New drywall. I draped strips of protective dropcloth paper over the top of the wainscoting, to protect from splatters from my primer.Notice the “raised ink” and the hand-painted look.
Recent updates reflect respect for the original feel of this 1920 bungalow in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston. There will be a claw-foot tub, as well as a very cool authentic vintage pedestal sink that the homeowner found on the side of the road, discarded from another older bungalow just a few blocks away. !!
Vintage-look beaded board paneling was added, along with hexagonal floor tile, both in a warm, muddy green that compliments the greens in the wallpaper.
The homeowner has a stunningly beautiful garden, and sought a wallpaper pattern that would bring the feel of nature indoors.
The top photo shows the walls as the contractor left them, in what we call a “Level 4” condition. This is optimal for wallpaper installation. No texture for me to get rid of, and no paint or PVA-based primers under the wallpaper. All I had to do was roll on my wallpaper-specific primer, Romans Pro 977, Ultra Prime.
The wallpaper is called Garden Party and is by York, in the Waverly collection (yes, reviving classic designs from the 1990’s!), and in their SureStrip line – one of my favorite products. It is pre-pasted, goes up nicely, hugs tight and thin to the wall, and performs wonderfully over the years, even under (mildly) humid conditions – such as a bathroom in an old house with poor ventilation.
The interior designer for this job is Stacie Cokinos, of Cokinos Design. She works mostly on new builds and whole-house remodels, and mostly in the Heights / Garden Oaks neighborhoods.
A toile is a sort of pen-and-ink drawing in one color. It’s a very classic look, and usually includes depictions of life in a by-gone era -although you can find toiles with nautical, fairy tale, animal, and many other themes.
This toile is from the Waverly line. I hung lots and lots of Waverly back in the ’90’s. Today, virtually none of it is available. This particular design has been discontinued.
The homeowners had this exact same wallpaper pattern in three of their former homes. They wanted it in their current home, too. Through thorough sleuthing, the homeowner was able to track down a stash of this pattern. He was able to access it through Sarah at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby.
The toile is by York, in their SureStrip line, one of my favorites. It is pre-pasted, and is designed to strip off the wall easily when it’s time to redecorate.
The powder room was more than a little wonky, with a wavy ceiling line and un-plumb corners. A pattern like this is forgiving, because its so busy and “scratchy” that you don’t notice if some of the motifs are going a little off-track as they move around the room.
The home is in the Cinco Ranch subdivision of Katy in far west Houston.
The top photo shows the classic savoy pattern by Waverly that I have hung so many times – in the early ’90’s. Time for an update!
The new wallpaper maintains the same navy and white colorway, but in a stronger presence and with more upward movement. I mean, what lifts your spirits better than soaring shorebirds?!
I really like the way the navy background stands out against the white woodwork. Much of this kitchen is the area above the cabinets, and the color and pattern play out very well in that short area.
This wallpaper is by Anderson Prints. It is a traditional paper, and was fairly thick, compared to most of their papers. I think the extra heft was due to the manufacturer printing on a dark substrate. This helps keep white from showing at the seams as the paper dries and shrinks a tad.
Speaking of which, I was pleased that the paper did not shrink much at all. With a dark paper, even the smallest shrinkage will allow the wall surface to peek through.
The job is an older townhome in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston. The wallpaper was bought through Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet.
In the first photo, you are looking into a 2-room bathroom, through the sink room into the tub / potty room. The homeowner has chosen two coordinating wallpapers.
The floral went in the outer, sink room, because it had the largest mass of wall space, which would allow the large flower-and-basket pattern to play out.
The smaller, more chopped-up tub room was better suited to the smaller scale of the trellis pattern.
The patterns coordinate nicely, because they both incorporate the same colors, as well as share a classic design theme.
These papers are by Waverly, which is by York, and are in the Sure Strip line, which I like a lot. They were nice to work with, and will hold up nicely in these rooms.
These wallpaper patterns were bought at below retail price from 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.
The color of this new wallpaper isn’t much different from the color it was painted originally. But the little bit of tone-on-tone pattern sure adds a lot of dimension and interest, while still maintaining a calm and serene feel.
The homeowner wanted paper on the ceiling, too. I usually don’t like pattern on the ceiling, but this one is so muted, I think it looks great.
The home is located in the Galleria / Tanglewood area of Houston. The paper is in the SureStrip line by York, in the Waverly design collection. It was nice to work with, and is thin and will hug the wall and stay nice and tight for years to come.
The paper 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.
This hall bathroom in a 1955 ranch-style home in the Briargrove / Tanglewood neighborhood of Houston was damaged by a roof leak during Hurricane Harvey. The contractor’s guys did a good job replacing drywall and painting the woodwork, but they fell short when it came to wallpaper. See first photo.
But this just gave the homeowner a chance to choose something that coordinated better with the decades-old tile that she loves (and that I love, too), and to pick a paper with more color and flair, that is more suited to her taste. See tomorrow’s post for that.
My first task was to remove the existing wallpaper. It turned out that there were two layers of paper, and, in some places, THREE layers.
In the second photo, I have removed most of the top (new) paper, which is the aqua trellis by Thibaut. I took it off by simply tearing it off the wall. Below it, you see the green savoy (small, tight, squiggly) by Waverly. Interestingly enough, I have hung this a bunch of times – in the ’90’s. 🙂
This paper was attached more tightly to the wall. To remove it, I had to first separate the top inked layer from it’s paper backing. You can see this in the second photo. Once the top layer, with it’s water-resistant acrylic surface was removed, it left behind a white paper backing. I used a sponge and bucket of hot water to soak the backing. It didn’t take long before the underlying paste reactivated, and then it was ready to let go of the wallpaper. You can see clean wall revealed in the photo, where the layers of wallpaper have come away.
