A somewhat new type of wallpaper , called non-woven ( also called paste the wall ), comes with many advantages. Because it’s made of minimum 20% polyester content , it doesn’t expand when wet with paste like papers made of wood or cellulose pulp. Nor does it shrink as the paste dries . Because of this trait, you can paste a strip and take it directly to the wall , with no booking / resting time . This same characteristic allows you to apply paste directly to the wall , instead of to the back of the paper , if you choose. This is sometimes a little faster and cleaner than pasting the paper . And for a simple accent wall , you can roll the material out on the floor , eliminating the need for a work table . (Still, I generally prefer to paste the paper.) Another benefit is that this stuff is tough and strong , and when you’re ready to redecorate , it will strip off the wall easily and in one piece, with no damage to your walls . (So say the manufacturers. 😊 ) One test to know if you have a non-woven wallpaper is to try to tear it. If it’s hard to tear, chances are it’s a NW . Also, sometimes those polyester fibers are very evident , as you see here at the top of this photo. One of my colleagues likens it to fiberglass. He may just be right!
Painted walls in this new-build in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston have been primed with Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime wallpaper primer . DoneJust the area above the wainscoting / chair rail was papered . Obstacles to trim around included six doors – with a total of TWELVE corners of decorative molding to trim around. In addition, there were EIGHT terminations of wood ceiling beams , also with uneven edges , to trim around. Absolutely NO information came with the wallpaper . No run number , no installation instructions , no nuttin’. Confoundingly, the company’s website was malfunctioning, and pop-ups prevented me from getting information , or even from seeing what the pattern looked like on a large wall . So here I am rolling the paper out on the floor , to get a scope of the pattern and layout . Note the unprinted selvedge edge , which I’ll have to trim off using a straightedge and a razor blade. See previous posts (do a Search) to learn more about this.The pattern is called Kanoko and the manufacturer is Relativity Textiles . This material was VERY difficult to work with. More about that in a future post.
I love all things vintage , particularly the early 1900’s – 1940’s . So it was a thrill and an honor to help decorate this 1926 home in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston . The homeowners revere their new abode , too, and carefully maintained the character of the home during the renovation, while still adding updates that facilitate life in a modern world . They also preserved many of the original features , and created a sort of ” shrine ” near the back door. This framed wallpaper sample is one of those.I love these old papers, and have a growing collection of my own. Back in the day, the ship-lapped walls were covered with cheesecloth – like fabric , which was tacked to the wood . The wallpaper was pasted and then applied over that. You can see some of that fabric peeking out at at the top of this sample . Just about every room had a border running around the top, below the ceiling , as seen in this example. This was stylish through many decades , so it’s difficult to tell what era this particular paper is from. To me, this looks like the 1950’s – but it could be as early as the 1920’s . Borders were still popular into the 1990’s , but wider. I’ve hung bunches of them! This ” history wall ” also included keys , mailbox parts , invoices written in fountain pen , hinges , and other cool old memorabilia .
Here’s the wall after I stripped, sealed, skim-floated, sanded, and primed it. Finished. The birds in the pattern balanced nicely with between the ceiling line and the wainscoting. I had more success with this install than the previous guy, due to proper prep, and also the material used this time was the user-friendly non-woven , rather than the old fashioned pulp type wallpaper the other guy had to wrestle with. Strawberry Thief is a very popular pattern right now, and comes in many colorways. Do a Search here to see my other installations of this design.There were some issues at the top of the wainscoting where the painters had used tape to mask off areas, long with caulk, an it left a rather large (1/8″) unpainted area between the wood molding and the wall. I filled this in with joint compound and primed it, and wallpaper would have adhered just fine. But that would have left a white gap between the wallpaper and the green molding. I rummaged in my truck for the best matching paint I could come up with, and painted over the white edge. This would have left a bit of a thin brown line between the wallpaper and the green molding. It would have looked OK, but I had an idea to get rid of the gap altogether.If I had used my regular thin straightedge (the red one), it would have let me trim the bottom edge of the wallpaper nice and close to the wall. But that would have left the aforementioned brown line showing. So I used the metal plate you see at the upper right of the photo as a trim guide. It’s thicker than my red straightedge, and so gives a fat cut that leaves more wallpaper and less of that brown line. In fact, the left edge, as you can see, is rolled, and that creates an even thicker edge to trim against, leaving even more wallpaper at the bottom of the cut. See the photo just above, to see how the wallpaper now completely covers the brown line. These metal plates have a lot of other uses. They are made and sold by a fellow member of the Wallcovering Installers Association . She makes a lot of other cool tools, too. If you are interested, send me an email. wallpaperlady@att.net The wallpaper design is by William Morris , a famed artist of the Arts & Crafts / Art Nouveau periods . The brand is Morris & Co. This label is EXACTLY the same as the pulp material the original installer worked with – save for that one word non-woven . Be sure you get the non-woven version, which is also called paste the wall . The home is in the Heights neighborhood of Houston .
