My most recent project was a fun challenge that used both my decorative painting and mural skills to replicate wallpaper. Yes – I painted wallpaper!
Thanks to our crazy winter, my client in Wellesley had ice dams that unfortunately lead to significant damage in their master bedroom. Part of this damage included the destruction of the wallpaper in one corner of the room – wallpaper that was just hung less than a year ago! Even though the paper was relatively new, the challenge became more interesting when they discovered that this particular pattern was discontinued. So – my client was faced with the need to strip the entire room and re-paper with a new pattern… But, they really liked the pattern they had.
The damaged corner
Fortunately, their painter had the idea to have a muralist/decorative painter paint the damaged section of the room to replicate the wallpaper pattern. By calling me, they were able to keep the wallpaper they like and fix the damaged corner! They were skeptical at first that it could be done, so I did a test board (below) to show them the paper side-by-side with my painting. They liked what they saw, so I was brought in to do the same on walls and around corners.
The test board
My first surprise was when I found that the base-color paint that matched perfectly in the paint store did not match in the lighting of the actual room. Fortunately, I also brought some of my stock of different color wall paints and I was able to mix a better match by eye when I was on site.
The bad match
With the re-mixed paint and "printed" texture
Once I had that piece done, I “printed” the texture pattern in the background using screen wrapped around a block. With that complete, I was able to dive into the pattern using stencils I made in advance…
The completed job
When the contractor came in, he had to bend over to look close at the seam to see where the real paper ended and the painting began – which was a great way to end the project!
Close-up including seam with the actual wallpaper
Enjoy,
Jason