“This should be ugly, but it really isn’t.”

amyheavilin

6 years ago

“I have an idea.” These are the four most dangerous words in “Amy Speak,” and they are usually followed by Doug saying, “Uh oh. Let’s hear it.”

I’ve had this idea for YEARS every since I had wallpaper samples in my hand and thought “I wish I could just use them all.” All along since then, my thought was (and still is) that whenever I build a master closet, I would wallpaper the ceiling with wallpaper samples.

My rationale was –

I like interesting things in closets, but you wouldn’t be able to see the walls because I’m kind of a clothes horse.
Wallpapering a ceiling sounds fun, but also sounds terrible. But using little bitty pieces seems less terrible.
It’s a closet. If no one likes it except for me, IT’S A CLOSET.

And as I was thinking about this $0 makeover for the bathroom, I thought…… why not? I have a million wallpaper samples that I’ve collected over the years. They are fun and colorful and bonkers. They don’t deserve to be hidden in a box, but if they are awful, I’m re-doing this bathroom for real in hopefully less than a decade….. so no risk, right?

Just a reminder – when I took off the wallpaper in the bathroom, I only steamed the top half. I left the bottom wallpaper on, knowing I was going to cover it. I did remove anything loose or in bad shape.

I wanted this to be a controlled chaos. First, I took all my wallpaper samples out. I used a paper cutter to cut them all to a 5.5 inch height (I didn’t worry about length). I wanted the samples to be in stripes, not completely random.

Once I had the samples cut, I sorted them by color. I had a folder of pinks, blue, purple, green, metallic, multi…… and then I counted each color. To no one’s surprise, I had a lot of teal and purple.

Then, I made an order. I wasn’t planning on following this STRICTLY, but used it as a guideline to make sure I didn’t run out of one color too soon, or use too much purple at once. And, then I made folders with a set of 21 samples to get through my pattern. I was TOTALLY BIASED and had folders of samples I loved the most (those would go on prominent walls) and samples that were just okay (those could go behind the toilet and next to the vanity).

To make sure I liked what I was doing, I laid them out to visually look at a row, and if I needed to change something around, I would.

I did not use wallpaper paste. I used Modge Podge, because I wasn’t sure if I would need to go back over the top (I didn’t) and it just felt like it would be easier for what I was doing. But since I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, it was just a guess. (Spoiler alert – it went great!).

I started with the wall behind the door – which felt like a good place to learn. The first piece, I painted the back of the wallpaper paste with the Modge Podge. This was a terrible, horrible, messy idea that I do not recommend. After the first piece, I just painted the Modge Podge on the wall, and pressed the piece on. I overlapped each piece by about 1/8 inch (and the overlap got glue), and I kept my paper cutter in the room to make any adjustments. And then I went over everything with a dry rag to get each piece evenly adhered. I thought it would be a mess and I would set the room on fire, but it was SO FREAKING EASY.

I am super sorry that I didn’t do video of me hanging this. But, I’m not smart, so I didn’t.

If you remember, there were a lot of critters in the previous wallpaper in the room. Please notice the bunnies!

I was strategic, and made sure that some of the bunnies survived! Four, to be exact.

“Find the Bunny” is a new favorite game for guests. Well, it will be once the plague is over and we can have guests again.

I was so proud of finishing the first wall that I took a selfie. It’s a pretty fun selfie background.

There are new critters on the walls now – I LOVE this fish.

And this bee! Or hornet. Or kitten? I don’t know. I’m not an entomologist.

So – now find them! And find THREE MORE BUNNIES! It’s a really fun game. (Also, peep that sconce shadow on the wall.)

Something interesting about this project – normally, when I’m working on something repetitive and tedious, I can only do it for so long. 30 minutes, MAYBE an hour, and then I need to do something else for a bit. I absolutely COULD NOT STOP this project. I was addicted to seeing how the pattern would come out. “Just one more row.” “Okay, one more.” “It’s not THAT late, I can do one more.”

Some rows had to be made narrower to make everything fit, but that works okay. I wanted it to look like tile, but not enough to do the math to make it all even.

Also, initially I was planning to just do the walls that had wallpaper before, and leave the white plastic “I’m pretending I’m tile, but I’m not tile” walls around the sink and toilet.” But once I started, there was no way I was leaving that white in the room. And I knew I would have enough wallpaper.