Mid century vinyl wainscote

[cowboy4800]

Howdy folks,Y'all member this stuff from Grannys house, well for me it was actually Aunt Dixie's house, but I digress. Anyways I picked up an entire roll of it, an old home decorating store was going out of business, the stuff had been upstairs for decades. Interested in any of it? lemme know

 

[danemodsandy]

OMG!

I haven't seen that stuff in about thirty years.

It was put up with adhesive, and it was the lowest-cost option for people who couldn't afford real tile, which was a lot of people in the '50s and early '60s. I remember it in kitchens and bathrooms. It worked out decently well in kitchens, pretty much, but you had to be pretty desperate to use it in a bath, because it was so prone to water damage around tubs.

After this stuff came melamine tileboard, which was Masonite faced with a couple of microns' worth of melamine. It had a tile design pressed into it. It looked okay new, but as soon as the melamine got scratched, the Masonite started getting wet and rotting.

Then came plastic tile, which was a decent enough solution as long as it was over the same concrete backing as was used for ceramic tile. Trouble was, that concrete backing represented the major portion of a tile job's cost, so plastic tile didn't save you much money, if properly installed. Many people just glued plastic tile up themselves, over wallboard, with predictable results.

Last was ceramic tile, which was the only thing that really held up back in the day. Today, prefab plastic tub surrounds are watertight, hold up for years, and have nothing to rot. They're at a lot of different price points, too. But back then, your Aunt Dixie (and my grandmother) didn't have a lot of options.

 

[tomturbomatic]

One of the most attractive wall coverings I ever saw was/is in a clinic at Johns Hopkins. It looked vaguely like marble squares, but when I moved closer to look at it, I saw that it was a beige commercial vinyl floor tile with a very slight pattern; each tile set at a right angle to its neighbor. All of my taste is in my mouth, but for an institutional setting, it was a beautiful wall and probably reasonable in cost, very durable, eliminated the periodic painting cycle and was easily maintained with a detergent wipedown.

 

[oxydolfan1]

No, thanks, I have quite enough of the "alabaster" version of what is pictured above, gracing the walls of my own bathroom!

In truth, it's not that bad, once you get used to it, and it is very easy to maintain, and keep clean.

I'd actually replace it, but I really would like something a bit more vivid and dramatic, and I've never anything comparable in the stores these days...

 

[oxydolfan1]

Oh, one more thing...

The best thing I ever did was to cover my aging walls in every painted room EXCEPT the bathroom with paintable wallpaper.

I love semigloss and higher-gloss finishes on painted walls because it is so much more durable and washable, and that means I have to paint less (and use better-quality paints when I do).

But I never realized that, when you live in a sunnier place, the glare I never minded in darker apartments and homes could be distracting.

The swirl pattern on the paper considerably cuts down on the visible gloss level, yet you can run your hand across it and have that smooth enamel finish that is just so much more serviceable and resistant to scratches, stains, etc.

It's available in the larger paint and big-box home improvement stores. Every roll and variety I bought was imported from England, so paintable wallpaper must be all the rage there now.

I was skeptical at first, but it even gives plain white paint a distinctive texture.