This is the mounting bracket for a sconce / light fixture . The fixture itself is exactly the same size as the bracket. So it’s unfortunate that the electrician used an electrical box that is too large . As you can see, the blue box shows on both the left and right sides of the light fixture. (I will also add that I think this light fixture is narrower than most – I suspect it was made overseas where boxes and codes are different from here.) In addition, the blue box juts out from the wall and will create a bump under the wallpaper , plus prevent the paper from adhering tightly to the wall . The jaggedly cut drywall will leave impressions under the paper, too. Here the plastic electrical box is recessed better into the wall. But there are still gaps on the left and right sides of the bracket. To get the wallpaper around the brackets without gaps showing , I removed the brackets, and then brought the wallpaper in to cover the electrical junction boxes by about 1.” (no photo) If the electrician needs more space for his wires , he can always trim the wallpaper back a little. In the instance of the box in the top photo, there will still be wallpaper that can’t sit tight to the drywall , but once the sconce is replaced you really won’t notice. I also had the option of leaving the mounting brackets in place and then placing the wallpaper over the metal plates. But first of all, I think this is against building Codes. And second, if the sconces are changed out later, or if someone needs to access the electrical connections, removing the mounting plates would most surely tear the wallpaper in the process. So, best to have the wallpaper behind the plates, rather than pasted on top of them.
Incredibly boring and blah powder room in a newish townhome in the Montrose area of Houston. Wow! Now THIS makes an IMPACT!!!This is not an Andy Warhol design, but it’s exactly like what he liked to create. Shot of mirror over vanity. Pattern is perfectly centered over mirror and coming down both sides.Lips! Pic is off-hue … The background is really a vibrant yellow. Rolling out the material. Each ” roll ” contains three strips, , or panels , each of which is 20.5″ wide by 118″ (just under 10′).The manufacturer is Mind The Gap , and the pattern is called Neon Kiss . This is a strong, un-tearable, stain-resistant non-woven material. It is easy to hang on flat walls, and you can use the paste the wall installation method. I usually paste the material , though, especially in bathrooms with vanities to cut around and toilets to squeeze behind. The substrate is soft and supple and easy to trim, and the surface is quite washable.
Textured wall has been skim-floated smooth , primed , and ready for wallpaper .This pattern is called Smoky Rose and also London Rose . Both are appropriate!Charcoal on an off-white background . Up close, it looks like water color strokes.The wallpaper is by House of Hackney . Most of their wallpapers are the user-friendly non-woven material. This one surprised me being a British pulp. This is a rather old-fashioned basic paper material with no protective coating. It’s brittle when dry and gets soggy when wet with paste, making it tear easily or to drag when the razor blade runs across it. Definitely takes a different approach during installation . I was lucky enough to have hung a pulp just the day before, so was in good practice! Although not resistant to stains and tricky to work with, I do like the matt finish and how the paper dries tight and flat to the wall.
Because I feared unstable walls in this 1920’s bungalow in this neighborhood (do a Search for previous posts), before hanging the decorative wallpaper, first I hung a non-woven liner paper on all the walls. That’s the white material you see in the photo. The liner was hung horizontally so its seams can’t line up with the decorative paper. The idea is to disperse tension from drying wallpaper and changes due to humidity and etc., so as to deflect tension away from sketchy wall surfaces, and thus prevent delamination of multiple unstable layers deep inside the wall. Again, do a Search here to learn more. Finished vanity area, with pattern centered on the light fixture.Corner shot.This colorful and symmetrical pattern is quite popular; I’ve hung it a number of times just this year. Englishman William Morris designed wallpaper and fabrics during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The styles then were Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts. This design reflects a bit of each.Wallpaper expands when it gets wet with paste, and then can shrink just a tad as it dries. The liner helps prevent that, but you can still end up with teeny gaps at some seams. To prevent the white backing from showing through, I run a stripe of dark paint under where each seam will fall.I use matt finish craft paint from the hobby store, diluted with a little water (in the orange bottle cap) and smeared on the wall with a scrap of sponge. Use a ruler or level and a pencil to mark where you want to stripe the dark paint. Remember to allow for that expansion as the paper absorbs moisture from the paste. Meaning, if the paper is 20.5″ wide, and expands 1/2″, you’ll want to run your line at about 21.” And make sure that your painted swath is about an inch wide. I also run a bit of dark chalk along the edges of each strip, to prevent the white substrate from showing at the seams (no photo).Morris & Co. makes this iconic Strawberry Thief. Interestingly enough, most times when I’ve hung a Morris paper, it’s been a non-woven paste-the-wall material. Today’s option was a surprise – a traditional British pulp . This is a pretty basic and somewhat old-fashioned type of substrate . Sort of like construction paper, or the pages of an old family Bible . The paper is very fragile , and can tear easily. You have to keep using new razor / trimming blades, because the material dulls blades quickly, and when dull they will drag and tear the paper. Pulp papers also require a soaking / booking time after pasting , to allow time for the material to absorb the paste , soften a bit, and expand . The edges of the strips like to dry out , so I’ve learned to dip about 1/4″ of the booked ends ( booked means the pasted side of the wallpaper strip is folded onto itself, bottom edge folded up and top edge folded down to meet in the middle), into a bucket of clean water. Then it goes into a black plastic trash bag to soak and relax for a few minutes before hanging. I use this opportunity to paste the next strip. Non-woven wallpapers have advantages, because they do not expand when wet, and therefor you can get accurate measurements. They also can be pasted and hung immediately, with no waiting time. Alternately, you can paste the wall .
