Bringing COLOR to Wine Niche Cubby Holes

Here’s a fun idea! Let’s pull color from the adjacent accent wall and put it in an unexpected place – on the backs of wine cubby holes in the home’s bar area.

This was more tricky to do than it would appear. Those triangular cubbies are NOT all exactly the same size. And the measurements from the front of the cubbies are not the same as at the back wall. So I couldn’t just make a template and cut 16 pieces all the same size and shape.

In addition, you have to take into account the expansion factor when wallpaper gets wet with paste. In further addition, it didn’t work to trim off excess paper as one normally would, because it was virtually impossible to get a hand and razor blade all the way to the back wall inside those tiny cubicles – and even more impossible to be able to maneuver the blade to make any trim cuts.

These 16 triangles took me about three hours, but, when it was all said and done – I got ‘er done!

And in a few days, the homeowner will stuff those cubby holes full of wine bottles …. Sigh …

Wacky Abstract Lindsay Cowels Wallpaper

Not everybody wants flowers, birds, or geometrics. Well, if you had a bed with a headboard that mimicked orange mink fur, you’d need wallpaper strong enough to stand up to it. Here’s a wild and wacky pattern by Lindsay Cowels that is well-suited to this room.

What’s extra cool is that the homeowner is a wine sales rep, and often hosts wine aficionados from France in this guest suite. I think this room out-hautes even the chiquie Frenchies!

This is a non-woven material, and the edges had to be hand-trimmed.

The home is new(ish) and is in the Spring Branch neighborhood of Houston. The interior designer is Mary Evans McCloskey.

Clever Wine Crate Pattern for Outside a Wine Room

In the top picture, out of sight to the right is a walk-in wine room. The homeowner has loved this pattern for years, and finally found a place to put it – right adjacent to the wine room!

The wine case pattern is by Brunschwig and Fils. Unlike the other papers by B&F that I have hung, this one is a vinyl, with a slightly embossed surface (the lines between the boxes are slightly indented). It has a selvedge edge that had to be trimmed off by hand. Unlike most hand-trimmed papers, this one had no trim guide marks, so I had to wing it on where to place my straightedge.

The paper backing soaked up paste quickly, and each strip was nearly dried out by the end of the booking time, so I ended up rolling a little paste on the wall where the seams would fall, to augment. Once it was on the wall, the paper adhered nicely.

The floor was unlevel, and so the paper ran crooked along top of it, making it look like the bottom row of boxes was running downhill. To level out this bottom line, I used my straightedge and a razor blade to cut off the bottom “boards” along the black line. I trimmed the strip to 1/2″ high. See 4th photo. I used a piece of artist’s chalk to color the cut edge, so white would not show along the top.

Then I appliquéd the strip over the bottom of the paper on the wall, butting it up against the baseboard. Wallpaper paste won’t stick to vinyl (it’s too slick), so I used special adhesive on the area of the overlap.

In the bottom photo, you can see how nice and even the bottom line looks.

The interior designer for this job is Stacie Cokinos, of Cokinos Design. The home is in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston.