Discontinued Wallpaper Co.  P 1 of 4
 Houston, TX  1972 to 1997
A 25 year pictorial study and memory review of a business entrepreneur. See 11B.

 A business analysis review of what we did and why we did it. Hopefully this might help some entrepreneur look at a business from the inside and apply the principles of what  had been learned by owner Brian Nelson. With 20-20 hindsight you can operate your business without  some of the mistakes made by Brian. This is page 1 of 10. There will 60 Images per page which can be enlarged with a double click. 

  

Welcome to  Discontinued Wallpaper Co. archive historical website  This is a A 25 year Pictorial Business Study of an entrepreneurial venture started with no money and ended with no money after 25 years of creative  successful business practices in Houston, TX from 1972 to 1997. Each business will have a description of what was going on at the time. Sometime there will be a learning lesson where an error educated owner Brian Nelson to do things differently  the next time. New  methods had to be devised to help solve problems that developed.

Decisions  where made with  simple logical conclusion. This was not rocket science. Each time a problem came up one had to ask himself " Is there a better way to do this?"   Today with the value of the the internet the business would have to be different manner.  Or it would have never survived for 25 years. There were  hundreds of other competitors over the 25 year period. DWC made great competition for the industry.

If you ever shopped at this store please send me an e-mail or your story about your shopping  experience at Discontinued Wallpaper Company.  Click: E-mail me
This will be an on going website. It will take hundreds of hours to upload and formulate all photos and the data.  Brian Nelson 713-467-3025.

The important words found on this site include:

Contact information for this Website:
Brian Nelson
Webpage Marketing Consultant 
31 Gessner Rd. ,  Houston, TX 77024
713-467-3025  Click: E-mail me


 You can find this site again by typing in the Google search engine  the very unique word " 1repapllaW  "  which is  "  Wallpaper1 " backwards.

Article Word Count                                MSW

 Discontinued Wallpaper Co. Directory
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Page 1 of 4 1-34   http://www.DiscontinuedWallpaperCo.com
Page 2 of 4 35-68 http://www.DiscontinuedWallpaperCo.com/Photos/35-68.html
Page 3 of 469-100   http://www.DiscontinuedWallpaperCo.com/Photos/69-100.html
Page 4 of 3 101-130   http://www.DiscontinuedWallpaperCo.com/Photos/101-130.html

  

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You are at: http://www.DiscontinuedWallpaperCo.com    ud 01/30/2009 03:33 PM -0600  Bookmark this page now!
 

Designers Box.  Brian Nelson. Owner   31 Gessner Rd. ,  Houston, TX 77024 713-467-3025   Click: E-mail me
 The important words found on this site include:                           Misspelled words used to find this page 1 of 5.
Find this site by typing in the Google search engine  the very unique word " 1  "  which is  "  1 " backwards.     
Article Word Count __________ MSW  _____   1 YouTube.com   2 Alt Tags , 3 MSW    4/FormLetter  3/NIDAS,   7 BB1  Follow Ups in NI
 Misspelled words used to find this page 1 of 3 Discontinued  Wallpaper Co Company Houston, TX . archive historical website Pictorial Business Study  entrepreneurial venture  investment  learning lesson  errors  educated owner Brian Nelson thinking outside the box. wallcovering, retail stores.   benefit   decisions  logical conclusion.  internet business  survival competitors  job journal
  website.  data.  Brian Nelson 713-467-3025 Pictorial Photo Retail Stores
138 Employees Employees Suppliers Suppliers
David Sciratt
Tom Tydeman
Stan Wilkening.
Jeanine
Lonnie
Mary Hormache
Carolyn Neiman
Richard Brownlee
Herschel
Kurt
Greg Meadows
David Broussard
Etta May
Barbara
Ron Ashely		 Ron Diaz
Daniel Bierman
Bill Fulton
Mary Jane Simmons
Mary  Ann
Kerry Wilkenson
Dennis
Lee Mabry

Amber Nelson
Avery Nelson
Meredith Nelson
Rosemary Nelson
Lydia
Al
Debbie W

 Peakload
Macs Men
Industrial Labor
Backlog
Isgo Wallcoverings
Seabrook Wallcoverings
James Butte Company
Cook Paint
Warner Wallcoverings
PG Berland
Al Berland.
Roman Adhesives
Lin Gor
Plymouth Wallpaper
Durabond Adhesives
USGypsum USG
Wallcoverings International
 

 

 Imperial Wallcovering
Fabulous Wallpaper
Thybony Wallcoverings
York Wallcovering
Bunswhwig & Fils
Eisenhart Wallcoverings
Ed Tusa
Fred Reitchel
Frank Bain
Ron Warfield
Imperial
Thibault
Gore Wallpaper
Sherwin Williams
Brewster Wallpaper
Blonder Wallcoverings
R Douglas Baird
Sid Chesnin
1   Dear Friends, 
We started our business working out of our house in in 1971 the Maplewood South Subdivision   southwest Houston, TX We moved here with 1 daughter from Rochester, NY looking for employment.

I used to love to hang wallpaper. It totally changed the personality of a room with in a few hours. We put up our first wallpaper in  1969 in Webster, New York. it was a red flocked wallpaper.  When we moved to Houston in  1970 we started bought wallpaper at a very busy garage sale. A few months later I went back to buy some quantities for an investment house they referred me to a wholesaler who I bought a trunk full of wallpaper surplus wallpaper for $50.  That was the start of a retail business that lasted over  25 years. It was the beginning  of self employment in  Houston.  We started  by advertising in the local paper with 30 cent ads and Ads in the Houston Chronicle for about $1.  Sometimes I would sell the wallpaper to customer who came to our house. Some of these customers also wanted someone to hang it.  I had advertised under the name Quality Paperhanging.  I ventured out and bid jobs sometimes driving 30 miles to bid on a $ 50 job.  Gas was about $ .25/ gallon then as the gas war helped the travelers.   If I got the job I would go back to complete the job when it would fit into my  schedule.  Often I would hang wallpaper for many people on the same street as customers told their friends about someone who could do the job for them. I started getting referrals from paint store like Cook Paint and contractors like Kitchen Designers. I did jobs in River Oaks in big mansions, high rises and for a few famous people like Leon Jawarski. I tended to prefer the more complicated challenging things like kitchen. Straight bedroom walls were boring. I usually charged more than other paperhangers at that time. I guess it was a supply and demand balance.

Some customers would not come to a residence to buy wallpaper. We rented a warehouse location facing a busy street at 10914 S. Post Oak. The rate  $ .10/ sq. ft. for about 2400 sq. ft. This web job journal may bring back some valuable memories for my kids, my  relatives, my employees, my customers and most of all for me. I don't know how long I will be around to tell my kids about things we did as a family business. You can read my cancer journal..... www.IamFightingCancer.com . I am feeling great after 3 different bouts with cancer. Creating these pages also gives me reminders of the crazy things I did to earn a living for 25 years. Today I  more interested in helping others reach their goals. I recently lectured to  4 classes of students at Prairie View A & M University. It was difficult to get those students to become interactive thinking about running their own business. Developing this business journal is a great reminder for me in teaching others how they can avoid the mistakes that I made. I love to do consulting to help others solve business critical problems. I call it ' Idea Possibility Thinking. "

Because we advertised that  all or our  in stock wallpaper was 40% to 80% off the original price, we had many repeat customers who drove long distances  to  get to our stores. Often customers would visit all of our stores before making a purchase to be sure they bought the pattern that best fit their needs.  The requested that we locate a store closer to them. It sounded like a good idea. If I was in the wallpaper business today I would tell them to go to my website and not have the headaches of multiple stores.

These pictures will not be in any specific order, at least not at this time.  I just don't have the mind set to do that. I am going through thousands of photos taken over the 25 years.  Each web page will have about 60 pictures. When you click on the picture you should be able to see a larger picture which you may want to make a print of it. If  you were an employee at that store I would love to hear from you. I often wonder what those younger employees did with their lives.

There were cumulatively  about 100 people who worked on my payroll..   There were over a thousand temporary labors who unloaded trucks, built shelves, stocked shelves or completed other  tasks. They came through Macs Men, Peakload, and a number of other temporary agencies. Without the temporaries I would have never been able to  accomplish what I had to do.

A phone call would put  1 to 10 men on my door step within an hour. A 4 hour minimum was required. The better workers were often given a repeat ticket.  Some who were totally broke could not work long enough to finish unloading a truck and missed an opportunity to get  a repeat ticket to  work the next day because they had to get back to the temporary office to get paid  that day as money was critical. I am sure many of the temporaries lived under the bridges and this day labor of  employment was critical to their survival. Take a look at the pictures below and on the linked pages. If you have any comments you can e-mail me by clicking here. Click: E-mail me

 Brian Nelson  Houston, TX 713-467-3025.

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5
This was our 3rd Store. It was  1500 sq. ft.  on I-10 aka Katy Freeway at Silber Rd., In Houston. The porcelain sign was moved to a 5,000 sq. ft location a mile west on the same side of the I-10 Freeway a few years later. Rent was about  $.25 sq. ft.		  


After the first year in business most everything was purchased in truckloads including wallpaper paste. You will see many pictures of my son Avery who wanted at an early age to always be with me when he didn't have other plans. That changed when he became a teenager.

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6
Note the round scale. Early on in the business we had rolls of various sizes. We would individually price each  roll. If we priced it at say $ 7.04 the 04 would indicate that it came in as the 4th truckload.  Some creative customers would roll the wallpaper out and roll it back up the other way and put their own price on the unmarked end of the wallpaper. We started  to carry wallpaper seconds which meant it had a flaw in it. In pricing each roll we did not open each roll. Sometimes the customers would call from home stating there was a spot in the middle of the roll. Now we have a problem.  We decided that maybe we could sell the stock by the pound. That saved pricing  every roll. We gave the customers scissors and big checking tables as you can see in the background. The customers were encouraged to cut out anything that was bad. This eliminated the problem of the customer complaining about the quality of the material. If they didn't' check it at all it was their problem. They had the opportunity to do so. The concept was used for the next 23 years.
Early on I purchased a set of about  8  10 ft long  12 inch wide  steel skate wheel conveyors. I used these for 25 year. They were a life saver in moving cases of wallpaper down the conveyor by gravity where at the end they would be easily  picked up with a 2 wheel dolly . The conveyor had adjustable stands that fit into a v slot on the bottom of the section.  The conveyor sections had pins and hooks so they could easily lock together. Later I purchase lighter weight  aluminum sections but they were not as stable as the steel units. When you push on one end it would move all the cases toward the other end where they were unloaded.
12-6-08Dear Brian,
During the period 1975-1997 I owned three beautiful houses and decorated all them with wallpaper from Discontinued wallpaper.  I would spend hours searching books before finding the right pattern.  I loved your store and was energized each time I entered. I felt as if I was on a treasure hunt.
Maggi

 


 

Dear Maggi,
 Thanks so much for writing those kind words. I guess you were on the historical page of www.DiscontinuedWallpaperCo.com   I ran the store for 25 years until the market dried up for wallpaper and it was no longer very fashionable or profitable. It was an important part of my life.
 
