Grab Your Sunglasses: Lars's & Anders' Bright, Happy, Blinding Wallpaper is Installed!

Since I last posted, I have successfully salvaged a disastrous wallpaper installation.  My installers were not to blame -- they are amazing and their installation was impeccable.  The disaster part was all me.

One of my two little tyrants clients sons, 8-year-old Anders, was unhappy with my wallpaper selection for his bathroom vanity walls from the very beginning and he voiced his objections in no uncertain terms before I even ordered the wallpaper.  He preferred this iconic Zebra wallpaper from Scalamandré instead:

Zebras wallpaper from Scalamandre

The red works, and I love this paper, too -- so much so that I have a Scalamandre umbrella with this Zebra pattern on it (great conversation starter).  Yet Anders has a serious tropical frog theme going on in his bedroom, incorporating the Froggy Quilt of Many Colors that I made for him when he turned three, as well as an oil painting above his bed that my mother painted for him.  He is as infatuated with frogs now as he ever was, and he insisted that all the frogs must stay.  I briefly entertained the idea of trying to incorporate some zebras, or even black-and-white graphics, into his bedroom to try to make the Zebras paper work, but I just couldn't see how it could possibly come together without making too many changes -- and spending too much additional money -- in Anders' bedroom.  Even then, zebras and rainforest frogs?  Zebras live in Africa.  The poison dart frogs and red-eyed tree frogs live all the way across the Atlantic Ocean in the rainforests of South America. 

Instead, I selected a contemporary, geometric handprinted paper from Printer's Guild Productions for Anders' vanity in bright primary colors that coordinated perfectly with what we'd already done in his bedroom, and I promised him that if he hated it six months after it was up, I'd take it down and put up the zebras.  I was banking on him forgetting all about the deal by then and no longer even noticing the wallpaper.  And I knew it was going to look great.

Ten-year-old Lars, on the other hand, had lobbied long and hard to have BRIGHT orange walls in his bedroom.  I compromised by selecting a bright orange wallcovering for his vanity area, as well as their tub/shower area, reasoning that it would function more like an accent color since we'd only glimpse a bit of it at a time from his bedroom.  The paper has a subtle texture to it that could either read like lizard skin or like the surface of a basketball, and although it seemed a bit overwhelming when it first went up, it gets broken up a lot in the tub/shower area by the fixtures, towels, and shower curtain (I'll probaby design a custom shower curtain with blues and greens when I get around to designing their window treatments).  I'm planning to hang some of Lars's own oil paintings in his bathroom vanity area, and that will lessen the severity of the orange as well.

So, after the first day of wallpapering, Lars came home from school and found this:

He danced around the house euphorically, loudly giddy with glee over getting the exact obnoxious shade of orange that he had wished for.

Anders came home from school that day and found something like this (the mirror wasn't back up that first day; I took this picture a day later):

Unfortunately, Anders forgot all about the try-it-for-six-months deal.  He said, "Where are my zebras?!"  Then he burst into tears, ran from the room, and sobbed into a pillow in the corner of the living room while I tried to console him.  At this point, a nagging little voice is whining away inside my head about how it's Anders' room, and why do I need to control everything, and who cares if the wallpaper "goes" with the bedroom anyway as long as he's happy!  Especially since the paper that I chose turned out to be extremely delicate and the installers need to come back tomorrow morning to put a protective top coat on it or else every time the cleaning service wipes splattered toothpaste off the wall, the bright colors will come off as well.

The next day, while the boys were at school and the installers were finishing up the tub/shower area, I had an epiphany.  I remembered that I had a few rolls of the rainforest frog wallpaper border leftover from Anders' bedroom in our old house, and by some miracle I was able to locate them in the Armoire Full of Everything in my master bedroom.  And there was enough to go around Anders' bedroom!  It was definitely an afterthought, but the colors help tie in the vanity paper even more, and it's FROGS, for crying out loud -- I knew Anders would love it.

On the second day of wallpaper installation, Anders came home and found this:

Jubilation!  He loves me again! 

Next time, I'll show you the carpentry work that Bernie has been up to in the kitchen.

Remodeling Update: Lars's & Anders' Bathroom Granite

So, Happy New Year, everyone!  Aside from a nasty cold that hit me Christmas Eve and is just starting to wane, I had a wonderfully relaxing Christmas and New Year's at home with my family.  My idea of relaxing might be different than yours, though.  My kind of rest & relaxation involves demolition and remodeling progress!