This home in the Energy Corridor / Memorial area of west Houston is dressed in soft tones of white, grey, pale wood tones. The homeowner wanted something dramatic in their exercise room bath, but also wanted to stick with the muted color scheme. Looks like she got what she was hunting for!Although this is actually a digital print, close-up it looks like brush strokes.The wallpaper designer and manufacturer is Lindsay Cowles. The material is a stiff, thick, heavy non-woven like what we call a bridging liner. And to be honest, I’m not enjoying working with it. Hard to manipulate into corners and intricate moldings, and creases easily, among other misbehaviors. I’d much rather they would print on a more standard weight non-woven substrate. This is a high-end brand, and the goods are sold by the yard and come packed in one huge, very heavy bolt, rather than several standard-sized rolls.
I mentioned in my post of January 27, 2022 that this wallpaper is what we call a classic or traditional British pulp material. All wood pulp and a little ink. No synthetic fibers, no protective coating.
When dry, the stuff is quite stiff and brittle, and when wet it can turn to mush. It dries fast, so sometimes can ” freeze ” and stick together when you unbook it – which can actually tear the paper apart.
This makes it difficult to work with it when going around intricate moldings, or into corners, or any time you need to bend or unfold it.
It’s also tricky to cut. It dulls blades quickly. And even a brand new razor blade can get bogged down or snagged. This can easily tear the paper. Another thing that happens is that you get these little ” buggers ” where the top part of the paper trims off, but little bits of the substrate stay behind.
The photo above shows this happening at a trim cut along a baseboard. You have to gently pull the strip away from the wall, being careful not to crease it or tear it. Then use your scissors to snip off these little bits. It’s a real PITA.
Media room before.AfterIt 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.
To the left is the wall to be papered. The white area to the right is the rounded edge of the wall corner. The brown strip is the wood trim.The white on the left is the rounded corner of the wall. The wood trim makes a nice, straight edge against which to trim the wallpaper. It also eliminates the possibility of the paper curling away from the rounded edge.
These bull-nosed or rounded corners have been popular in new homes for more than 10 years now. They may look trendy, but they are the dickens to trim wallpaper along.
You can’t see where you’re trying to trim, it’s hard to trim straight, some thick or stiff papers don’t want to adhere to rounded edges, a textured wall can’t be smoothed exactly to where the trimming will take place – just for starters.
Today’s client had a good idea; to have a strip of wooden trim added along both the sides and the top of this door opening. It made my day much easier, and it ensures a neat trim line and removes worries of the paper pulling loose.
I’m going to keep the photo, in hopes of encouraging other homeowners to try this.
tThe homeowner loved the coppery-hued colors in this “Carousel Stripe” pattern by Cole & Son. The colors mesh beautifully with the wood tones, and also the brass faucet, in this home bar area.
What’s interesting is that I think the colors (especially the red) are more intense now, than in the samples she got from the vendor. In fact, one complaint of hers was that the vendor sent just one small snip of the paper, and didn’t show the full color spectrum of all 10 stripes that make up the pattern.
No matter. The finished effect really sets off the bar backsplash, and will be a fabulous backdrop once the bottles and glasses are back in place.
This wallpaper is a non-woven material, which is made of synthetic fibers rather than wood or cotton pulp. Instead of the paste-the-wall installation method, I chose to paste-the-paper. This made the material more flexible and manageable, which helped a lot, because when it was dry, it really wanted to crease and flake.
TFor instance, the racks sitting on the counter in the first photo could not be removed. Manipulating, fitting and trimming the wallpaper around the sharp bends and angles without marring the wallpaper was very difficult.
The non-woven, synthetic-origin material (think fiberglass) was also really hard to cut. Even with a brand-new razor blade, I had trouble getting perfect cuts around moldings, and also in a whole lot of other simpler areas.
These two rooms were hard enough, with minimal angles and corners and intricate moldings. If this had been a bathroom, or another room with a lot of turns and fancy cuts, it would have been really difficult to prevent creases and other damage to the wallpaper.
As it was, I spent about nine hours hanging these four single rolls of paper.
This is a wonderfully restored 1939 home in the Rice University area of central Houston.
Look to the right of the can. Notice the tiny spots of red. This is rust, and rust is bad because it (along with certain other substances, like ink, tar, oil, tobacco, water stains, wood sap (knots), mold, mildew) will bleed through wallpaper. Maybe not immediately, but, over time, it will work its way through the primer and the paper and to the surface, leaving a spot that cannot be washed off.
Actually, there was a whole lot of rust along the entire height of this wall’s corner. An air conditioning leak had kept the drywall wet for a period of time, and rust had formed along much of the metal corner – called a “bead.”
I skim-floated over the affected area with joint compound, and that buried the rust … for a while. But rust (and other substances), will eventually work their way to the surface, leaving spots on the wallpaper.
So a stain blocker was called for, which will prevent any stains from bleeding through. For this I love KILZ – but only the “Original” oil-based version. The water-borne products just don’t measure up
Some reasons I skim-floated over the area was to provide a buffer space between the rust and the sealer in hopes that the rust would not make it all the way up to the surface, to create more material over the very corner itself that could soak up the sealer, and because the stain blocker would soak into the porous smoothing compound more so than to the sharp corner of the metal bead.
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