tight angles, dimensions that didn’t mesh, high ceilings that made reaching areas such as over the sink difficult (i.e. risky), and more.
The wallpaper is by Borastapeter, a Scandinavian company. It’s a non-woven material, which has a lot of advantages over traditional paper or vinyl. Although one could use the paste-the-wall installation method, in this chopped up bathroom with intricate detailed areas, I chose to paste the paper. This helped ensure adhesion in even the tightest spaces, and also made the material more flexible and easier to manipulate.
The interior designer is Stacie Cokinos of Cokinos Design.
Don’t you just love the pig wearing a sweater?!
I hung this paper in a little boy’s bedroom about two years ago. Now a new baby is coming, so Son #1 is moving from the nursery to his “Big Boy’s Room” next door. In the process of the shuffle, the parents had the connecting Hollywood bathroom updated, and this involved moving a door – which meant messing up the wallpaper.
As you can see in the top photo, instead of taking the time and effort to remove the wallpaper, the workmen put their patching compound right on top of it. I don’t like hanging paper on top of paper, for many reasons. There are adhesion issues. And also, for one thing, it’s not good to have seams fall on top of seams. For another, because the new paper is somewhat thick, you would have a visible ridge from top to bottom along the edge of the new strip.
So I took a razor knife and cut roughly around the workmens’ patch. Then I stripped off the paper around it, up to the edge of the adjoining strip. I did this on both sides of the corner.
This wallpaper is of a non-woven material, and is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate. I was pretty disappointed that that turned out to not be the case.
On the other hand, I was happy that it didn’t. Stripping paper that way puts a lot of stress on the wall surface, and you can end up with delamination (coming apart) of various layers under the paper (primer, skim-float, paint, drywall).
So I used a more labor-intensive, but lower-impact method. Click my page to the right for more info on the process. I first stripped off the top, inked layer of paper. That left the white backing still adhering to the wall. I used a sponge to apply plenty of water to this backing. The idea is to reactivate the paste that is holding it to the wall. Once that paste was wet enough, the backing pulled off the all cleanly and easily.
I was really pleased that my primer from the original install held up perfectly under all this soaking and tugging. I had worried that it might “rewet” and pull away from the wall, which had been my experience with it before. I had used Gardz, a penetrating product designed to seal torn drywall. It’s also good at sealing new skim-coated walls. And wallpaper sticks to it nicely, so all the better!
One photo shows you the stripped off area next to the edge of the remaining strip. You can see the thickness of this existing strip. The new wallpaper will butt up against this, and there will be no ridge because the thicknesses of both strips are the same.
Another photo shows my stripped-off area next to the contractor’s patched area. There is a difference in height between the newly revealed wall and the patched area – and that will show as a ridge or bump under the new wallpaper.
To eliminate that difference in height, I skim-floated over the area. In one photo, you can see the wet (grey) smoothing compound. I set up a strong floor fan to assist in drying. My heat gun also came in handy.
Once it was dry, I sanded it smooth. Now you don’t see any transition between the newly exposed wall and slightly higher patched area. I applied Gardz to the all the newly patched areas. Set up the fan again. And once it was dry, I put up the replacement paper.
It’s a good thing the family had paper left over from the original install. If they had had to purchase new paper, it could have come from a new Run (slight difference in color shade), and that would have meant stripping off and replacing three walls.
We had barely enough paper. The corner was out of plumb by as much as 1/2″ from floor to wainscoting, on each side of the corner. That adds up to an inch out of whack. That one inch meant we needed a whole new strip of wallpaper, to get the paper on the wall to the left to match up with that on the wall to the right.
Long story short, the whole thing turned out great. There is a bit of a mis-match in that corner, but it’s not very noticeable at all.
The wallpaper is by the Scandinavian company Boras Tapeter.
The home is in the West University neighborhood of Houston.
