Recessed Electrical Outlet

This recessed electrical outlet is a super cool innovation, because your plugs won’t stick out into the room behind furniture and etc.  But this outlet is high up on the wall in a powder room , so is probably to service a lighted picture or mirror or similar.  The recessed outlet will allow the fixture to sit flush with the wall .

Here it is pulled out of the box, so I can place wallpaper behind it. This pic shows some of the electrical connections.
I did some searching, but couldn’t come up with definitive information about if a special deep electrical box is required.  But my guess is that it is. 
Either way, these types of outlets are a super good idea for both items that need to sit flush with a wall (lighted mirrors, TV s) or with every day appliances like lamps and home electronics. 

Geometric Grasscloth in Home Gathering Area

No, this large room with sink and counters isn’t a kitchen. The family loves to entertain both family and friends, so included this “bonus” room in their new home’s plans. It’s used for both entertaining and crafting.
The wall facing you was originally painted a semi-gloss navy blue. In the photo, I’ve applied my wallpaper primer.
It will adhere to the glossy paint, and provide a matt finish for the wallpaper paste to grab ahold of.

Taking measurements and plotting the layout.

This paper has a selvedge edge , which has to be trimmed off by hand with a straightedge and razor blade. The manufacturer has not provided trim guide marks , so I am using a ruler and my eye.

The new look is so dramatically different I couldn’t resist taking a photo mid-hang. As you can see, I’ve used dark paint to stripe under where the seams will fall, to prevent any of my primer from showing through at the seams.
You can see the ceiling line starting to track upward on the right portion. More on that below.

Finished. Perfectly centered.

This is the mounting hardware for the big screen TV . I asked them to remove the TV, but we left the mounts in place. In order to support the heavy TV, they are placed quite securely into the wall , and I feel it’s best not to jimmy around with that.
Rather than have the first strip straddle the TV mount, I plotted to have my first seam fall down the middle of the wall, placing a seam in the mid point of the mount. This meant I had to hang four strips instead of three, but it made it a whole lot easier to work around the TV mount, as well as to keep the left and right edges of the grasscloth straight and plumb.

Close up showing the texture of this grasscloth material. It’s atypical to have grass cloth printed with a pattern , and I rather like the way the ink looks somewhat scratchy against the rough background.

Because it’s Schumacher, you can expect printing defects . The slight pattern match doesn’t bother me, as there were many more places along each strip that matched up perfectly. Nor do I mind the different intensity of ink on the two strips. That’s all part of the look of grasscloth.
But I wasn’t pleased with the white ink out in the middle of nowhere, as seen about 1//3 down the center of the picture. This isn’t considered a defect , and from a distance it’s not really noticeable. But it bugged me.

So I used some water-based paint and a very small brush from the craft store and lightly touched up the spots.

I also softened the mis-matched edges a bit. There’s a fine line between covering the white spots and staining the material, so use a light hand. And never permanent ink or oil-based markers or pastels.

Likewise, the ceiling line was not level, so as I moved from the mid-point out to the right, the ceiling rose above the geometric motif’s top edge, and a white line began to be visible, but only to the right of the centerpoint.

So I used the black paint to cover up that extra bit of white. This increases the width of that horizontal navy blue line from 1/4″ to about 1/2″. But from down on the floor you can’t tell, and it looks a whole lot better than having white on the right side and none on the left.

The brand is Schumacher and the home is in the Garden Oaks / Oak Forest area of Houston.
The interior designer who came up with this bold and lively look is Clayton Brooks .

Dark – But Not Boring – Paper for Media Room

Media room before.

After

It was tricky getting the paper into that 1 1/2″ wide space between the windows, but it really makes the windows stand out.

Close-up. The non-woven material is made of synthetic fibers, rather than cotton or wood pulp.

The manufacturer is Schumacher, and the pattern is called Cymbeline.

When you’re cocooned to watch a movie in your tricked-out media room, you want the room nice and dark. But a dark wallpaper doesn’t have to be plain or simply textured.

The vining tree limbs and leaves of this wallpaper pattern add interest and movement to the walls and keep the mood from falling somber. But don’t distract from what’s going on on the big screen.

Schumacher is not one of my favorite brands. But this paper was not one of their contrary screen prints, but rather a non-woven material. It was stiff and thick, but pasting the back softened it up and made it pliable and cooperative.

The home is in the Montrose neighborhood of central Houston.

Remove TV Before Wallpaper Goes Up

Here is the wall in a media room where the big screen TV hangs. It’s virtually impossible to hang wallpaper around these wall-mounted TV’s. It’s just difficult to do, plus paste gets smeared all over the TV.

So I request that the TV be removed. The black horizontal bars are the mounts for the TV. These are pretty secure in the wall, and I feel it’s better to not mess with them. It’s easy enough to trim around these bars and the cables. And once the TV is back in place, you’re not going to see any little gaps between the wallpaper and the brackets.

Cole & Son Acquario – Super Cool in a Powder Room

This is a powder room off a TV / game / great room in the home of a family with school-aged kids. They had just done updates to the room (built in shelving and TV niche, carpet, pool table, huge snuggly sofa), to make it a family hang-out spot. The small adjoining powder room got an update with tile on the sink wall.

What a dramatic and shockingly fun wallpaper design! – This is called Acquario, and is in the Fornasetti collection by Cole & Son. I just call it “the Puffer Fish.”

Wallpaper shrinks as its paste dries, and so you can expect to see teeny gaps at the seams. This is normal. But since this wallpaper is dark, the white edges of the substrate, as well as even a minute bit of the wall under the seams, might be more prominent as the dark paper dries and shrinks.