I enjoyed every year of it even during tough times.  I have hundreds of more pictures to put up and many more entrepreneurial comments for the records showing what things I learned from doing various aspects of the business. 
 
Your letter has motivated me to stop procrastinating and work on that memory project.  I am 68 and   work with websites advertising and selling tents out of my home under the domain www.PartyTentCity.com .
 
If you send me your picture I may even remember your face or my kids or wife might recognize you. I hope you still have some of your wallpaper up. Some people say wallpaper is coming back into fashion. If it did I  still have a desire to sell the stuff but with more age onsetting I may not be able to do what I used to do. Thanks for writing me.
Brian Nelson
31 Gessner Rd.
 Houston, TX   77024
713-467-3025
 www.NelsonIdeas.com
7
In  1977 When I got to 3 stores I wanted to hand customer something that they could take home with them and not throw away. This double sized business card in photo color had a calendar on the reverse size. It showed the store from the outside so they knew what the other store looked like when they got there.		  

I could have done a similar thing on the internet a whole lot cheaper but we didn't have that at that time. I think I bought about 20,000 of these but used only a fraction of them. It was costly to get them distributed to potentially new customers.

8
This is the sign going up at 15715 North Freeway. Years later after I moved out of the store they reduced the front parking lot to almost nothing  via eminent domain as the expanded the width of I-45 North. A shopping center also moved in adjacent to the property that was out by itself orignally .

 


I used this  licensed portable sign as low cost advertising at multiple stores as needed.  I was able to chain it down as trailers are easily stolen in Houston.  I think the opening here was  pasted over other text on the sign. Note that the phone no does not have the area code 713 which was required a few years later,

9
This picture  of the 2nd location at 10902 S. Post Oak.. It is taken from the  business card above in section 7. . This was a warehouse store.  The center tables were used to inspect wallpaper before purchasing it.  Often customer would leave unselected rolls on the tables which had to be returned to their place on the shelves by the employees.  All of the shelves were in 6 ft long cabinets with 27     27" long x 12 inch storage tubes. All cabinets were on 6  4" steel casters lag screwed to the bottom   2x6's  Carts from one part of the store were often moved  entirely to another part of the store as the layout was needed for better  customer use.
Avery is standing on a electric material handling  machine made by Big Joe.  It could lift about about 500 lbs 4 feet.  This was  high enough to get into a 40 ft 18 wheeler truck. Each cart was on wheels.  We could load 3 across and 6 deep for  a total 18 cabinets going to another store. If the new store did not have a loading dock we had to have a way to get those cabinets off the truck. I would roll the Big Joe on my  6x10 trailer that I pulled behind my car or van.  After a few errors we learned to nail down  2 x 4's chocking the wheels on the last cabinet so they would not roll around in the truck. My 6x10 trailer was also used to haul 2 cabinets at a time to another store. Many were made  by a retired man in Conroe, Mr. _____.   I carried  a large tarp for my trailer. It was secured to special rope hooks at numerous places in the side walls of the trailer.
10
Customers loved to watch us price merchandise  or stock the shelves with new inventory. They liked to get the items that had not been picked over by someone else.  It seems that sales often increased as we filled the aisles with so many  cases from recent truckloads that you could barely walk down them until we could process the inventory  for proper placement on the shelves. Customers would help open the 30" tall boxes so they could get first choice on possibly  the perfect pattern for them before others got it. Since the wallpaper was by the pound it was no problem to help them get what they wanted from new stock.
Other tenants shared some of the costs of my porcelain sign.  The Time Tunnel was a club that entered from the back side of the building. Note that the Century 21 Real-estate  sign has their name printed twice. As an outside drive by  sign where the speed is 50mph. duplicating the name  allows them only 1/10th of the value if the letters were larger being used only once.  So many businesses make this mistake trying to get as many words as possible on a reader sign. To test this just notice which signs you can read when you  drive by a store at  50 miles per hour.  The perpendicular street sign is about 5 times as effective from an advertising point than  a sign on the building. They lose the potential real  value by displaying your name on the outside of a building.  The landlord required lit channel letters on the building. The problem with that type of sign is that the neon wears out, the plastic can be broken with a rock, It can be blown out with high winds. It does not have the flexibility of changing copy as a porcelain sign would have.

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Blue Box 1 Scan Below

Click Brian Nelson's www.PartyTentCity.com for party tents, canopies and awnings. Today's Sale 26'x40' Tarp.   Silver. Regular price is $104.00. With this ad it is on sale for only $88.00. Shipping is $15. No charge for shipping if tarp is picked up at  31 Gessner Rd.  in Houston, TX  77024  Use PayPal to Brian@NelsonIdeas.com or Call Brian 713-467-3025.  
 Blue Box 1 Contact Brian at 31 Gessner Rd. Houston, TX  77024 Tel. 713-467-3025 Cell 713-927-4479 Click: E-mail me 
 www.IamFightingCancer.com   Bookmark this page now!   Anything Internet   
 http://www.NelsonIdeas.com/Directory-All-Websites/Alphabetical.html

  09/24/2009 02:35 PM -0500


11This is  porcelain  sign  was at 15175 North Freeway. Being porcelain we could change the copy by priming the porcelain with a latex paint and then putting new letters on it. I think we had the number of rolls on the circle. I can't remember what words were put on it.
 		 1-2-08

---- Original Message -----
Dear Brian,

I have shopped at your store on many occassions and can\'t tell you how upset I was when I, once again, needed more of paper I had previously used to discover you were no longer in business.