In one area of the room, I got a surprise. There was a third layer of paper under the others. The top vinyl layer had been stripped of eons ago, but the tan, gritty paper backing was left on the wall. You can see this in the third photo dry (light tan) and soaked with water (dark tan). Once that tan paper backing got soaked enough with several spongings with hot water, the paste reactivated and the paper was happy to come away from the wall.
I was uncommonly lucky today, because whoever hung the original wallpaper had taken the time to prep the walls correctly. First, he skim-coated the textured walls to yield a smooth surface for the paper to adhere to. Second, he applied good quality penetrating sealer. This sealer might have been Gardz, a product that I use now, or another similar sealer, perhaps even a solvent-based (as opposed to water-based) sealer. His sealer provided a hard surface for the new paper to stick to, and also gave a surface that was resistant to all the water I was using to strip off the old wallpaper.
Check out the fourth picture to see the huge pile of wallpaper I pulled off this one small hall bathroom.
Once all the paper was off, the walls were in very good condition. There were no delaminated areas, no lifted areas, nothing that needed patching – just an amazingly intact surface.
I did a few little touch-ups to a few little areas (I wanted to clean up 60 years of grime collected along the top of the tile), and then rolled on my favorite wallpaper primer, by Roman’s, their Pro 977 / Ultra Prime. It’s a white pigmented primer, and is a wonderful surface to hang wallpaper on.
How can such a small room be so difficult to cover with wallpaper? Well, factor in low ceilings, cramped quarters, a pedestal sink (always tricky), bowed walls, un-plumb walls, un-level ceiling, an under-stair build-out with some wacky angles – and a geometric print wallpaper, which the eye wants to see marching nice and straight across the walls.
I spent 10 hours hanging this 12-roll bathroom. (Shoulda taken 6-7 hours.) In the end, it looks fabulous. The pattern may not be hanging true-to-plumb, but it looks plumb. And it matches in all the corners, which is more important than marching straight across the ceiling line.
The design is called an ogee, and is from Waverly, a company that was popular in the ’90’s, disappeared, and was later bought and resurrected by York, one of my favorite wallpaper manufacturers. It is thin and workable, and was really nice to work with, and will hug the walls nice and tight for many years to come.
The interior designer for this job is Pamela O’Brien of Pamela Hope Designs, assisted by Joni Karnowsky and Danna Smith. The home is in West University Place, in Houston.
The tiny red and blue floral wallpaper pattern looked great in this Tanglewood powder room for a decade or more. But when the homeowners wanted to freshen up the look of the house, the interior designers moved toward a more sophisticated look, and they chose this muted stripe pattern.
It’s more subdued, and it really goes nicely with the blue paint below the chair rail.
The interior designers for this job are Neal LeBouef and Anthony Stransky of L Design Group, a Houston-based company.
The wallpaper is a pre-pasted product by Sure Strip, and is in the Waverly line. It goes up easily, and is designed to strip off easily later, when it’s time to redecorate. I love this particular product.
This light-hearted pattern looks like line drawings of flowers. It went on an entry wall that faces you immediately when you enter the home. The homeowner bought her paper more than a year ago, and has had the three double rolls in their box, leaning up against the wall, ever since. Family coming for a summer visit was the incentive to finally get the paper up!
This cute pattern is from Waverly, an older, somewhat flowery brand that has been reincarnated (and updated) by York. It is in the SureStrip line, which is designed to strip off the wall easily when it’s time to redecorate. This brand performs beautifully, during installation and during the time it’s up on the wall, and I like it a lot.
This product is pre-pasted, which means that the manufacturer has put a dry paste on the back that is activated by running the strips through a water tray. See third photo. I augment that by spreading a thin layer of wallpaper paste on the wall and along the ceiling and baseboard lines.
The 50’s era home is in the Willow Meadows neighborhood of Houston. The homeowner is an artsy sort of person who is not afraid of color or avant garde decorating, so the flowery wall fit perfectly with her décor. She originally intended to cover the wall with family photos and other artwork – but once she saw the paper up and realized how much she loved it, she quickly became reticent to cover it up. 🙂
The wallpaper was bought at below retail price from 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.
When entering this 2-room bathroom suite, the first thing you see is the window on the far wall. Because the window is the focal point, I chose to center the wallpaper’s pattern on it. As you can see in the first two photos, the geometric pattern is perfectly balanced on either side of the window.
But since walls and windows and ceilings and floors and etc., are never perfectly plumb or level, you can plot the pattern to be nice and straight in one place, but then you can plan on it going crooked in other areas of the room.
So it becomes a game of priorities… Do I keep the pattern plumb/level, or do I keep the pattern match intact?
Look at the photo of the wallpaper against the ceiling line, and you will see the pattern dropping down as it moves to the left. That doesn’t look great – but it’s not really all that noticeable or offensive.
Now look at the photo of the corner. The pattern matches perfectly. To get the pattern to match, I had to hang the paper to the left of the corner off-plumb, and that’s what threw the pattern at the ceiling line off-level and caused it to drop down as it moved to the left (mentioned above).
Mis-matched wallpaper patterns are eye-jarring, even in corners. I think it’s better to have the design match in the corners, then to worry about how it is moving along the ceiling line, or how it’s meeting up against other walls in other corners.
This wallpaper is by Waverly, which is made by York, and is in the Sure Strip line, a product that I particularly like. It was bought at below retail price from 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.
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