Revisiting Arts & Crafts Install in Heights Bungalow

Note: The camera has altered the colors here a bit … the blue is actually a lot more toned-down and murky . I hung this back in 2020. This bungalow in the Houston Heights / Woodland Heights is very Arts & Crafts in style … that’s a decorating theme that was popular back around the turn of the last century .
The manufacturer is Bradbury & Bradbury , who specializes in recreating the feel of by-gone wallcoverings , especially from the periods of Victorian , Arts & Crafts , Oriental , Modern Age , and more.

The color is a little more true here. A wide wallpaper border like this is called a frieze , and was poplar in Craftsman styled homes back about the turn of the last century .

Pearland Powder Room Update and Wake Up

Originally, these walls were sorta heavily textured, and painted a drab brown-tan. Here I’ve finished skim-floating the walls to smooth them, and applied my wallpaper primer. Ready for paper!

Flowering tree branches are a popular trend right now, and many companies are making their own versions of it.

Pattern is nicely centered on the sink wall.
The white background really perks the room up, and the light touches of metallic gold in the leaves helps bounce light around this small room.

Close-up. This material has a slight raised ink texture to it. I love the look and feel.

That scribble at the top reads Florence Broadhurst . She was an Australian artist / painter. This line of wallpaper patterns are based on her art and designs.
The pattern is called Branches and the manufacturer is York Wallcoverings, one of my favorite brands.
Pearland is a southern subdivision of Houston.

More Pics of Yesterday’s Bathroom

Looking through the sink room into the wet room. What a serene look. The bold, monochromatic, shower curtain is a nice foil to the soft wallpaper.

This wallpaper pattern is called Woodland and is by Crown Wallcoverings.

Trees Brighten and Lighten a West U Powder Room

Plain paint in a khaki color is just drab.

A white background and “movement” from the tree forms brightens and energizes the space.

Almost looks hand-painted.

Most wallpapers by Exclusive Wallcoverings are traditional un-pasted paper, so I was surprised to find that this one was a paper-backed vinyl, and pre-pasted, too.

I am usually not a fan of the lower-priced pre-pasted, paper-backed solid vinyl (read my page to the right). But this brand has figured out how to make a quality product, and I was pleased with it.

Best of all is how the white background lightens up the space, and the intertwined branches bring a lively feel to the room.

The home is in the West University Place neighborhood of Houston.

“Waves” In Contemporary Powder Room

I love how the color and pattern play off the tiled accent wall behind the sink and mirror.

The wallpaper is by Fine Decor Wallcoverings, in their Terence Conran line. Like most modern papers from Great Britain, it is a non-woven substrate, and can be hung via the paste-the-wall method. In complicated rooms like bathrooms, I find it better to paste the paper.

This new and very contemporary home is in the Memorial / Beltway 8 area of west Houston.

Dark, Sparkly, Faux Cork in Spring Branch Powder Room

No good pictures of this, folks – you had to see it in person to get the full effect.

But the textured vinyl wallpaper had the appearance of a charcoal-colored cork material – with a few silvery sparkles tossed in here and there.

The homeowner wanted a snug, dark powder room. But not cave-like. This paper did the trick beautifully. It is dark, but with the large mirror and the light grey vanity and cararra marble countertop, there were plenty of light colored accents to offset the dark.

This was a new, open floor plan, contemporary styled home in the Spring Branch neighborhood of Houston. The vinyl material will be resistant to water and stains. The non-woven substrate had a lot of fiberglass content – I could see the strands! – so it will be easy to strip off the wall when it’s time to redecorate. In addition, the material does not expand when wet with paste, needs no booking time, and can be hung with the paste-the-wall method. I preferred to paste the paper.

This wallpaper pattern is by Exclusive Wallcoverings, and was bought from my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price – Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.

A Whimsical Frolic Through The Woods

The homeowner wanted her powder room to be dark. The original paint was darker than the first photo shows (My two 100 watt light bulbs are washing the dark color out.). But stark, dark walls and ceiling can be claustrophobic, so she knew a little pattern would help create the effect she was going for.

This house in far-west Houston was redone after flooding from Hurricane Harvey. The contractor’s worker attempted to hang the wallpaper, but wasn’t making things look great.

The homeowner ordered new paper. This time around, her original color choice was discontinued, so she opted for the one you see in the photos. I say it was fortuitous. 🙂

I was called in to hang the new paper. After smoothing the very lightly textured walls and then priming, the paper went up nicely.