Do you know if there is a store in Houston where I can go to look for more of the paper I purchased 15 years ago?

Vickie  L

 
Vickie, Thanks for writing and thanks for being my customer over the years. I don't know your name but send me a picture. I may recognize you. I am sorry that you  cannot find more of the paper you bought 15 years ago from Discontinued Wallpaper Co.

I don't know anyone in the business any more.  Here is my  "Needle in the Haystack" possibility thinking Idea.    If you take a picture  of the wallpaper and e-mail it to I will put it on the web  at www.DiscontinuedWallpaperCo.com  with your contact information.  Someone may have have some leftover rolls they would be willing to sell or give away. I will also put a video of it on  www.YouTube.com 
 
 How can you lose? Describe the wallpaper including the pattern number,  manufacturers name,  description of the pattern and its colors.  It  might help when someone else goes the DWC website.  I will notify manufacturers and distributors to  check the site periodically about patterns they have to sell.    Let me hear from you.  

Brian Nelson  713-467-3025.
Brian@NelsonIdeas.com  
Houston, TX
www.DiscontinuedWallpaperCo.com .

 
12
This shows the 6 ft long x 27 inch wide movable cart coming out of the man size door. There is a Crown material handling lifter which must have been rented. I just don't recall that unit. The one I owned was a Big Joe shown in 9B above.
This is a typical picture of customers rolling out wallpaper on the checking tables. The table were used cabinet shelving which we attached 4 " steel caster we bought for the Tube Cabinets. We bought those  casters from the factor in  50 gallon barrels. A barrel of those was very very heavy. Two wheel dollies were indispensable in operating the business. Sometimes the tables were very crowed with customers fighting for the longest usable table. Wallpaper paste and other items were store in the shelves under the table top.
13
The guy that sold me these neat letters that worked on the window from the inside for free advertising was Daniel Bierman.  He also installed and sold me door alarms he invented which would tell me when a customer was coming in the door.  Years later on he stopped by my store on Harwin and I invited him to work for me. He stayed several years. We are still good friends. Note the open sign. We used to have  signs that said open on one side and closed on the other.  Sometimes we would forget to turn it around so we put the hours over the CLOSED  words so we wouldn't lose customers by forgetting to turn the sign around.
This was a 4,000 Airline my Wallpaper Warehouse store. It was 10,000 sq. ft.  paying $ .10/ sq. ft.  It had knee high loading docks. . Now that I see this sign  it reminds me that I was working on this very sign using a 15 ft wood ladder when I drunk came by and crashed in a van that was right next to my ladder  causing me  to fall off my ladder hitting the bumper of the van. I wound up in the hospital ER where I was in intensive care for 10 days with enormous headaches.  The percandan drug I was taking in the hospital  was too powerful to take at home and thus was put on something else when I was finally released.  The family  had to cancel plans to go to the Nelson reunion and manage all the stores. I kept the 15 ft ladder and cut it town to a 12 ft ladder.
14
 My  6x10 hauling trail pulled be hind numerous cars, vans and even a limo also functioned  as a great  shaded and sheltered area at the beech.
The significant water leaks in the 610 Loop  120,000 sq. ft building are cleaned up by they younger staff age 10 who have a direct relationship with the owner. It is called the 'Father Son "  relationship. I think his college education with 2 degrees was motivated by not wanting to do the had labor work he learned cleaning floors at DWC.
15
As much as we tried to keep order and cleanliness in the store for our benefit as well as customers benefit we seemed to get an increase in sales when  sealed cases were handily opened by the customers when their desperate search for the right pattern was getting closer to the all or nothing  needs.
For a period of time we tried to lease space within the store as a Weekday Flea Market.
We had  120,000 square feet to share with others who might bring their own customers into the store.

Although the concept was go my ability to market and manage such an operation was not very good. 1-2-08
16
I think that is Avery on the big wheel cart. There was a lot of room to ride around.
We had a surplus inventory of thousands of posters so the kids handed out free posters to each horse rider that came along on the trailer riders that were coming in to the Houston Rodeo. They were my kids  Amber, Meredith and Avery and two friends. This store was on Katy Freeway at Antoine less than 2 miles from our home on Kuhlman. Today the entire shopping center has been torn down and replaced partly with the new I-10 freeway.
17
These were 4  employees who covered 4 stores. No. 2  was Herschel. NO. 3 was  Greg Meadows. I can't recall the names of the other two but will recognized their name when I look them up. The stores were air conditioned but the box fans helped out a lot. Note that the cabinets were all painted red.
Amber is  getting ready for a store to be set up or moved.
18


Avery unloads stock from the car for a store on Katy Freeway. Many photos have my kids helping me and I leaned more of taking pictures  of them rather than just the store.

 


We used this conveyor system for about 25 years.  Sometimes we had about 10 sections  of 10 ft.  conveyor  set up to move the cases from  inside a 40 ft truck to get inside the store as far as possible. Avery is pushing several  cases.