One way to (hopefully) prevent an unstable wall from delaminating to to hang a liner paper. A liner is a special paper that goes on first, and your finish paper goes on top. Usually, liners are hung horizontally rather than vertically. The idea is that the seams of the two papers will not line up, so that eliminates the worry of stress from drying and shrinking wallpaper tugging at the wall surface below. But liners add more materials cost, and also labor cost to hang it, plus time, because it has to dry overnight. This homeowner had already shelled out a lot of money for this Schumacher (high end brand) “Acanthus” pattern. So I devised a method to do a “mini-liner” effect. I took liner paper and cut 2″ strips, and applied them to the wall under where the seams would fall. Here I am using my laser level to mark where the next seam would fall. Next I rolled paste on the wall, and then I applied the strip of liner paper. The liner will straddle the area where the seam lands, and thus disperse the tension on the wall across its width. Any stress put on the unstable wall will be covered by the liner strip and by the wallpaper, hopefully preventing any chance of delamination (the wall coming apart).I like the product I used today because it’s “non-woven” material, which has a high polyester content and shouldn’t shrink or tear. But it’s not as thin as I thought … I had hoped the thin strips would be undetectable under the textured grasscloth. But I was disappointed that, in certain lighting, the vertical ridges from this very thin material do show a tiny bit. I was unable to go back and open the seam and remove the strips, because – you guessed it – the surfaces of the wall began to come apart. Tomorrow I will try a different material. The next day I tried a trick recommended by colleagues on my paperhanger’s Facebook page – to use cash register receipt print-out tape, available at office supply stores. This material is a lot thinner – but it is also not nearly as strong. I hope it holds up to the tension placed on the seams by the wallpaper. It is thin, and much less noticeable under the textured grasscloth … although I did see one area where the vertical ridge was just just barely detectable under the paper.
This is a grasscloth pattern called ” Acanthus ” by Schumacher.
Moving from the entry to the adjoining dining room of the historic home in Houston mentioned in my two previous posts. This pattern by William Morris is called “Fruit,” and is true to the period in which the home was built.
I love the way the colors work with the wainscoting and also the picture rail around the top.
This pattern is less repetitive and the color is softer than the option used in the entry (see yesterday’s post), making it an easy-to-live-with choice for this large dining room.
The material is a traditional British pulp which you don’t see much these days, as most European manufacturers have moved to the newer non-woven substrates. I do like the pulps for their matt finish and tight adhesion to the wall. Although, they are brittle and tend to drag and tear when being cut, so they require some special handling.
This one also has a raised ink feature, which adds just a tad of texture. Look closely at the close-up shot.
This was purchased from FinestWallpaper.com, who has a large selection of Morris and also Voysey (another designer from that Arts & Crafts period) patterns. The home is in the Old Sixth Ward neighborhood in central inner-loop Houston.
This grasscloth wallpaper by Thibaut is called Union Square. It has not just the texture from the natural reeds of grass sewn onto the backing, but also 3-D square “dots” of thick plastic or resin or vinyl … Doesn’t matter what the material is … There are raised, textured “dots” marching across this paper in a neat, orderly fashion.
But plastic can be sticky. On all of the bolts, the paper labels stuck to the plastic dots. Unrolling the grasscloth caused the labels to tear off strips, which remained stuck to the plastic dots. These scraps of paper could not be removed, so I had to cut off and discard the top 16″ or so of each bolt.