It was nice that York Wallcoverings printed this dark design on a dark substrate, instead of the typical white (see photo). That helps prevent white showing at the seams, if the paper should shrink a tad as it dries.

I really like the pattern. It’s fresh and has a bit of whimsy – sort of like a dance in the forest.

And the pattern gives the room a whole lot more character, and it’s definitely not boxy or claustrophobic anymore.

Shading in Grasscloth – Girl’s Bedroom in Aqua

Homeowners are loving textured wallcoverings these days, and grasscloth is all the rage.

However, I am almost always disappointed in this natural product, due to the visible seams and the lack of uniformity in color. The effect you see in the photo is called “shading” or “paneling.” Note the darker color of the second strip from the left.

Click the link on the right to read more on my page about grasscloth.

Wallpaper and YouTube Don’t Mix

This West University mother of young children went to YouTube for some primers on how to hang wallpaper, and then, along with hubby, spent a 3-day weekend tackling the powder room redo project. They didn’t do a horrible job (first three photos), but there were some things that must not have been covered on YouTube.

First, and probably most important, the walls should have been primed with a product designed for wallpaper.

Second, seams should be butted, not overlapped.

Third, wallpaper should not be wrapped around the door moldings, but trimmed at the base.

Fourth, I’m not sure what’s going on with the cuts at the baseboard. I think the room had seen a number of redecorating efforts, and that the baseboards took a bit of a beating in the process, leaving a surface that wasn’t smooth and wasn’t willing to hold on to wallpaper.

I stripped off their wallpaper, patched bad spots, sanded the walls, then primed with Gardz, a penetrating sealing primer that bonds together porous surfaces and that is also a good base to hold wallpaper.

The rest of the photos are of the room after I hung the new paper.

This product is a pre-pasted, paper-backed, solid vinyl material. It happens to be one of my least favorite kinds of wallpaper. The homeowner chose it because she has young children and the vinyl is reputed to be more water-resistant and durable than other types of wallpaper. If she had consulted with me before she bought her paper, I would have steered her in another direction.

It’s true that the vinyl surface is resistant to water, and it’s more resistant to stains than a paper-wallpaper. But that doesn’t make the product wonderful.

The main problem is the paper backing. This stuff is not horrible, but it does have a reputation for curling a tad at the seams (do a search on my blog for previous posts). Humidity (such as in a bathroom with showering) can cause increased curling at the seams. Any water that falls on a cut edge of the paper (along backsplashes, seams under hand towels, etc.) can wick into the paper backing and cause it to expand, which will cause the seams to curl.

To reduce the potential for seam curling, I used a special pasting process (rather than following the manufacturer’s instructions). And I ran a bead of caulk along the top of the backsplash (see 4th photo – the caulk will be clear when it’s dry) to prevent splashed water from wicking up under the wallpaper.

My trim cuts along the baseboard looked better than the homeowners’, but I still felt the baseboard was compromised somehow and that wallpaper did not have a good surface to grip ahold of. So I ran a bead of caulk along the top of the baseboards, too.

This wallpaper is by Exclusive Wallcoverings, a British manufacturer. It is a faux grasscloth, and, unlike true grasscloths, it is pretty water- and stain-resistant, and it has a pattern that can be matched. In fact, the close-up photo above shows a seam – and I’ll bet that you can’t find it! The pattern number is FD44143

Next time around, when a mom has concerns about her kids touching or splashing the wallpaper, I would suggest she consider one of the newish non-woven products. Or, better yet, a scrim-backed (woven fabric-backed) solid vinyl product, such as something from the Thibaut brand Texture Resource line, particularly Volume 4. Everything in that book is beautifully textured and realistic, and virtually indestructible. Do a search here to see my previous posts.

“Scrim” Backing on Solid Vinyl Wallpaper

Digital Image

Digital Image

This thick vinyl wallpaper has a deeply-embossed surface. To support that, the material has been fused to a “scrim” backing – a loosely-woven fabric that is sort of like fine, strong cheesecloth.

While I don’t like solid vinyl wallpapers with a paper backing (because the seams tend to curl up in humid environments), those made with this woven scrim backing are a whole ‘nother ball game … They are tough and durable, resistant to water, resistant to humidity, can be washed, can be banged into, etc., all without worries of damage.

The manufacturer is York Wallcoverings, and the paper was bought through Dorota at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.