19
We had a 2nd floor where this picture was taken from at the 120,000 sq. ft. super store at I-10 and 610. It looks like we were having a  paperhanging class of some kind. 		 


Brian is at a typical spot at the store with thousands of rolls of new stock that has to be put on the shelves. Note the case of insulation on top of the red carts I have no idea why that was there. I think I bought a bunch of it and resold it to my customers.

20
Things look a little more cleaned up  in  this photo at the super store. 		 


There is some kind of a training session going on here. Note the cool. Not sure where the refrigerator was.

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Blue Box 2  Brian Nelson

 Do you need a party tent of white or silver tarp? Go to www.PartyTentCity.com or to see all my links go to:  http://www.PartyTentCity.com/PTC/Websites.html

Today's  special sale: Business is slow. Call me right now while this include page is up and get a 23% discount off any www.PartyTentCity.com  order.  No charge for shipping if picked up at  31 Gessner Rd.  in Houston, TX  77024 Use PayPal to Brian@NelsonIdeas.com or Call Brian 713-467-3025. http://www.NelsonIdeas.com/Directory-All-Websites/Alphabetical.html
 Blue Box 2  Bookmark this page now!  
 Contact Brian at 31 Gessner Rd. Houston, TX  77024 Tel. 713-467-3025 Cell 713-927-4479 Click: E-mail me 
 www.IamFightingCancer.com   
 

21
This is the Gulf Freeway at Monroe store when it was very new. The lease was signed prior to the store being built. 		 


Avery stands on new inventory with Mary Kay Hormache  the manager of the I-45 North freeway store at Ritchie road.  The big steel cars in the backgrounds were wider than a man door and not kept around too long before they were sold to some customers.

22


Avery sits with an 8 page flyer describing all the bargains in the store. I never did a good job of mailing this out for all the copies I purchased. Most flyers will given to customers asking each to take a couple for their friends.  Note the CB antenna on the trunk. This must have been in the 70's when CBS were so popular and some much fund to use.  Today everyone has a cell phone but you can't call the guy driving next to you to find out about traffic situations etc. Now we use a GPS fo find where we are going.

 


We were active in the Houston Wallcovering Associating promoting wallpaper.  This was a class about paperhanging.  Note that all the people were women? Maybe it is not a paperhanging class.

23


The grass in front of this new store on Gulf Freeway had not been planted yet. Driving that Lincoln with about 10MPG was considered normal when gasoline was about $ .50/ gallon.

 


The inspection tables were a part of each store. Stock was sold by the pound. The customers cut off just what they wanted. They had to have a place to roll out the paper and check it before purchasing it.  Therefore there was not legitimate reason to complain about the paper in the future.  All sales were final. We provided yardsticks, scissors and places to put the trash.

24


Amber is on skates just like Specs liquors used to advertise. Later on in the larger store I couldn't operate without the mini bikes to get quickly from one place to another.

 


The ends of the cabinets had the type of wallpaper patterns on that aisle along with wallpaper that is of that style.

25


Free wallpaper classes were quite successful for the Houston group WAGH.

 


We used 2 wheel dollies to move the cases off the trailer that were brought from another store.  A tarp covered the trailer when it rained. I think this wood trailer was rather heavy. This was the I-45 N. Freeway store with Mary and Amber in the dress.

26
Thousands of new  8 page flyers for distribution. 		 


This is new stock. I recall a trucker one time coming  to me and saying so sincerely " Mr. Nelson I think you got ripped off with this load I brought you. "  I looked at the load and advised him I was getting exactly what I had ordered. I bought stuff others wanted to get rid of. Often we got  $30 and $ 40 a roll wallpaper which we resold for $ 2.80  a pound or about $ 3-$ 4 a roll. Such a bargain for our customers.
27
The 2 wheel dolly and 3,000 lb pallet jack were invaluable in moving stock around the store. I recall buying 2 truckloads of wallpaper paste  shipped out of Chicago at  time when we moved a lot of wallpaper.		  


This sign going up for Discontinued Wallpaper Co.  was a very valuable part of the marketing plan.

28
I think I had a Olds 88 pulling this trailer. 		 


Mary and Lonnie work at filling the dumpster with stock that was taking up more space than was justifiable. At one point I shipped this stock to  26 other cities on a 50%  consignment..
29


Sometimes the boxes on the top of the carts were full and other times empty for customer use.

 


Everything in the store was on wheels. The short table could be moved to the aisle as a working area. This is at 8449 Gulf  Freeway.

30


Avery was helping by writing his initials on the side of the trailer.

 


I don't understand how the picture in the upper right got there.
31
The landlord decided to put a new face board on the front of this store. At that time we did not need the area code for 713-729-7811. We didn't have fax machines and cell phones needed more area codes. 		 


Amber and Meredith are on the ground while Avery had to climb up on the wallpaper Each roll had to be put away in it's proper place by wallpaper style.

32


The CB antenna was popular when we lived on 6 acres in Conroe.  A retired neighbor built 6 ft cabinets on wheels for me. I hauled in 2 at a time.

 


Having a store with 4 ft   high loading dock  was very convenient for unloading truck. Most of our retail stores did not have this  benefit. WE could pull the pallets out with the pallet jack.

33

I think this was a consignment merchants location in Beaumont. 		 


The whole family was there. Avery, Amber, Meredith and Rosemary. The desk had a calculator and a telephone. Money was kept on the employees person for security and quick access.

