Grasscloth on Several Bookshelves Today

Home office work station niche primed and ready for wallpaper.

Done. Grasscloth comes 36″ wide, and this niche was about 39″ wide, so it required two strips, both trimmed down to 19.5″ wide. Generally, design-wise, you try not to put a seam down the center. But in this case there was no other viable option. This seam was practically invisible.

In the photo, the seam is a little to the right of center. You always see the seams in grasscloth, and this is about as perfect as it gets.
The homeowner, who is an interior designer, did a superb job of finding a grasscloth that’s murky blue hue coordinates perfectly with the color of the cabinetry.
Unfortunately, I don’t know the manufacturer of this material.

Close-up showing the texture.

Twin bookshelves flanking the fireplace wall in the family room, primed and ready for wallpaper.

Grasscloth has been installed. It’s nice to not have the shelves in place – so much easier to get that paper up!

Bookshelf niche on the right.

Bookshelf niche on the left. Note the slight shading and color variations . These are typical of natural products like grasscloth, and are not considered a defect. As the manufacturers say, these variations are ” part of the inherent beauty of these natural materials .”
Shelves will go in these niches and decorative items will obscure these slight imperfections.

TV room bookshelf niche. Yes, t’was I who swiped the smiley face and the horse head into the primer. 🙂

Done. This niche is a tad less than 36″ wide, so only one strip was needed, hence, no seams. Any color variations you see are due to shadows.

Close-up.

Closer-up. Scissors for perspective. These days, people are loving the subtle texture and warmth of grasscloth , paperweaves and other natural materials .

The manufacturer of the grasscloth in both the family room and TV room is Schumacher . The home is in the far west area of Katy , a suburb west of Houston.

William Morris-Like Design in Woodlands Powder Room

Before. Hurricane Ida (October 2021) took their New Orleans home and everything in it, so the homeowner relocated to a north Houston suburb to be closer to family and college friends. The home is brand new, and has grey-tan walls. While the homeowner “grows” into the house, acquires furnishings, and figures out her decorating approach, she wanted at least one room prettied up.

She fell in love with this wallpaper pattern, and decided the powder room was the best place to showcase it.

Pattern centered on the sink / faucet and light fixture. It will look symmetrical and super nice when the mirror is hung.

William Morris innovated designs like this back in the 1860’s, and started the Art Nouveau and Arts & Craft movements, which carried on into the early 1900’s. I’ve hung a lot of patterns by him, and similar, in recent years, indicating an increased interest in this gorgeous, fluid, nature -centric style.

The paper has a velvety feel, and the seams were invisible. It’s non-woven material, which is very strong and designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when you redecorate. It’s fairly water-resistant and somewhat more stain-resistant than more traditional wallpaper substrates.

Apelviken by Midbec is a Scandinavian manufacturer. Yeah…. the instructions on the flip side were a lot of fun to read through!

Interestingly, the labels listed the sequence in which the bolts were printed. Note that not all the bolts were in proper sequence. With a machine-printed product, sequence isn’t all that important because the color will print out very evenly.

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.

Soft-Toned Damask on a Tall Bedroom Accent Wall

I don’t get many opportunities to pull out my 16′ extension ladder, but this week I did … the ceilings in this master bedroom were 12′ high! – just a few inches further than I could reach using my 6′ ladder. The first two photos were taken yesterday, as I was “floating” or “skim coating” the wall, to smooth it so the texture would not show through the wallpaper. The whiter areas you see have the plaster-like substance applied, as I work my way from top to bottom, from left to right.

Because of the dark paint on the other walls, I stopped the white “mud” just a hair away from the corner. In the second photo, that is my floating trowel hanging from the brace of the ladder. I floated the wall yesterday, and let it dry overnight. Today I sanded, vacuumed, wiped dust off the wall with a damp sponge, primed, and then finally hung the wallpaper.

I started in the middle (third photo), so I could center the damask motif on the wall, which will look nice once the homeowners get their bed and headboard back in place. The plastic is on my ladder to keep wallpaper paste from slopping all over it. I don’t have to do this with a normal step ladder, but extension ladders require a different angle of approach, and I couldn’t avoid having the pasted paper unbook and flop against my ladder. Yuck.

Fourth photo just shows some of the mechanics of how all this happens. The next pics are shots of the pattern; really pretty, soft, and nicely suited for a bedroom. They wanted a light color on the wallpaper, as it would contrast nicely with their brand new, very dark hardwood floors.

This wallpaper pattern is by Etten (by Seabrook), and is printed on the newish non-woven substrate, which is designed to peel off the wall easily and in one piece, when it’s time to redecorate. Note that, since these papers are generally thick and somewhat puffy, you often see the seams just a little (last two photos).

The room was a master bedroom in a fairly new home, and the location was Pearland, a suburb of Houston, Texas.