Serena & Lily “Feather” in Houston Play Room

The original all-white walls didn’t do much to make this play room for young kids feel fun. Mom chose “Feather” by Serena & Lily to pump it up a couple of notches!

In the close-up photo, you can see the irregular lines of this design, as well as the hand-painted, watercolor-y look. The material has a slight “raised ink” texture.

You might think the pattern is a little busy now, but once the furniture is back in place and the artwork goes up, the room will feel more balanced.

The homeowners also commented that the pattern on the walls makes the room feel bigger and less “lost” than with the all-white look.

The home is in the Braes Heights neighborhood of southwest inner Loop Houston. The wallpaper is called “Feather” and is by Serena & Lily – one of my favorite brands.

Not Afraid To Be Daring and Dashing!

Originally, the wall was just a grey-tan. Now look how bold and exciting it is, with some strong color and an adventurous pattern! Baboons! – Who would ever think of putting them across a wall??!

This is one accent wall in a dining room in southwest Houston (Meyerland/Fondren Southwest). The home had flooded during Hurricane Harvey, and the couple had it raised 10′ and then refurbished. This dramatic dining room was the final touch!

The wallpaper pattern is “Savuti” in the Dark colorway, by Cole & Son. It is a sturdy non-woven material, and I used the paste-the-wall installation method.

Grasscloth in a West Houston Study

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This couple wanted the textural look of grasscloth for their study, in a newish home near Cross Creek Ranch and Cinco Ranch, a bit southwest of Houston. The pattern they chose is a medium-fine grass in a pretty uniform color. With fine grass, you don’t notice as much the mis-match of the fibers at every seam.

The grass fibers have been sewn onto the front of the wallpaper. But the black backing is less homogenous, and exhibits variations in its color. These are the horizontal differences in color that you see in the pictures.

Some of these color variations spill onto the surface of the material, too. These can be especially evident as swathes of darker colored dye on the outer edges of the wallpaper. (See photo)

Overall, this product looks very good. People who like grasscloth love the texture of the natural material. And they like the “organic look” of visible seams, mis-matched pattern (there is no pattern to match!), and the color variations at the edges and within the strips.

I believe the manufacturer of this grasscloth is York.

Grasscloth Wallpaper on Un-Straight Outside Corner

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Outside corners are difficult, because they are virtually always off-plumb or un-straight. Thus, trying to wrap wallpaper around them can result in wrinkles within the strip, or an un-plumb or wavery edge, which is impossible for the next strip to butt up properly against.

Obtuse angles like this one are even more onerous for the framers. This outside corner ended up being quite irregular. I knew that it would be impossible to wrap stiff grasscloth around it without having gaps or wrinkles in the strip, and that the far edge of the new strip would be wavy and unsuited to butt another strip up against.

So I gave up the idea of trying to wrap the strip around the corner. I decided to end the first strip right at the edge of the obtuse angle. And then to start the next strip at the other side of this same angle / wall.

So I cut the width of my grasscloth strip an inch wider than the width of the wall. Then I hung the strip, then took a razor blade and trimmed off the excess the paper so the strip followed the contours of the outside of the obtuse angled corner.

For the next strip on the opposing side of the corner, I butted it up against a plumb line, which left an inch on the right side hanging over the obtuse angle corner. Then I used a new, sharp razor blade to trim off the excess, so that this strip, too, conformed to the undulations of the wall.

That’s what I’m doing in the first photo. It’s a lot more tricky than it looks, because you’ve got to cut so that the edges of the two strips butt together, without gaps or overlaps, or edges that got cut off too much, and without disturbing the lay of the grass fibers on the paper backing (meaning, without fraying the edges of the grasscloth or causing the fibers to run either up or down. (They should lie perfectly horizontal.)

The blue plastic tape is to keep paste off the surface of the other strip.

The finished corner is shown in the second photo. I think it turned out pretty nicely. And way better than having large wrinkles, or an edge that is too crooked to butt up against another strip of wallpaper.