34
We used the sign "Put your roll back exactly where you found it."  for many years in the largest store. 		 


We cut a lot of circles for the front of each tube which held the pattern. It was stapled around the edges.

2 Wallpaper


"Of paper there are divers sorts, finer and coarser, as also brown and blue paper, with divers designs that are printed for the hanging of rooms; truly they are very pretty, and make houses of the more ordinary people look neat." - John Houghton, Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade (1669)
 

During the US Civil War in 1863, J.M Swords tore wallpaper from the walls of his own home on which to print his Daily Citizen newspaper and get news to his fellow Confederate citizens.

THE TRADITION OF wall decoration dates back to Egyptian and Roman wall painting. Centuries later, and particularly in cooler climates, people used fabric to cover walls and windows to keep drafts out. In the homes of the well-to-do, these fabrics were elaborate, resplendent tapestries, which also adorned the walls of European palaces and castles. They were not only practical, but decorative.

A Cheap Substitute
Wallpaper began as a cheap substitute for tapestry and paneling. Some historians believe that the use of wallpaper dates back to the 1400s. The first wallpapers were decorations for wood panels, introduced into England by Flemish craftsmen. The papers were small squares with images printed by wood blocks, which were then colored in by hand. As the desire increased to find a less expensive alternative to the wall-hangings of the rich, printers produced simple yet decorative paper panels.

In the 1500s, the wealthy continued to cover their walls but now they did so with brocades, velvets and even embossed leather. The earliest known wallpaper in England dates back to 1509 - an Italian-inspired woodcut pomegranate design printed on the back of a proclamation issued by Henry VIII. Discovered in 1911 at Christ's College in Cambridge, the paper is attributed to Hugo Goes, a York printer. In general, wallpaper of this period depicted floral designs and murals. Wallpaper's popularity increased in Elizabethan England. Throughout Europe, a fascination began with these fine papers that offered protection against dampness and an improved ability to handle fireplace smoke.

But wallpaper wasn't purely a Western invention. The Chinese began to produce it in the early 1600s, showered with painted birds, flowers and landscapes on rice paper formed in rectangular sheets.

A Period Of Innovation
The 1600s introduced a period of French innovation leading to wide acceptance of wallpaper. Writer Savary des Bruslons noted "a dominotier makes a type of tapestry on paper . . . which is used by the poorer classes in Paris to cover the walls of their huts or their shops." Such dominotiers gained the reputation of experts in emulating fabric on paper.

Papers of this period fell into two classes, irrespective of whether they were produced in England or France: simple and complicated. The simple typically depicted a geometric pattern repeat, printed from a single wood block. The complicated consisted of more complex designs, including shields, vases or flowers and were created from several blocks. Either way, designs were first printed in black onto the paper. Using a kind of stencil, color was applied. The less expensive papers were printed less carefully from worn blocks and sold at rural fairs. The more costly papers were produced from carefully carved, new wooden blocks and were printed and colored carefully as well.

The 1600s also marked the debut of flock paper. Flock is the small shearing of wool left over from the manufacture of cloth. The process involved painting the background color onto paper or canvas, printing or stenciling the design onto it with a slow-drying adhesive, and scattering the flock over the adhesive, producing a velvet-like pile over the chosen design. The practice began about 1600 but enjoyed its heyday from 1715-45 when exceptional quality paper of this type was imported from France into England.

Though called wallpaper, the paper was not attached directly to the wall during this period. Instead, it was pasted onto linen and the linen was then attached to the walls with copper tacks. Sometimes the linen was attached to wooden battens, which were then attached to the walls.

From the 1680s, wallpaper offered an economical alternative to tapestries and leather hangings. Individual sheets were joined together in groups of 12 or more to form a roll, enabling faster printing and complex designs. New production techniques also meant that hanging paper required more skill.
 

The Zuber wallpaper company took advantage of US nationalism and republished its "Views of North America" wallpaper as "The War of American Independence". Slight adjustments were made to the prints so they would appear to depict scenes such as the Bost Tea Party.

Color My World
By the beginning of the 1700s, simple black and white papers had virtually disappeared in Europe. Colored papers were in vogue, especially imported paper from China.

In France, wallpapers evolved from the end papers used in bookbinding. The first ones were printed in small squares in marbleized patterns. Eventually, the squares were glued together into a long sheet and rolled up for convenience. Wallpaper became a royal affair. In 1778, Louis XVI issued a decree that required the length of a wallpaper roll be about 34 feet.

Patterns imitated scenic tapestries, brocatelles and patterned velvets. Americans often imported these papers. For instance, the wallpaper in the Duncan House in Haverhill, MA was designed by Carle Vernet and printed in Paris about 1814. Made of separate panels, it shows a single scene of a hunt.

The French continued to innovate and invented a machine to print paper in 1785. Wallpaper design began to attract artists and not just woodblock printers. Chinese paper continued its popularity and its style of hand-painted birds, trees, pagodas and sometimes Chinese figures in landscapes became known as chinoiserie. The paper found its way into manor houses, palaces and chateaux. It was usually applied in panels and was sometimes edged with gilt. European painters copied the Chinese designs, but the French-produced papers were the most sought after.

At first, wallpaper appeared in minor rooms while fabric continued to be used in the major ones. Use of wallpaper became so widespread that it inspired the introduction of a tax in England by 1712 on paper that was "painted, printed or stained to serve as hangings".

