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.
The townhouse where I worked today (Timber Grove area of Houston) had walls that were more like trapezoids than rectangles. Trapezoidal walls make wallpaper run off-kilter. With this rigid geometric print, that meant that the pattern would either mis-match badly in the corners, or start tracking (going downhill) badly along the ceiling line.
So I did this little trick, to keep the pattern straight and nicely matched in the corners. You’re looking at the strips laid out on my table; sorry, no shots of the paper up on the wall. But the pics will give an idea of the process. And it turned out perfect.
I split the strip of wallpaper in two vertically, using a straightedge and a fresh razor blade to follow along the pattern. When applying the paper to the wall, I was able to slightly overlap the left side of the second strip on top of the previous strip, with less overlap at the top and more at the bottom. This enabled me to keep the same design element in the corner to the right (not shown), all the way from the ceiling to the floor. When the next strip went up, the design matched perfectly.
Since the width of the overlap wasn’t more than 3/8″, the black lines of the design disguised any ridges that might be created by the overlap.
Overlapping like this caused some of the vertical lines to be closer to each other than they were supposed to be. See second photo. But the eye notices this much less than if the pattern were very broken up in the corners, which would effect both the horizontal and vertical elements.
When looking at this wallpaper pattern from a reasonably close distance, it looks like elongated diamonds. But look at it in an alcove from a distance, and you see a horizontal striped effect.
A good reason to always look at the pattern in a room-set photo before purchasing, so you can see what it looks like played out on a full wall.
Either way, I like it. And it really makes this tall room look taller.
This wallpaper is by York, in their SureStrip line, one of my favorite papers to hang. It’s a thin non-woven material, is designed to strip off the wall easily and cleanly, and comes pre-pasted. This time, instead of their silly squirt bottle suggestion (which provides splotchy and inadequate coverage), or rolling diluted paste onto the back (which reacts with the pre-paste and forms a thick, gummy mess that dries too fast and traps air bubbles), I used the old-fashioned water tray method. I find this wets the paper and the paste better, and makes for a smooth surface, and the paper does not dry out before I get it to the wall (as it does when pasted the traditional way). I then rolled a thin layer of paste on the wall, to augment the pre-paste, eliminate blisters and bubbles, and reduce the chance of shrinkage.
This powder room is in a new home in the Timber Grove neighborhood of Houston. The interior designer is Stacie Cokinos, of Cokinos Design. She works mostly with new builds, or with homes undergoing major renovations. Her look is clean and open and calming … and I am seeing a little farmhouse look creeping in here and there.
I love all things vintage, and have a keen fondness for old wallpaper in particular. So it really hurt to strip off this beautiful (albeit kitschy) mural – the original installed on one wall of a dining room in this 1960 home in the Timber Grove neighborhood of Houston.
The new homeowners, a young couple, had a more modern vision for the look of their home. This very whimsical “Franz” design feels both modern and mid-century at the same time. And, it perfectly mirrors the thin linear gold lines of the chandelier.
The wallpaper is by a company I had not heard of before – Half Full. It is based in California, and their products are reasonably priced. Unlike many “boutique” manufactures, the company was able to provide sensible product information over the phone, and I was pleased with the quality of their wallpaper.
The surface was printed with a clay-coated ink, and the substrate felt like a pulp material. Installation instructions called for a typical vinyl adhesive, and standard booking times. The material – particularly the edges – did tend to dry out a little too quickly, but a little additional pasting helped with that. There was no detectable shrinkage. I do wish they had printed this black design on a dark substrate, because, even though I used chalk to color the edges of the paper, the white paper backing did show through at the seams just a smidgeon.
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Both the scale and color of this bright wallpaper fill the wall with an eye-stopping blast of color and movement. Right now the remaining three walls are “vanilla.” But the homeowners will soon paint those three walls a coordinating color – either a baby blue or a soft aqua, either color to be drawn from the accent colors in the wallpaper.
