In my family room I had a big empty wall that I wanted to do something unique with that made a statement, was rather inexpensive, and filled it up without cluttering it up with a bunch of art! While shopping at Lowe’s I came across their wallpaper department and my first reaction was – wallpaper….EW!! Dont’ you think of 1970’s green and pink floral print from your grandmothers house when you hear the word “wallpaper”? But what immediately caught my attention to this display was the neutral modern print. I think it’s called Trellis? I’ve heard it called different things but as you can tell by my house, it’s basically my favorite print ever. I was intrigued. But still skeptical. When people asked about it, would I be able to admit it was actually wallpaper? I decided to give it a try and I was going to proudly boast that “heck yeah it’s wallpaper!”
MATERIALS NEEDED:
– Wallpaper of your choice (mine’s from Lowe’s link here)
– Wallpaper paste (also from Lowe’s pictured below)
– Regular paint roller and tray
– Exacto blade knife
– Old sheet or something you don’t mind getting messy
– Water bucket & Sponge
– Smoothing edge (pictured below)
– An extra set of hands (optional)
TOTAL COST FOR MY WALL = approx. $150
Here is the “before” of my living room wall. Before much of anything really, not just wallpaper.
Start out my MEASURING your wall to find out how much of the wallpaper and paste you will need. Making several trips to the store isn’t fun (trust me). The roll says it covers 56 square feet but that’s if you use every square inch and it lines up perfectly. WHICH IT WON’T. It took me 4 rolls for approx. 153 sq.ft. Make sure you have plenty of extra because there will be quite a bit you can’t use due to the pattern alignment. I bought one large bottle of paste and it was enough. The one I have pictured is the smaller container, so it depends on your wall size.
I started out by laying the big sheet in the middle of the floor, got my water bucket nearby, and my adhesive tray with roller. My setup looking something like this:
This is the sponge I used:
Now – Don’t be fooled that the wallpaper says that it’s “PREPASTED”. You still need paste, folks. Sorry to break it to you. Ideally you are supposed to be able to sponge on some water and it be sticky enough to adhere to the wall. But unless you want it peeling off on the corners and it sliding around and not sticking, you need to use the paste. In my case, my walls are 9 feet high so the weight of each strip alone (it’s pretty thick, and durable stuff) is not able to hold up without the paste.
So I rolled out my first piece, measured it OVER 9 feet to have wiggle room and made a cut with scissors (doesn’t need to be exactly straight). Next, use the sponge to wet the entire surface, but not dripping wet. Then roll on the paste very generously. I noticed that the more I used the better it was. I used it very sparingly on the first piece of two and realized later it wasn’t enough.
Then, hang the first piece on the side of the wall you decide to start on and use the corner as a guide for the edges. Make sure there is excess wallpaper at the bottom edge. You will cut it off with an exacto knife. This saves from having to measure exactly, if your walls are uneven, and you’d rather have too much than too little. Start by placing the strip in the top corner and smooth out with a smoothing device AS YOU GO. Don’t try to press on the entire piece and then smooth it out. Attach with your hands one tiny section and use the smoother to guide the rest to adhere to the wall.
This is the smoothing edge I used:
After you have the first piece up, this will serve as your guide for the rest. Cutting each additional strip requires matching it up with the last piece. Don’t just cut another 9′ piece assuming it will be enough. Trust me, I wasted lots of wallpaper like this. Look at where your last cut on the roll ended and how much further down you will need to go to get the pattern to match up with the top of the second strip to the first strip on the wall. Then measure the 9 feet from that point. Sometimes it means you will be cutting a 10 or 11 foot strip. This is why it’s so important to have plenty of excess wallpaper. (You can always use the leftovers when wallpapering a pantry closet like I did. Details soon!)
When hanging the second piece the most important part is matching the pattern at the top of the wall and keeping the edge lined up to the edge of the first piece. Again, let the smoothing edge do most of the work for you as you use your hands to guide and make sure the pattern and edges are lining up. This may take two people.
When cutting off the excess, I used the smoothing edge to push up against the ceiling (or baseboard) to use as a guide for the exacto knife. I cut off the excess like this:
Getting the pieces all aligned properly took lots of patience for sure, but luckily if it starts to get unaligned you can always peel it up pretty quickly and start again. Sometimes I had to peel off entire strips 3 and 4 times before it was aligned right. Keep calm and keep pasting’ y’all.
When it came to outlets, I removed the plate covers and just wallpapered right over them as if they didn’t exist. Then I went back with the exacto knife, made a cut out around them, and then put the plate back on. It’s definitely not the prettiest cut underneath, but once you put the plate on, nobody can see that part!
Once I got to the other end of the wall, the width of one strip was too much. So I had to cut it vertically as well. This was probably the most difficult piece. What had happened by the end was – the distance left at the top was smaller than the distance left at the bottom. So basically as each piece went up they were slightly at an angle. Probably because the very first piece (aligned with the corner wall) isn’t a straight wall. This is very typical. So I measured the distance at the top and drew a dot on my wallpaper, and then measured the distance at the bottom and drew another dot on my wallpaper 9 feet from the first one. Then I used a measuring tape to connect these dots to make a straight cut. So I ended up having a piece of wallpaper that was shaped like this:
You may think this is really off and people will notice, but trust me they won’t. Not many walls are perfectly straight so this is bound to happen. The imperfections will be hidden behind the huge beautiful statement this wall makes! Another thing that annoyed me when lining up strips next to each other are that at one point it would be aligned perfectly and at the next part where the pattern meets it would be off. Sort of like I have in this picture. Once again, nobody will notice these minor details.
Here is a final picture of the finished product. And more to come from my family room makeover soon!
Comment and let me know what you think!