Most papers of this time imitated textiles and their manufacturers boasted that they could emulate damask, velvet and needlework. One major designer of this period was John Baptist Jackson, born in 1700, and a pupil of the engraver Kirkhall. In 1725 he went to Paris and came into contact with paper stainer Jean Michel Papillon before he went on to Italy and became interested in Italian Renaissance design. In 1746, he returned to England, determined to revive English wallpaper printing, which had taken a beating from the French.

Dawn of the Designer
The French had taken over the industry. They paid their designers well and French nobility paid special commissions for custom papers. One manufacturer deserves special mention, Jean-Baptiste Réveillon, who became a "Manufacture Royale". For some years before the French Revolution, his factory in Paris produced the finest and most beautiful papers for the French aristocracy. It was attacked by the angry mob in 1789 and Réveillon fled to England. The factory reopened with the help of others who found favor with the Revolutionaries by printing patriotic papers in red, white and blue. Réveillon took his inspiration from painted decoration on wooden paneling, doors and shutters - a style originated by Raphael in the Vatican. His designs featured long vertical and graceful designs of urns, flowers, swans, birds and beasts block-printed in dozens of different colors, and flowing upward from a central motif. His papers were to be hung as panels, separated by borders and plain wallpaper sections. He also introduced papers that used strong colors - reds, ochres, terracottas, greens and azure blues - in addition to the traditional black. Classical motifs, medallions and dancing figures filled the panel area. Réveillon papers became a popular export to the US during the 1700s and can still be seen in New England homes.

A Taxing Situation
Meanwhile, back in England, wallpapers were being colored by hand on the wall to outwit the tax man. The industry continued to grow in spite of the taxes and grew strong enough that by 1773, Parliament lifted the ban on imported papers, though customs duties still applied. Taxation continued into the next century and generated a significant amount of revenue. By 1806, falsification of wallpaper stamps was added to the list of offenses punishable by death. To deal with the tax, English manufacturers sought to increase sales by catering to the mass market. They simplified their designs. This allowed the French to maintain their firm grip on the finer, more complicated designs.

Dramatic Design
The use of wallpaper borders is almost as old as wallpaper itself. Borders, originally used to hide the tacks used to hold the wallpaper in position, assumed their own importance by the late 1700s, because they could visually alter a room's proportions. Border designs featured florals and architectural friezes. Many of these were printed to look like a cornice and hung at a junction of the wall and ceiling to add importance and grandeur to the room. Often, they were used to outline doors and windows or architectural details within the room such as a fireplace.

By the beginning of the 1800s, dividing the wall into three parts - the dado, filler and frieze - became fashionable. Borders differentiated each section, which bore distinctive yet interrelated patterns. This style is often seen in Victorian homes.

Stripes - reminiscent of a military campaign with their military colors - became popular in Napoleonic France and in England, not only on the walls but extending to the ceilings as well. The practice spread throughout Europe. Panoramic landscapes were also popular in France. Never before had designs been attempted on such a large scale. To cover the walls of a large room without repeating a scene, 20 to 30 lengths were printed, with each length about 10 feet high and 20 inches wide (300cm by 50cm). Massive amounts of time and energy, not to mention risk, were required to print such scenes, using thousands of hand-carved blocks and hundreds of colors. For the most part, the Zuber company in Rixheim and Dufour in Mâcon and Paris produced them. In 1852, Zuber took advantage of a nationalist wave in the US and republished a previous paper, "Views of North America", as "The War of American Independence". He substituted foreground figures so the Boston Harbor became the Boston Tea Party. Peaceful scenes became battlefields.

Landscapes were not common in England as they did not accommodate the ancestral portraits the British preferred as wall decoration.

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Wallpaper

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This page refers to the material used for interior decoration. For other uses, see wallpaper (disambiguation).
 
  
Mary Cassatt's painting of two ladies drinking tea in a room with red-blue striped wallpapers.
 

Mary Cassatt's painting of two ladies drinking tea in a room with red-blue striped wallpapers.

Wallpaper is material which is used to cover and decorate the interior walls of homes, offices, and other buildings; it is one aspect of interior decoration. Wallpapers are usually sold in rolls and are put onto a wall using wallpaper paste.

Wallpapers can come either plain so it can be painted or with patterned graphics. Wallpaper printing techniques include surface printing, gravure printing, silk screen-printing, and rotary printing. Mathematically speaking, there are seventeen basic patterns, described as wallpaper groups, that can be used to tile an infinite plane. All manufactured wallpaper patterns are based on these groups. A single pattern can be issued in several different colorways.

"Wallpaper" is also a term for computer wallpaper.

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 History

Wallpaper, using the printmaking technique of woodcut, gained popularity in Renaissance Europe amongst the emerging gentry. The elite of society were accustomed to hanging large tapestries on the walls of their homes, a tradition from the Middle Ages. These tapestries added colour to the room as well as providing an insulating layer between the stone walls and the room, thus retaining heat in the room. However, tapestries were extremely expensive and so only the very rich could afford them. Less well-off members of the elite, unable to buy tapestries due either to prices or wars preventing international trade, turned to wallpaper to brighten up their rooms.

