Residential Winners Commercial Winners Specialty Winners See All Entrants (Slide Show) See All Entrants (PPT)

Members of the National Guild of Professional Paperhangers have recognized nine exceptional wallcovering installation projects with 2005 Winning Walls with Wallcoverings awards. The Zinsser Company, makers of wallcovering installation products, proudly sponsors the NGPP’s Winning Walls with Wallcoverings Program.

The program is open to any NGPP member who has completed a wallcovering project during the calendar year. An independent panel of judges assesses each entry by assigning point scores to fifteen different project factors, including creativity, special challenges, materials, time constraints, and the quality of the entry presentation. The awards were presented at a luncheon held during the 2005 National Guild of Professional Paperhangers Convention and Tradeshow in Portland, Maine, September 14-17, 2005.

First place award winners were Steven Kaye, C.P., Paper Craft Interiors, Inc., Algonquin, IL, in the Residential Category; Tim Bodine, Professional Wallpaper & Paint, St. Louis, MO, in the Commercial Category; and Gerri Beauvais, C.P., San Francisco, CA, in the Specialty Category.

Second place awards went to Doug Bera, Star Paper Hanging, Fishkill, NY, and Charles Grippo, Custom Wallcovering, Hartsdale, NY, who worked together to earn this award in both the Residential and Specialty Categories; and to Steven Kaye, C.P., Paper Craft Interiors, Algonquin, IL, in the Commercial Category.

Receiving honorable mention recognition were Scott Peto, C.P., Restoration Services of Ohio, Inc., Middleburg Heights, OH, in the Residential Category; and Michael Baughman, C.P., Baughman Wallcoverings, Oceanside, CA, in both the Commercial and Specialty Categories.

Residential
1st Place Winner
Steven Kaye, C.P., Paper Craft Interiors, Inc., Algonquin, IL

2nd Place Winner
Doug Bera, Star Paper Hanging, Fishkill, NY, and Charles Grippo, Custom Wallcovering, Hartsdale, NY

Honorable Mention
Scott Peto, C.P., Restoration Services of Ohio, Inc., Middleburg Heights, OH

Commercial
1st Place Winner
Tim Bodine, Professional Wallpaper & Paint, St. Louis, MO

2nd Place Winner
Steven Kaye, C.P., Paper Craft Interiors, Algonquin, IL

Honorable Mention
Michael Baughman, C.P., Baughman Wallcoverings, Oceanside, CA

Specialty
1st Place Winner
Gerri Beauvais, C.P., San Francisco, CA

2nd Place Winner
Doug Bera, Star Paper Hanging, Fishkill, NY, and Charles Grippo, Custom Wallcovering, Hartsdale, NY

Honorable Mention
Michael Baughman, C.P., Baughman Wallcoverings, Oceanside, CA

Entry Descriptions

Residential First Place Award

The wallcoverings in the first place residential project were unpasted paper-backed vinyl installed in a home built in the 1880s. There were nine rolls for the ceiling, twenty-five yards of border, four groupings of decorative border companions, and another twelve rolls for the walls.

Preparation involved removing a popcorn textured ceiling that was totally out of square and a great deal of surface repair. There were seven days of planning and painstaking wall preparation before the first roll of wallcovering was hung. The installer bled from scraping the ceiling, itched from irritants of fiberglass liner, and cursed the previous hanger for not preparing one of the sidewalls that led to severe wall damage. The result was a splendid dining room that proved to be an award winner for Steven Kaye, C.P.

Commercial First Place Award

The installer became the coordinator of this complicated project that won first place honors in the Commercial Category. Finding a source for an enormous digital mural that was the length of a football field was a problem in itself. The mural was comprised of sixty panels of 54” wide material and was installed on three walls of a large room floor to ceiling. The walls were nearly twenty-four feet high with a radius starting about the sixteen-foot mark. At that point, as the wall went up the remaining eight feet, it curved outward, ending up eight feet away from the bottom of the wall. At every inside corner the walls curved out and met each other, effectively cutting off a triangular portion of the graphic. Conversely, at the outside corner the wall expanded at the top, adding an inverted triangle to the mural. Graphic placement was critical to keep the mural running straight. With the assistance of four other Guild members, Tim Bodine successfully completed this award-winning installation.

Specialty First Place Award

There were three days of research, planning, and layout for this project; then set-up, wall prep, hanging muslin, installing a blankstock liner, and clean-up took another four days. At that point, installer Gerri Beauvais, C.P., was ready to start hanging nine 18-inch wide Zuber panels, which took about four days. Good clean preparation is key to installing Zuber scenics, which are printed on very pulpy paper with tempera ink. The front cannot come into contact with any moisture. Even perspiring fingers will leave fingerprints that will not fade when dry.

