I think that the walls throughout my Craftsman home have officially been painted every color in the rainbow. My living room began as beige, and last year I painted them a dark red for a more formal feel. The family room is a mild green that is relaxing and the kitchen has splashes of a bright, cheerful blue. The kids picked their own colors for their rooms. My daughter picked a lilac purple and my son decided on a light brown. I can honestly say that I have practically become a professional painter, but I am ready to try something different. Since I was having problems on choosing paint colors for my master bedroom and bath, I figured this was the perfect opportunity to try out wallpapering.
Although I’ve painted just about every room in the house, I never got around to painting my bedroom and bath. I am usually all painted out after doing all the other rooms. So my bedroom and bath walls are still their original white, which is perfect for my wallpaper project. First I did some researching to familiarize myself with the concept of wallpapering. Apparently it began as large tapestries in Europe to help insulate the cold, stone walls. Nowadays, wallpaper comes in rolls and is fairly easy to apply to the walls. It also is available in a huge variety of materials, colors and patterns. There is the traditional paper, vinyl that is more durable, fabric, textured embossed papers, shiny metallic papers and naturalistic grass wallpapers. I figured I better go simple and easy for my first try, so I went with the user-friendly vinyl coated wallpaper. It is easiest to keep clean, pretty durable and easy to remove, just in case it turns out to be a disaster.
After I bought the rolls of wallpaper, I prepared the walls for attachment. I wiped them down with a damp cloth and removed a few nails that had been placed to hang pictures. My kids helped me with holding the strips up against the wall and marking out where each piece will go. Since I got the easy wallpaper, it was already prepasted on the back of it. I filled up a bucket and we started dipping the wallpaper in the water for application. It was pretty wet and sticky, but had no problems sticking it to the wall. Then we used dry towels to smooth out the paper and get the excess water, wrinkles and bubbles out. The door and window frames were a bit of a challenge getting the paper to fit perfectly around them.
When the walls were finished, we still had some wallpaper left, so I decided to get creative with it. We have this older curio cabinet in the formal dining room that I have wanted to fix up for years. The outside of it still looked pretty new, but the inside was never finished. Unfortunately, it was noticeable because the cabinet doors were made of glass. It was the perfect project for the remaining of the wallpaper. After applying it to the inside of the cabinet, the curio cabinet looked so much newer and fresher!
We actually had a lot of fun wallpapering and it was so much easier than painting to clean up afterwards. There was no wet paint spots, paint spills or drop cloths to worry about. I did layout some sheets just in case the wallpapering was messy, but after we were done, they were just a slightly bit damp from the water. All in all, the process of wallpapering was a very pleasant one. We had some enjoyable family time and got the satisfaction of a beautifully finished project in the end. Now we have one of those Arts and Crafts homes that is not only freshly painted, but also has brand new and refreshing wallpaper.
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