The really sad thing about this is that the wall height was such that I could have gotten three strips out of each double roll. But with having to discard paper from the start of each bolt, we were left with only enough remaining paper on the bolt for two strips.
Even worse on a few other bolts, the plastic dots stuck to not just the paper label, but to the paper backing of the grasscloth itself. This left strips of paper stuck to the dots, and also peeled bits of paper off of the back of the wallpaper – leaving the possibility of paste leaking through and staining the surface.
This sticky defect went through the entirety of each bolt, so there were three bolts that were unusable.
This meant that I could not finish wallpapering the remaining walls. And that we’ll have to send back the defective paper, and the homeowner will have to wait for the company to find non-defective paper, and ship it, and for me to have an opening on my schedule to finish the job.
The Thibaut Customer Service rep has told me that the company is aware of and has worked on this problem. (Thibaut is one company that actually LISTENS to us installers, and makes changes as needed.) Their solution is to place thin plastic wrap inside the bolts, to prevent the dots from coming into contact with any other material, like the paper backing.
I hope the replacement paper comes with this new innovation.
Textured wallcoverings are tempting to dogs and cats, and this couple’s King Charles spaniel puppy had some fun with a couple of areas of their kitchen wallpaper. It is an embossed vinyl on a paper backing, made to mimic a woven grasscloth.
An applique a half inch higher than the tear, and the full width of the wall, was the least noticeable way to repair this. The thickness of the material made it more difficult to disguise the patch, but the finished job looked very good.
The third photo shows “border paste” – also called vinyl over vinyl (VOV) – which was called for in this instance. Vinyl wallcovering is somewhat slick, and most adhesives won’t stick to it. So you need this special formula.
In addition, because the patch was exhibiting curl at the top and side edges, and because I wanted something with quick tack, I used clear caulk (not pictured) along all the edges. This sets up quickly, and holds very tightly, even on glossy surfaces.
Here is a nursery accent wall, getting ready for a baby girl in a few months.
I like Spoonflower’s paper, and it’s been a while since I’ve hung it, so today was fun.
Spoonflower is different from other papers. For starters, it comes in strips of certain lengths, so you have to figure out how many strips of each length you need. For an accent wall like this, that was easy – but it can get complicated in chopped up rooms like bathrooms. Each strip comes packaged separately, in it’s own long, skinny zip-top bag.
The paper is pre-pasted, which you don’t see much these days. I find this type much faster to hang. The paper is also designed to be overlapped at the seams (instead of butted). This means you will see a 1/2″ wide ridge from floor to ceiling down either side of each strip. (See third photo.) In the grand scheme of things, this is not very noticeable. (In the old days, all papers were hung this way, and I have some authentic 1940’s paper in my home office to prove it. 🙂 )
The material is thin paper, and it gets very wet when it is pasted, and it expands. When the paper dries, it shrinks a tad. If the seams were butted, you would end up with gaps between the strips. By overlapping the strips a tad, gaps are prevented. This method also puts less tension on the wall, so you have less chance of layers inside the wall delaminating. (Do a search here for more info.)
The composition and the thinness of the paper also make it difficult to cut, because it wants to tear. So you have to keep a supply of sharp, new blades handy.
This paper is very similar to one I blogged about on December 25, 2018. I’m betting it’s made by the same manufacturer, but sold under different brand names.
Note that Spoonflower also offers a peel & stick so-called “removable” option – do NOT go with this one – horrible stuff, that P&S.
This home is in the Heights / Timber Grove area of Houston.
Originally living in the heart of New York City, these homeowners “got a better offer” and moved to Houston. In a nicely updated 1925 bungalow in the Woodland Heights, life for these two has changed for the better – but the wife still reminisces over the view she had out her skyscraper office window back in NYC.
She found this really cool wallpaper design, which depicts hundreds and hundreds of New York buildings, from tall to gigantic, from the 1800’s to the 2000’s, with many styles of architecture tossed into the mix.
Where did this cool and sentimental wallpaper go? … In the laundry alcove. But it’s not tucked away in the rear of the house … this laundry room is in the main hall leading through the house – which means that this fun and sentimental wallpaper is on view every time anyone walks through the house.
This wallpaper is by York, in their Sure Strip line. It is a thin, easy to manipulate non-woven material, and is designed to strip off the wall easily and with minimal damage, when it’s time to redecorate. This is one of my favorite brands, because it’s easy to work with, doesn’t tear or crease, it doesn’t shrink and gap at the seams, it’s easy to remove, and it will stand up to humidity, such as will exist in a laundry room.
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