Retro Look in Kitchen

Breakfast area before

Breakfast area after … with my work table set-up still in the middle of the room.

Kitchen sink / window area before.

Finished

This fruit-and-floral motif is a very retro look, which was popular in the 1950’s – early 1970’s . The background looks like linoleum tiles – very period-appropriate.

Close-up.

Exclusive Wallcoverings saw the current interest in retro / vintage looks, and designed this very appropriate pattern.
This was a thin and very flexible non-woven material , and was a delight to work with.
As are all non-wovens, this is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate.
To install , you can paste the paper or paste the wall .
This home is in the Lexington Woods area of Spring , ( north Houston ).

Cheery Verdant Choice Saves Home Office

This accent wall in a home office in Cypress ( Houston ) has a long story of mishaps, frustration, and $$.
Originally, the interior designer had suggested Feather Bloom grasscloth / sisal by Schumacher . I prepped the wall and prepared to hang the paper. But we discovered printing defects (very, very common with Schumacher), and other issues. Search here to see my previous posts.
We had to abort the install that day. This turned out to be a good thing, because, truth be told, the homeowners really didn’t like the Feather Bloom, but felt a little pressured to go with it.
So back to the vendor the ugly duckling went.
Then the homeowners took their time without the designer’s input, to look at wallpaper selections and purchase $1 samples they could see, feel, and tack up to the wall.
Their new choice (below) fits their style, color scheme, and pocket book much better (this option cost thousands less than the Schumacher).
The actual purchase was made through Dorota at the Sherwin-Williams store in the Rice Village (713) 529-6515.
Everything was done over the phone, and, to save the homeowners driving all the way into the city, I picked up the paper for them and delivered it to their home on install day.

Starting in the middle of the wall so I can place the very symmetrical pattern dead in the center of the wall.

The colors in the paper work beautifully with the green cabinets you see to the left.
And I love the way the airy feel and foliage and flowers compliment the open-air view outside the window.

This pattern is reminiscent of designs by William Morris, a designer of the Arts & Crafts period around the turn of the 20th Century. I’m seeing a lot of interest in these patterns of late.

Apelviken , Midbec , 33006 , A Street Prints , Spring, non-woven material made in Sweden , was very nice to work with and will hold up well for many, many years.
I installed using the paste-the-wall method , although you could also paste the paper.

Kitchen With Burst Pipe Water Damage Fixed and Finished

This kitchen in the Spring area of north Houston suffered severe water damage from burst pipes during the hard freeze in February 2021. Nearly a year later, they are almost finished with repairs, including new drywall on bottom of walls, new cabinets, new plumbing, cabinets, electrical, and more. Here you see the contractor’s repair work on top of some of the original wallpaper, which dates to the early 1980’s! It was a good brand, and the installer did a great job. For various reasons, I opted to leave this wallpaper in place, and so skimmed over uneven areas and then primed on top of it with Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime.

The homeowner’s new choice is very similar to the previous paper, but with a more springy feel and a lot of upward movement. The area below the chair rail will receive another coat of paint to better define the correct yellow color. Or, the homeowner may switch to a green pulled from the leaves in the pattern.

This wall with the fir-down / soffit was a real bugger, for various reasons, and took me about four hours.

Looks so sharp against the white paint and tile!

The wallpaper was printed on a white substrate, so I ran black chalk along the edges of each strip, to try to prevent white from showing at the seams. Still, some of the strips shrank just a half a tad, and that did allow some white to show. This wallpaper is a non-woven material, which has a high polyester content, and is not supposed to stretch or shrink, so this is disappointing. Pasting the wall and dry-hanging the material would have probably helped. But the material was extremely thick and stiff, and plus the room had way too many turns and bends and angles, so pasting the paper made the most sense. These gaps are very minor, and only visible when viewed from straight on; from an angle you can’t even see them. On some papers, I can pull some tricks out of my bag and camouflage them. But with this non-woven material, don’t even try anything with paint, marker, chalk or anything else – it will surely stain the material.

The walls are smooth. The slight texture you see is the non-woven material. When an edge is torn, you can actually see the polyester fibers – a lot like fiberglass. This material is very strong, and is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate.

Manufacturer is Mind The Gap out of Transylvania (!), and the design is called Aquafleur, in the Anthracite color. The material comes as a 3-panel set, which they call one “roll.” The overall width of the A, B, and C panels side-by-side is about 5′, and the height is just under 10′. The height of the wall was less than 5,’ and the strips were nearly 10′ long, so at least 5′ was lost of each strip. Because the pattern was a mural type, rather than a typical repeating wallpaper design, even more paper was lost in working around the configurations of the room – for instance, a full 10′ strip would be needed to paper just one 9″ high strip above the door. So there was an incredible amount of waste – and this is a higher-priced boutique brand. But the lady of the house really loves it, and so she went with her heart.

Buffalo Check in North Houston Laundry Room

I hung this bold and fun pattern a few years ago in a Spring (north Houston) laundry room. I’m back this week to wallpaper their kitchen, so took a minute to snap this shot.

It has a hand painted , water color -y look. I don’t remember the brand, but I’m thinking it’s from the Joanna Gaines Magnolia Home Collection in the SureStrip line by York.

“Indian Flower” by Jasper Wallcoverings, Hand Trimmed Goods

The selvedge edge of this wallpaper had to be trimmed off by hand, using a paperhanger’s straightedge and a razor blade.

Once that was done, the paper could be pasted, booked, and hung, just like any pre-trimmed paper.

The manufacturer is Jasper, and the pattern is called Indian Flower. I hung it in the dining room of a home in the rapidly-developing area off the Grand Parkway and Birnham Woods, in the Spring area of Houston.