Tile Collection came to install granite countertops in our boys' bathroom vanities on December 29th.  I got a fantastic deal on these because the vanities were small enough to be cut out of remnants left from other customer's projects, and my granite fabricator charges the same clearance square foot price on all scrap pieces regardless of how expensive the stone was as a full slab.  It's a great way to upgrade secondary baths on a budget, but you have to be flexible about your stone selection.  Doing a stone fireplace surround would be another project where you could get an amazing deal using remnants.

Lars and Anders have one of those partially-shared en suite bathrooms commonly referred to as a Jack and Jill Bath.  They have a shared enclosed room housing the toilet and tub/shower, but they each have their own separate vanity that opens directly into each of their bedrooms.  Because the vanities are so visible as soon as you enter the bedrooms, and there isn't even a door to close, I deliberately selected Pottery Barn Kids bedroom furniture in Rustic Sun Valley Honey because it's so similar to their bathroom cabinetry, to lessen the jarring "Why is there a bathroom sink in this bedroom?" feeling that I was getting before.  I've never been a big fan of the "cultured marble" plastic countertops with integrated sinks and the chrome/brass faucets, but my primary objective in upgrading the countertops and fixtures was to dress up the vanities and ease the transition between the comfortably furnished bedrooms and the stark, utilitarian bath area.

Here's Lars's vanity on the morning of December 29th, with the granite installer disconnecting the plumbing before removing the old countertop and sink:

Those orange and blue squares on the wall were just paint colors I was auditioning.  They will get covered by wallpaper.

Here's what Lars's vanity looked like a few hours later, with his Poseidon granite countertop and new Kohler undermount sink:

...and here it is the next day, after Bernie installed the new Delta faucets and reconnected the plumbing.  We had replaced the towel bars, vanity lights and cabinet knobs awhile ago.  Doesn't that Poseidon granite look amazing?  This stone is in the top tier "Customer's Choice" pricing category, but because we used a remnant we got it for less than what we would have spent on the least expensive entry-level granite.

Here is Anders' vanity right before the new countertop was installed:

...and here it is after:

Anders' granite is called Golden Splendor, although when he heard that Lars's was called Poseidon, he insisted that his granite needed to be called Zeus.  Although it doesn't have quite the dramatic movement of the Poseidon, I chose the Golden Splendor of Zeus granite for Anders because he is getting a bold, primary colored geometric wallpaper in his vanity area and I wanted to make sure the stone wouldn't compete with that.  Lars's wallpaper is a bright orange textured paper, so it's okay for his granite to be more involved.

Here's Anders' vanity with the faucet installed:

Can you see those silvery mica flecks in the granite?  It's really pretty in person, just subtler than Lars's.

Bernie's office is in a secondary bedroom and it has a private en suite bath with a tiny little vanity.  I've arranged with my granite company to save one of the larger pieces of my Baltic Brown kitchen countertop and recut it for this little vanity.  Although it looked like Baltic Barf in my kitchen, this stone actually complements the more contemporary, masculine feel of Bernie's office nicely, and it looks great with the brown knobs I put on his cabinet, the paint color, and even the existing tilework in the adjacent shower.  I'll just give you a little before shot of that one.

I feel a little less wasteful knowing that at least some of the original granite will be reused.  Plus, it will be fun to be able to say "...And this is what the original kitchen countertops looked like when we first moved in."

 Meanwhile, since these pictures were taken, my wallpaper installers have been busily working in the kids' bathrooms, and they should be finished by the end of today.  Bernie has already started in on the carpentry aspect of our little kitchen remodel project, and that's looking amazing as well.  The granite guy came out to do the kitchen templates this morning, and we're scheduled to approve the layout of the templates on our slabs this Friday. 

I highly recommend asking your granite fabricator about approving your layout in person prior to cutting even if they don't suggest it, by the way, especially with granites like these that can have so much variation of color and pattern from one part of the slab to another.  I could have had them move the template over a few inches to the right and Lars's countertop would have been primarily black, for instance.  There's no way the guys at the fabrication plant can read your mind and know which parts of the stone you like best and which parts you'd like to minimize unless you go there in person and make your preferences known!

I'll try to post another update in a day or so; right now, I've got to get back to the master bedroom drapery design that I'm working on for a client.