I do love wallpaper in the right place. We have an older home with cheap paneling in one room. I finally painted and wallpapered it. I have done it 3 different times now. My hubby put up a chair rail on one long wall and across the end window wall. The room is long and narrow. We put up a wall and put a hot tub in behind a wall in one end. And the rest of the room is where you enter from the back of the house. I painted the door wall and below the chair rail a slate blue. Then I wallpapered the wall above the chair rail and all of the wall opposite the window. Then I ran a border all the way around. My wallpaper is kinda of a faux look with small red dots. My trim is white. I have a double window and am making a double layered topper out of small red check homespun. The bottom print is almost the same as the tan color in the wall paper. I am trying to decide if I want tabs or not. This type curtain is often in the country books we get in the mail We have a cabin in Southern Indiana and I hae made some for it. They are so cute. With the double layer, the curtain doesn't fade so quickly. I hope to get done this week. My hubby couldn't get over what a difference it made..

I forgot that the gallery was there; I will go look. I have polled the family, and even though I was the one who did the faux top half, everyone says thatÂs their favorite paint treatment in the house. I think they all remember me adding a new color to it now and then over time. In the pictures the base color looks pink, itÂs really a soft salmon. I could easily put a glaze over it to subdue it more, as long as I didnÂt have to match the unpainted parts of it. The more I look at the border the more dated I feel it is. I think I needed someone to tell me. I also thought of a chair rail, which I would like, except the whole issue of that awkward doorway into the kitchen. I would love to case all these drywalled doorways, but I have a lot of them, and I think the effect would not be worth the amount of effort it would take. If I did one I feel like I would have to do all of them. IÂm not sure about casing a doorway that has no door, eitherÂwould it look odd? Plus I have my new DR furniture in, and the buffet is higher than my old one, effectively covering much of a chair rail if I had one. I think my best option is to cover the old border with a new border, or remove it and put in a new one. At least I can paint first without having to protect the border. I do like the idea of something architectural, ajsmama! I love egg and dart. You reminded me, I was in a new hotel this last summer that had a wonderful architectural "crown molding" that was a border. That leads me to think maybe something that LOOKS like a chair rail, like tromp dÂoeil. I think it could go well with the new formal furniture too.

I have a love-hate thing with wallpaper. In the right style house, with the right subtle pattern, and broken up with something -- wainscot, chair rail, only one wall, etc. -- wallpaper can be very pretty. OTOH, I HATE HATE HATE removing wallpaper. Our guest room, which doubles as a playroom when we don't have guests over, has the previous owners' navy, red and white plaid PLAID wallpaper, peeling in corners, and a badly installed chair rail. My DD, who is turning 4, was laying on the guest bed with me the other weekend. We were just having a chat. She starts squinting at the wallpaper. "That's ugly, mommy." "You mean the wallpaper?" "Yeah. Those blue squares on the wall. They're ugly." "I know, but it's really hard to remove." "Oh," she says. "It's still ugly." Now, if I had an old, traditional house instead of my 1964 California side split level, I would seriously consider some wainscot and one of those gorgeous papers posted by Val or Dee. Instead, I'm trying to find time to strip ugly Navy americana plaid wallpaper from my guest room. You can bet I won't be replacing it with more paper, either. The nice thing about paint is that when the wall gets dingy or I get tired of the color, I can go out and buy a gallon or two and slap it on the wall. I can even splurge with expensive paints and still come out ahead of the game.

Was there a time in home decorating history when 1940s ladies' powder room or bedroom wallpaper was the style for a kitchen? No, but wallpaper was common throughout the house because paint rollers only came into common usage in the 1950s. We stripped out a house that had ducks in one area. Maybe yours was left over or the whole house was floral. I am not sure that people don't still have weird taste, it's not just historical. This is typical 1940s kitchen wallpaper: The sideways border may have been a way to trim the door opening. Usually this was done with narrower borders though. I've seen rooms where the border trimmed all openings and the base as the floor as well.