I am hanging grasscloth in the home office / den / library of a new home in the Richmond / Fulshear area on the southwest side of Houston. The wallpaper is by York.

Fireworks or Dandelion Heads ??

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No matter if you see fireworks or flowers, this light colored pattern full of bursts of movement really transformed this powder room. Originally, the room was papered a dark brick red color. It was so dark that I could not even get a photo, plus the paper had no pattern, so you have to wonder why they didn’t paint instead.

The homeowner searched hard to find a wallpaper that would coordinate with both her new grey granite countertop and the existing Saltillo tile floor, while brightening up a room that had been cave-like for decades.

I would say that she was successful, because this paper fills the bill in every way.

This home is in the Fondren Southwest neighborhood of Houston. The wallpaper is by York, in their Candice Olson line. The label said it was unpasted, but it turned out to be pre-pasted. I pasted the paper anyway, and was very happy with the quality of the paper, and how nice it was to work with, and how tight the seams were, as well as the overall finished job.

Unhappy – Visible Seams Today – But a Solution

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I don’t often work in offices or businesses or commercial spaces, but today I did take on a job in an office park (photo 1) off Westpark & Chimney Rock in southwest Houston. It was a pipeline company that was spiffing up their offices, and everyone who worked there was positively delightful.

The wallpaper, however, was not quite so agreeable.

In the second photo, you see the painted wall before I got started. I rolled on a coat of Gardz, a clear primer. Then started hanging this small herringbone pattern by Schumacher. Although I followed the manufacture’s instructions to reverse-hang the goods (a trick to minimize color variances by hanging every other strip upside down, so you are placing the same sides of the wallpaper next to each other – it’s easier to understand if you are actually doing it, rather than typing it. 🙂 )

Anyway, as you can see in the next photo, there is a visible vertical 1/4″ wide line down each seam, between each strip of wallpaper.

I didn’t think it looked good, and the other guys working on the jobsite noticed it, too, so I called the interior designer, who called the clients. Bottom line: Although we all acknowledged that it didn’t look great, it wasn’t horrible, and besides, there would be furniture and a large painting on that wall, which would pretty much cover the white lines, as well as distract your attention to more interesting things (the oil painting).

So, they gave the go-ahead to continue hanging the paper. Still, I thought it could look better.

I was unable to remove the four existing strips, due to surface failure when attempting to pull those off the wall – Meaning, when the wallpaper, which is on a non-woven substrate, which is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece with no damage to the wall, when I pulled it off the wall, some of the paint came away from the wall, too, leaving an uneven surface on the wall, which would leave dips and bumps under the new wallpaper. I had Gardz’ed the wall, so I thought the surface was stable. But if the paint beneath my primer is not sticking to the drywall, or if there are many layers of paint and they are not all compatible, or dust, or crumbling paint, or who knows what, you can have layers delaminating (coming apart), which is what I had today.

Long story short, I thought the white vertical lines looked better than crumbling walls and bumps under the paper. So I left those strips up on the wall, and focused on the remaining five strips.

Since it was a pattern that allowed it, what I did was, instead of using Schumacher’s factory cut edge, I used my 6′ straightedge and razor blades to trim off 1″ or so from either edge of each 9′ strip of wallpaper, making sure to continue the reverse-hang rhythm, while also making sure the “up” or “down” angle of the herringbone pattern lined up correctly with the pattern on the strips on either side.

This was tedious, but it proved to be the right solution. If you really looked at the wall, you could still see some of the seams, and there was still a bit of white discoloration. But the overall effect was MUCH more pleasing, and definitely worth the extra effort. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of the finished wall with the hand-trimmed wallpaper.

Interestingly, if you look closely at the “before” photo (#2), you can see a faint vertical white line on the painted wall, before any wallpaper even went up.  This supports the designer’s theory that the strong fluorescent light is at least partly to blame for those white lines.

The interior designer for this job is Janet Dowlearn.