Because the block printing is done with hand-carved wood blocks that are about 150 years old, there is quite a bit of play with the pattern match. The client purchased only two scenes, and knew she didn’t have enough to fill all the areas so one area was covered with scraps left over from the stairs and appliquéd together to produce a scene. The result was a very satisfied client and a first place award in the Specialty Category for Gerri Beauvais, C.P..

Residential Second Place Award

The paper was untrimmed 100% gold foil from Japan. No installation instructions could be found. What made this job especially challenging was the height—twelve feet from the chair rail, which meant about sixteen feet off the ground. In addition, paper was hung on four walls below the chair rail three feet to the floor. The paper was also at the end of a dye lot. The paper was delicate with a five-inch box pattern on it. The boxes go offline of one another after a few feet. The tricky part was to keep it matched to eye level.

The job required methodical precision. The installers, Doug Bera and Charles Grippo, learned how to hang a material they had never encountered before earning them second place recognition in the Residential Category.

Commercial Second Place Award

The project involved installing sixty-three yards of net-backed silk fabric on a concave staircase as high as twenty feet and in the VIP lounge at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. One complicating factor was the job of cutting strip lengths from twelve feet to twenty feet. Working closely together during the trimming of the fabric with three straight edges end to end, the two installers were able to apply enough pressure to make a parallel trim not more than 1/16 inch off from top to bottom. The apparent repeat of seven and a half inches was anything but a regular repeat, so there was a problem of coming up with a formula for placing the wallcovering on the wall. Scaffolding issues made the job a tight squeeze, but Steven Kaye, C.P., completed the project on a rigid schedule, and received second place recognition in the Commercial Category.

Specialty Second Place

The job involved removing all old materials, plastering, priming, and hanging on a very tight schedule. The house was a 100-year-old mountain house with walls so old and water damaged they could not be repaired. Part of the project was installing Type III vinyl. This material was so thick the installer had to use a blow-torch to make it pliable enough to mold around the decorative molding. The Bradbury & Bradbury wallcoverings had to be trimmed, laid out, and installed with the greatest of care. As much carpentry as papering went into this challenging project, which earned a second place award in the Specialty Category for Doug Bera and Charles Grippo.

Honorable Mention Residential

A simple project became a creative masterpiece when the homeowner liked a paper but not the companion paper. The installer, the client, and a designer worked together to create a hand-painted supplement to the project. The installer, Scott Peto, C.P. did a lot of trimming of leaves and branches and worked around many details, but in the end the room looked great and received Honorable Mention in the Residential Category.

Honorable Mention Commercial

In this project, commercial wallcovering was installed in a residential structure. Installer Michael Baughman, C.P., not only had to deal with 54-inch material in a

residence, but the job also involved considerable stair climbing and working around six dogs. Add to this, complicated masonry details, hand carved wood details, built in cabinetry, wrap-in window openings, knee walls, sloped walls, and arched doorways and engineering became a significant challenge. There was also a stripe and a floral pattern that had to be matched. In addition to the prep work the homeowner already had done, the installer had more spot sanding and patching as well as skimming to do to prepare the walls properly. The end result was a beautiful as well as a creative use of commercial non-woven material in a residential setting, earning an honorable mention award in the Commercial Category.

Honorable Mention Specialty

Michael Baughman, C.P., also received honorable mention in the Specialty Category for a project involving twenty-four hand-painted muslin murals that had to be cut into pieces resembling the pieces of a puzzle that would fit precisely between window mullions without losing the image. This all had to be applied to glass on the outside of a building in an area of the Houston Zoo that was under construction, so dirt and weather were hindering factors. The job turned out well in spite of these complications.

Projects amaze judges

After reviewing dozens of entries and completing the difficult task of narrowing the field to nine award-winning projects, several of the judges said that their experience reminded them again of the complexity of the wallcoverings industry and the installation craft.

“The amount of prep work that went into these jobs was incredible," said Judge Abbey Francis. "The average person might not realize how much prep work is involved. This contest shows there’s a lot more to wallcovering than just putting up a basic roll. People can achieve any look they want now."

Judge Willie Ross, an NGPP member from St. Louis, commented, "It’s encouraging to see the creative ways other craftsmen approach their jobs."

“What stood out was the willingness to tackle projects full of unknowns. Making new materials and new ideas work really impressed me," said Cindy Kistner, an American Society of Interior Designers member who served as a judge. "This contest is so important because we get to see new fresh ways to use materials, in particular photographic materials.”

Judge Debbie Tzinberg, TZ Designs, Inc., St. Louis, MO, found the entire program inspirational.

“The entrants were so proud to belong to the organization and were so proud of their work,” she said. “This contest brought out the best in people. Some of the wallcoverings are works of art. We should take pride that there is a whole craftsman attitude among wallpaper hangers.”

2006 Contest

Entry forms for the 2006 Winning Walls With Wallcovering contest will be available in the Spring of 2006.