Before. Good colors. But nothing inspiring. Done. Boy, this paper really visually pushed the walls away and made the room look larger ! Easy on the eye tone-on-tone pattern , lighter colors , and a teeny bit of gold sparkle .
Note the 5/8″ high strip of wallpaper under the medicine cabinet on the left.
Because those faucet handles sit up so high above the backsplash , it’s likely that when people reach for the handles, water will get splashed onto the wallpaper . To prevent splashed water from wicking up under the wallpaper – which could cause the paper to expand and curl away from the wall – I ran a bead of clear siliconized caulk along the top of the backsplash . The color is skewed in this shot, but you get an idea of the tropical foliage and pattern scale . Toile is a French word for a sort of pen and ink drawing in one color on a background that may be colored or may not be.Close-up , showing a truer color . Note the palm trees and the monkey . This material has a woven -look textured surface , and it mimics fabric . I almost felt like I was install ing linen , instead of wallpaper . The brand is Rasch , a company out of Germany . Their papers are consistently nice to work with. This one was unexpectedly thin and flexible . It’s textured vinyl on a non-woven substrate . The vinyl makes it durable and stain-resistant , and the NW makes it easy to remove later when you’re ready to redecorate . The seams are positively invisible. This powder room on the first floor just off the home office / study comes complete with a shower . Just for fun – one of the obstacles in this room was this rain shower head – sticking out right where I need to be on my ladder , and keeping me from reaching those walls . On top of that, the faucet handles also stuck out much further from the wall than most do. While priming the walls, as I was climbing down from the ladder , my clothing actually got entangled in the handles and – turned on the water ! Yes, I got a shower at work today ! The home is in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston .
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 .
This vintage tub is super cool , and period-appropriate to this 1926 home in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston . But if you need to get wallpaper on the walls around and above it, it’s really tricky . A ladder won’t fit in the tub , nor straddle it, and might damage it as well. So I keep this handy piece of plywood in my van . It’s a standard 2’x4′ size, and 1/2″ thick. That’s thick enough to distribute and hold my weight, but still light enough that I can carry it into homes and up staircases . It’s been sanded and then primed with white KILZ , to look a little nicer bringing into my clients’ homes, and also to reduce the chance of it leaving a mark on surfaces . The board is a perfect size for placing over various types of bathtubs or other items – as long as their top is flat. Note that I have cushioning and non-slip material between the board and the tub. In this case, I’m also using a one-step Rubbermaid step stool to boost my height. This might look a little scary, but it’s all actually very safe . I just need to be sure that my weight is distributed over the tub, and not over that unsupported section on the right. The stool does add a little more interest to the balancing act. But it’s all doable and safe if you just pay attention to your weight and movements. It did help that this family gave me plenty of peace and quiet while I was working .
We wallpaper hangers / installers like to have a nice straight ceiling line . Meaning, that the same pattern motif will show up at the same height on the wall on every strip . For instance, the top of the sailboat will touch the bottom of the crown molding all the way around the room. But in old houses, poorly-built houses, or just plain old wonky houses (which are most homes in Houston! ), you can’t count on ceilings and floors being level , nor on walls being perfectly plumb . When I used my level to check the ceiling in this 1926 home in the Woodland Heights neighborhood , I admit – I laughed out loud! When a surface is level, the air bubble will be in the middle of the two black lines . It’s common for the bubble to be a little “off.” But this one isn’t even trying to be in the middle. Meaning – the ceiling is nowhere near level. The ceiling line is moving up and / or down as it moves across the room. The discrepancy can be as much as an inch or even more from one end of the room to the other. Meaning, there is no way that that sailboat is going to be just below the ceiling on every strip. Luckily, this particular wallpaper pattern was such that you aren’t going to notice much. The other thing is, most people who live in older homes, or homes with shifting foundations , or even new homes , understand that walls and floors rearrange themselves over time . So they’re understanding if sailboats drift down the ceiling line , or if patterns don’t match absolutely perfectly in the corners.
Deep green wainscoting at the bottom, and on the right is a 100 year old ” dry sink ” with coordinating colored tile backsplash turned into a vanity, with period-appropriate faucet . Fresh and lively . But can you believe the design dates back about 100 years ? – same as the house! Close up. Looks like watercolor paint . Birds , butterflies , plants , flowers , and grasshoppers !C.F.A. Voysey is a male designer who worked around the turn of the last century, late 1800’s through about the 1920’s , and was part of the Arts & Crafts decorating movement . Most of his patterns are somewhat symmetrical , as well as whimsical and fanciful , with heavy emphasis on nature . This is a non-woven material , can be hung via the paste the wall method , although I prefer the paste the paper installation . It has a 20% polyester content and is thus more resistant to stains and humidity than traditional papers . And it’s designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece with no damage to your walls when you redecorate . The brand name is Lord Twig and it comes from Finest Wallpaper , which is in Canada. This went in the rear powder room of a beautifully renovated 1926 4-plex apartment that has been artfully converted into a single family home , in the Woodland Heights area of Houston .