This wallpaper was prepasted, and was easy to hang. However, as with other products I’ve hung by this company, there were issues with the seams that I was not happy with.
The seams were not cut perfectly straight, so we ended up with what we call “gaps and overlaps.” In addition, some of the factory-cut edges left a tiny bit of the white selvedge on the edge. This meant that when one strip butted against the next strip of wallpaper, that tiny bit of white would show. Even if it’s “only” 1/32″ of an inch, it shows.
The misprinting went further than that. As you can see in the photo, some of the pattern matched perfectly at the top of the wall, but fell into a mis-match as we got further down the wall. To minimize this, I was able to use craft paint (kept in my truck) to cover up some of the gaps at the seams, and to disguise some of the pattern mismatches.
This wallpaper came in the form of a 6-panel mural, which has a less repetitive pattern than a standard wallpaper pattern. In the top photo, three of those panels are rolled up and waiting to be pasted and then taken to the wall.
The mural was bought from AneWall, an on-line company. I hung it on one accent wall of a nursery in the north Heights (Heights) neighborhood of Timber Grove.
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In contrast, today I worked in a new construction home – by a builder who will not be identified – in Timber Grove, just west of the Heights. They painted without bothering to cover anything with tape or plastic, so, as you see in the second photo, the beautiful stained woodwork and floors are covered with paint splatter.
The third photo is dark, but to the left of the light switch you can see a 3/4″ gap in the wall, and above the switch is a 1/4″ gap. Another photo shows torn and bulging drywall around a light switch, and another shows Sheetrock screws (just two of many) protruding from the wall.
Here you see the difference between a custom home builder, and a custom home craftsman. I would much prefer to live in the home by Ridgewater.
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Here is a new-construction home in the Timber Grove neighborhood, just west of the Heights, in Houston. The home has a decidedly Craftsman feel (a design theme popular in the early 1900’s).
The TV room has dark stained wainscoting and paneling battons, which is period-correct. But all this dark is not suited to modern 21st Century living. The homeowner chose to cover the space inside the battons with a lighter-colored, textured wallcovering.
Instead of grasscloth, which can stain, be shredded by pets, or display eye-jarring color variations, the homeowner chose this faux grasscloth product – and I am all in favor!
Bankun Raffia by Thibaut Designs is a wonderful alternative to natural grasscloth. It has the texture and motley color that people love these days, and when properly installed (reverse-hung), there are no color variations between strips. It is a strong, durable vinyl product that will hold up to splashes and dings. And it does not have the gritty manila paper backing, so no worries about curling seams under humid conditions.
The finished room, with its dark woodwork contrasting against the lighter, textured wallcovering, is crisp, tailored, and manly, yet warm and inviting. You can almost see Sherlock and Watson reclining on the tufted leather sofa, stoking their pipes and sipping sherry.
The homeowner commented on how the wallpaper brightened up the once too-dark room, while still allowing the Craftsman feel and colors to show through.
This wallpaper pattern is by Thibaut Designs, and was bought at a discounted price from Dorota Hartwig whom you can find at the Sherwin-Williams on University Blvd in the Rice Village . She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her (713) 529-6515
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The baby is coming home soon, and the nursery is just about ready. The three other walls have been painted a cheery peach color. But there’s still something missing … Oh, yes – WALLPAPER! Just look at how much personality and joy this pretty pattern adds to the room. Papering just one wall is economical, and won’t overwhelm the room with pattern.
This is a white-on-shimmery silver design, called “Birdsong” (#ER8134), and is by Waverly, which is made by York. Waverly was a big name in home décor 15 years ago, but has kind of fallen off the map. They were bought by York, as I understand, and are having a comeback. In fact, two of my paperhanger Facebook friends have hung this brand this same week. The white ink has a slight texture to it (raised ink), and the paper is prepasted. You don’t see much in prepasted goods these days, but I love the stuff – so much cleaner and faster to hang.
I have two more rooms to paper in this home in Timber Grove, near the Houston Heights.
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