Early wallpaper featured scenes similar to those depicted on tapestries, and large sheets of the paper were sometimes hung loose on the walls, in the style of tapestries, and sometimes pasted as today. Prints were very often pasted to walls, instead of being framed and hung, and the largest sizes of prints, which came in several sheets, were probably mainly intended to be pasted to walls. Some important artists made such pieces, notably Albrecht Dürer, who worked on both large picture prints and also ornament prints intended for wall-hanging. The largest picture print was the Triumphal Arch commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and completed in 1515. This measured a colossal 3.57 by 2.95 metres, made up of 192 sheets, and was printed in a first edition of 700 copies, intended to be hung in palaces and, in particular, town halls, after hand-colouring.

Very few samples of the earliest repeating pattern wallpapers survive, but there are a large number of old master prints, often in engraving of repeating or repeatable decorative patterns. These are called ornament prints and were intended as models for wallpaper makers, among other uses.

England seems to have been always a leader in wallpaper; the earliest known sample found on a wall comes from England and is printed on the back of a London proclamation of 1509. It became very popular in England following Henry VIII's excommunication from the Catholic Church - English aristocrats had always imported tapestries from Flanders and Arras, but Henry VIII's split with the Catholic Church had resulted in a fall in trade with Europe. Without any tapestry manufacturers in England, English gentry and aristocracy alike turned to wallpaper.

During The Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, the manufacture of wallpaper, seen as a frivolous item by the Puritan government, was halted. Following the Restoration of Charles II, wealthy people across England began demanding wallpaper again - Cromwell's regime had imposed a boring culture on people, and following his death, wealthy people began purchasing comfortable domestic items which had been banned under the Puritan state. By the mid-eighteenth century, Britain was the leading wallpaper manufacturer in Europe, exporting vast quantities to Europe in addition to selling on the middle-class British market. However this trade was seriously disrupted in 1755 by the Seven Years War and later the Napoleonic Wars, and by a heavy level of duty on imports to France.

In 1748 the English ambassador to Paris decorated his salon with blue flock wallpaper, which then became very fashionable there. In the 1760s the French manufacturer Jean-Baptiste Réveillon hired designers working in silk and tapestry to produce some of the most subtle and luxurious wallpaper ever made. His sky blue wallpaper with fleurs-de-lys was used in 1783 on the first balloons by the Montgolfier brothers. The landscape painter Jean-Baptiste Pillement discovered in 1763 a method to use fast colours. Towards the end of the century the fashion for scenic wallpaper revived in both England and France, leading to some enormous panoramas, like the 1804 20 strip wide English one showing the Voyages of Captain Cook, which is still in situ in Ham House, Peabody Massachusetts. Like most of eighteenth century wallpapers, this was designed to be hung above a dado.

During the Napoleonic Wars , trade between Europe and Britain evaporated, resulting in the gradual decline of the wallpaper industry in Britain. However, the end of the war saw a massive demand in Europe for British goods which had been inaccessible during the wars, including cheap, colourful wallpaper. The development of steam-powered printing presses in Britain in 1813 allowed manufacturers to mass-produce wallpaper, reducing its price and so making it affordable to working-class people. Wallpaper enjoyed a huge boom in popularity in the nineteenth century, seen as a cheap and very effective way of brightening up cramped and dark rooms in working-class areas. By the early twentieth century, wallpaper had established itself as one of the most popular household items across the Western world. During the late 1980s though, wallpaper began to fall out of fashion in lieu of Faux Painting which can be more easily removed by simply re-painting.

"Wallpaper" is also a term for computer wallpaper, referring to an image used as a background on a laptop screen, usually for the desktop of a graphical user interface. "Wallpaper" is the term used in Microsoft Windows, while the Mac OS calls it a 'desktop picture'.

 Gallery

"Artichoke" wallpaper, by John Henry Dearle for William Morris & Co., circa 1897 (Victoria and Albert Museum).
modern retro wallpaper


 
'Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique', panels 1-10 of woodblock printed wallpaper designed by Jean-Gabriel Charvet and manufactured by Joseph Dufour
'Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique', panels 11-20 of woodblock printed wallpaper designed by Jean-Gabriel Charvet and manufactured by Joseph Dufour

 Use

Like paint, wallpaper requires proper surface preparation before application. Additionally, wallpaper is not suitable for all areas. For example, bathroom wallpaper may deteriorate rapidly due to excessive steam. Proper preparation includes the repair of any defects in the drywall or plaster and the removal of loose material or old adhesives.

 Removal

Interior decorating styles change over time, and eventually a person may wish to remove that once lovely wallpaper.

 Perforation

Most of the methods of wallpaper removal can be aided by mechanically perforating or scoring old wallpaper with a tool called a Paper Tiger, which looks like a puck with a wheel of sharp teeth. Rolling this tool on the wall in a clockwise or counterclockwise motion effectively creates tiny holes in the surface of wallpaper, but leaves the drywall undamaged. Perforation should be followed by the application of a chemical wallpaper stripper or steam to dissolve the underlying wallpaper paste.

 Chemical Wallpaper Stripper

Chemical wallpaper stripper can be purchased at most paint or home improvement stores. It is mixed with warm water or a mixture of warm water and vinegar, then sprayed onto wall surfaces. Several applications may be required to saturate the existing wallpaper. Perforation can aid in the absorption of the mixture and lead to faster removal. After the mixture has dissolved the wallpaper paste, the wallpaper can be removed easily by pulling at the edges and with the aid of a putty or drywall knife.

 Steam

Another method of removal is to apply steam to wallpaper in order to dissolve the wallpaper paste. A wallpaper steamer consists of a reservoir of water, an electric heating element, and a hose to direct the steam at the wallpaper. The steam dissolves the wallpaper paste, allowing the