In the top “before” photo, you see where I have used diluted craft paint to run a dark stripe along the wall where the wallpaper seam will fall. This, along with having colored the edges of the wallpaper strips with near-black chalk, pretty much eliminated any visible gaps at the seams.

This small powder room took me nearly 12 hours – to smooth the textured walls, prime, and hang the 6 single rolls (3 double roll bolts) of wallpaper.

The home is in the Pasadena area of south Houston.

Nobody Else Has This! – Jack Rabbit Floating Wall

This wall between the kitchen and home office is what we call a floating wall. It directly faces the TV / family room. I can guarantee you – NO ONE else has such a bold and eye-popping wall treatment!

This “Jack Rabbit” mural comes as six panels, some with rabbits and some with just foliage, that can be placed next to each other in any combination.

The homeowner was originally considering this for her guest bathroom.

But the project was going to take a good number of panels. And, at $375 per panel, the price was getting out of reason.

This floating wall in the main living area was a much better option.

For one thing, only one panel was needed.

For another, because this is the area everyone passes through when leaving or entering the house, or looks toward while sitting on the sofa, the rabbits are front and center for maximum viewing.

Each 40″ wide Jack Rabbit mural panel is on a non-woven substrate with a thin vinyl coating, and is a paste-the-wall material. The quirky design is by Edmond Petit and was purchased through Finest Wallpaper, a newish company out of Canada, with a vast product selection, great customer service, low prices, and quick turn-around.

The home is in the West University / Southside Place area of Houston.

Calming Faux Grasscloth on a TV / Fireplace Accent Wall

If you’ve read this blog for long, or if you’ve read my informative page on grasscloth to the right, you know that I am not a fan of this material. So when clients want texture and an earthy, organic feel, I suggest some alternatives.

One of my favorite alternatives to real grasscloth is this textured vinyl product, called Bankun Raffia, made by Thibaut. It has none of the visible seams, shading, paneling, or color variations of the real stuff. What’s more, it is strong and durable, just about tear- and water-proof, and it is stain resistant.

The homeowner wisely chose this product to use as two panels flanking the fireplace wall (which is also the TV wall). The faux grasscloth adds warmth and texture and subtle color. It will hold up well against daily use, and it will be easy to remove when they are ready to redecorate.

Grasscloth in Tiny Bookshelf Cubicles

This neutral-hued grasscloth sure warms up the look of these display shelves, adding both soft color and texture. The homeowner’s books and decorative items stand out much better.

None of the shelves was removable, so I had to cut and install TWENTY FIVE separate pieces of grasscloth wallpaper for the backs of these bookshelves.

To minimize trimming inside those small, tight cubicles, I took careful measurements and then pre-cut my pieces. I used a straight edge, razor blade, and one of those “self-healing” cutting mats that are used for sewing and crafts. The mat was marked both vertically and horizontally in inches (and graduations) and had easy to see right angles.

I cut all my pieces a mere 1/2″ larger than the dimensions of each cubicle. I used the craft mat and straight edge to cut a right angle in the upper left corner of each piece of grasscloth. I could position this in the upper left corner of each cubicle, which also butted it up perfectly against the top and left sides of the cubicle.

Then all I had to do was use my razor knife to trim the grasscloth on the right and bottom sides, to fit into the cubicle.

I spent a full four hours priming, then measuring and labeling each cubicle, and then cutting and pre-trimming each of the 25 pieces of grasscloth. Look at the photo of my measurements!

All this effort paid off, because every single piece of material went into its cubbyhole perfectly, and required trimming on just two sides (instead of four). The install still took a full eight hours. But it was fun and challenging, and a different work-out for the brain from hanging paper on tall, flat walls.

This grasscloth wallpaper is by Thibaut. I forgot to take a photo of the label, but it was a really nice paper, and, even though I had only one seam (in the TV niche), for once there was no issue with shading or color differences – in fact, that one seam is all but invisible. I hung this in a living room in a townhouse in the Rice Military / Camp Logan neighborhood of Houston.

Circles, Spots, and Dots

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These owners of a newish townhouse in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston wanted an accent wall covered with something to bring personality to their third floor TV room, without adding too much distracting color or pattern, and without overwhelming the large flat screen TV. After looking at maybe a zillion choices, they came back to one of their first loves, this fun ball design.

The builder had not textured the wall, so all the only prep that was needed was a primer. I centered the balls in the middle of the wall so they would look even around the TV set. I used plastic strips to keep paste off the ceiling and the walls that were not being papered.

This wallpaper I by Wallquest, and is in their Ecochic line. It is a thin paper (not a vinyl) and will hold up nicely.

Water-Colorful and Fun Flowers on a Bedroom Accent Wall

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It was hard getting a full-wall shot of this wallpaper install, because the wall was so darned tall – nearly 12 feet high! But you get the idea.

Originally, the wall was painted navy blue, like the other three walls in this master bedroom. The wall also had a flat-screen TV plastered in the middle of it. The husband, of course, loved the huge TV. But the wife persevered, and got him to agree to have this colorful and playful wallpaper cover the wall. Now, as to whether or not that TV will go back up on the wall remains to be seen ….

I smoothed the textured wall, which you can see on the right side of the first photo. The next day I hung the paper. The paper is by York, in the SureStrip line. It is a pre-pasted product, on a thin non-woven backing, and is designed to strip off the wall (relatively) easily when you want to redecorate. It is a lovely product to work with, clings tightly to the wall, seams are nearly invisible, and should hold up nicely for many years.

This is a 1955 home with mid-century modern flare, in the Spring Branch neighborhood of Houston, and the clients were a busy family with school-age children.