Before my baby blue primer hit the walls, this hall bathroom was all white – white walls, white tile, white vanity and mirrors and sink. Just a little bit of light grey color, and a simple white line drawing on this wallpaper do wonders to give this room warmth and personality. The design reminds me of a fairy tale. The family is bowled over by the change!
The paper is by Borastapeter, a Scandinavian company. It is a superb product – washable, easy to strip off when it’s time to redecorate, soft and supple enough to make hanging it in tight areas easier, seams are virtually invisible, non-woven material so can be hung via the paste-the-wall method (I pasted the paper instead).
The interior designer for this job is Stacie Cokinos of Cokinos Design. The home is in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston.
For a 5-year old girl, you can’t beat the color combination in this room! .. .. Peach walls, a floral wallpaper in teal and peach on an accent wall, and other accents not pictured, like twin teal shelves and chest of drawers, and a turquoise scrolled-metal headboard.
She can live with this pattern and these colors well into her teen years.
In the first photo, I have skim-floated to smooth over the textured walls. My three fans (plus the ceiling fan and the home’s A/C system) are working hard to dry the smoothing compound. I also engaged the services of my heat gun, to speed drying along.
This wallpaper is by Eijffinger, a Scandinavian company. It is a non-woven material, with a high fiberglass content, and won’t expand when wet with paste. Also, it is designed to strip off the wall easily and cleanly when it’s time to redecorate.
These qualities mean that it was possible to hang it using the paste-the-wall method. That made me happy, because I did not have to lug in my heavy and cumbersome trimming / pasting table.
The home is a newish townhome in the Montrose neighborhood of central Houston.
The plants in this wallpaper pattern are native to Scandinavia, and are a nod to the homeowner husband’s Norwegian heritage. The bright colors and white background really brightened up the bathroom.
This product was atypical, as it was 36″ wide (instead of the typical 20.5″ or 27″). Additionally, it came as a 2-panel set mural, with an “A” and a “B” panel. It took three sets to paper this bathroom.
This was a thicker non-woven material. It could be hung by pasting the wall, or by pasting the paper. I chose to paste the paper – which makes more sense when going around pedestal sinks and behind toilets.
Even though non-wovens are virtually impossible to tear, I had to work very gently with this material, because the surface could be creased or marred quite easily, simply by folding or unfolding it.
This wallpaper pattern is called Brita. It is in the A-Street Prints line, by Brewster, and was bought from my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price – Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.
This powder room in the West U neighborhood of Houston was decorated around the unique dark green pedestal sink and toilet. Back when the house was built, in 1992, the black floral wallpaper was a fun and in-vogue choice for this room. But by 2018, the look was dated, and some of the seams were succumbing to humidity and splashed water, which were causing curling. (2nd photo)
So the old black vinyl paper was stripped off. (3rd photo) The new paper still looks good with the plumbing fixtures, but it is bright and airy, and has a softness to it. But it’s not a sleeper – look closely and you’ll see a wonderland of fun characters playing and gallivanting through the forest. (4th photo)
This wallpaper pattern is by the Swedish company Boras Tapeter. While this particular choice is monochromatic and muted, the company has a wide variety of very playful designs with a whole lot of color – all the while reflecting the simple, clean-lined Scandinavian look. Interestingly enough, I have another client family looking at patterns from this same brand.
Additionally, the quality is great, and it was very nice to work with. It’s a non-woven material, and is designed to be a paste-the-wall install process – but I pasted the paper instead, which makes it more pliable and cooperative, especially around complicated areas like the fluted pedestal sink. Another advantage if the non-woven products is that they are engineered to strip off the wall easily and with minimal damage to the walls, when it’s time to redecorate.
The paper was bought at below retail price from Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.
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The second photo shows the first strip going up. I love the stripe of dark, bold color against the boring white walls.
The pattern is called “Wonderland,” and it is by Boras Tapeter, a Scandinavian company. It is on a non-woven substrate, and I hung it using both the paste-the-paper and the paste-the-wall methods.
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