Nicely centered pattern in the potty room of this beautifully renovated 1926 home in the Woodland Heights area of Houston . Toilet alcove before … along with my cute baby T-shirt used to cover and protect the toilet seat. Toilet area finished.Looking from the main room into the commode room / potty . Finished. The colors coordinate beautifully with the tile . Wildwood is yet another of the cheerful and fresh patters by Rifle Paper . I’ve been hanging a lot of their papers lately … the brand is very popular .wallpaper installation houston
A new baby will soon be welcomed into the home of this young couple in the Houston Heights neighborhood called Norhill (or Woodland Heights). Mom wanted something gender-neutral, and found this colorful and adorable shapes-and-animals-in-blocks print on line at Lulie Wallace.
This went on just one accent wall of the room, but it is tame enough that it would work OK if put on all four walls.
I skim-floated the walls first, to smooth out the light texture on them, then followed with a primer coat of Gardz.
This wallpaper is a bit atypical, because it is pre-pasted, which means it comes with a thin layer of paste on the back that you activate with water (instead of having to roll paste on the back of every strip). I do like the pre-pasted papers. I do roll a light coat of paste on the wall, to augment the manufacturer’s pre-paste.
Another dissimilarity is that the paper comes packaged in individual strips, rather than traditional rolls with several strips rolled up together.
Even more unusual is that the strips were meant to be overlapped, instead of butted together. Overlapping the seams creates a vertical ridge under the paper which is somewhat visible. You also have to have an adhesive that will stick to the acrylic coating on top of the paper.
There are some good aspects to overlapping seams. For one, this makes for a very strong bond. For another, it takes stress of drying and shrinking paper off the seam and distributes it across that 3/4″ of overlapped area. In this 80-year-old house, with it’s many layers of paint with a history of not sticking to each other, this is important, because it greatly reduces the chances of the tension on the seams causing the paint layers to come apart, which would cause gapping at the seams. See previous post.
Another positive feature about overlapping the seams, and how that worked with this particular pattern, is that, in this 1930 home, with its unlevel ceiling and floor and its greatly-out-of-plumb walls, I was able to manipulate the strips of wallpaper so that they looked straight and plumb – even though they were actually hung quite off-plumb.
This wallpaper pattern is by Lulie Wallace, and was bought on line.
The top photo shows me starting to apply smoothing compound to the textured wall of a 1930 frame bungalow in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston. Originally, all the walls of this dining room were a dark purply-navy flat paint. This wall will become a feature wall.
It took a long time to get the wall smoothed, but when it was finally time to hang the paper, I was ready! – It’s such a beautiful, unusual, daring, and fun pattern. What’s more – it combines a shimmery silver background with 3-dimensional flocking. That’s the coal-balck velvet-like fuzzy material that sticks up about 1/16″ from the surface, creating a dramatically gutsy effect.
The second photo is funny, because it makes the wall look hashed and diagonal. But in real life, you don’t notice this cross-hatch design; your eye only sees the pairs of peacocks and the dramatic colors.
This wallpaper is a non-woven material and I hung it using the paste-the-wall method.
The pattern is called “Tail Feather.” It is by ASW – A Shade Wilder, and was bought through Wayfair.com
The bottom of these walls are covered in beautiful block paneling. Originally, the top of this bedroom belonging to a little girl in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston was painted tan. Tan’s a nice, safe color – but it’s bland and boring and is totally not up to the energy and zeal for life of a toddler.
Interior designer Rachel Goetz found this cool watercolor-like design from Anthropologie. It’s colorful and fun, and, if you look closely, there are hidden grasshoppers, butterflies, and ants!
The wallpaper is in the Sure Strip line made by York, one of my favorite papers – but this Ant pattern (also called “Watercolor Peony”) is only available through Anthropologie. It’s pre-pasted, and very thin, and no worries about curling seams. Sure Strip is designed to come off the wall easily later, when you’re ready to redecorate.
Are you a Home Tour Junkie? I am! I attend all the home tours I can in the Houston area. This year I am thrilled to say that two of the homes where I hung wallpaper will be on the Heights Home Tour in April. And another home I worked in will be on the Woodland Heights Home Tour in March. Two homes were pulled together by interior designers – Stacie Cokinos in the Woodland Heights and Rachel Goetz in the Heights.
As a side note, a home on the Good Brick tour last year featured a room I hung wallpaper in, and a few years back some of my work was shown on the Garden Oaks Home Tour.
Forget the past stuff – come on out to the Heights and the Woodland Height Home Tours and see some lovely homes, some cutting edge decorating, and some really craftsmanly-hung wallpaper!
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