"Hi everyone, my name is Stef and I have house DIY ADD. We’ve been
living in our home for a year and a half in upstate New York, and it seems that
if there’s a three day weekend, we’re doing a project. Here’s one I did
recently to our first floor powder room.
I picked the powder room for this project because first of all, it has
the smallest wall in it, and it is also a very dry room. If this was done in a
bathroom with a shower/tub, then this project wouldn’t work well.
I’ve included pictures in this post but am sorry to say that because
this is such a small room, it was hard to get a full picture of the room, so
bear with me…"
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| Olive wall before... |
I should preface my first post by saying our house was a short-sale and
kind of a mess. Flat paint was used in almost every room, with a family that
had toddlers and cats so there were finger prints and scratches everywhere.
Long story short, we spent our first month painting and re-carpeting almost the
whole house (3 rooms to go!).
We painted the walls using Home Depot’s Martha Stewart collection – the
new color is “Sisal” in case you are wondering. The wall which will be covered
in paper is to the left of the window:
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| Wall before... |
So, how do you actually do this? I found a few posts online, and was
surprised to hear from a few other DIY-ers that you could use double-sided tape
to get the paper to stick to the wall. If you’re looking for something more
permanent, you could use wallpaper paste but I’m too messy to be using glue or
paste on the wall. I used 3M double sided tape found right at Target. Buy a lot
of it (I used 3 rolls for this one wall).
Things you need for this project:
- Books with pages that you’d like on your wall (similar in size)
- Exacto knife
- Paper slicer with a straight edge
- Double sided tape
- Level
- Kitchen spatula
Where to start:
For our main book I used a New York State tourism book from 1943. It
had a great mix of pages – maps, day trip tours to certain cities, and lots of
history and timelines inside. The other book I used, which was slightly larger,
was an old law book from the late 1800s – this also had a nice mix of pages. I
flipped through the books and used an Exacto knife to cut as close to the
binding as I could, which let me pull out several pages at a time from the one
cut. They don’t have to be straight yet – that’s what the paper slicer is for.
I didn’t cut all the paper at once; I would work on the wall for a bit
and go back to the books then back to the wall. You can do whatever works for
you. I also had an antiqued poster that I wanted to include in the wall, so
you’ll see that incorporated in this wall too.
Getting the book pages on the wall:
I put a piece of tape on each corner of each book page, and began
placing them on the wall as squared with the bottom as I could. Use the spatula
to smooth the pages on the wall. I started at the bottom of the wall and worked
my way up, which is how I ended up with a uniform bottom. I might suggest
cutting the paper in half to have a staggered bottom. This was a lesson learned
for me at the end because the top of the wall turned out to be staggered unlike
the bottom (see below and you’ll see the difference – some pages are cut in
half at the top where they are all full size at the bottom).
Just get creative and get going. Pull out the level every few
rows just to make sure you’re not getting crooked. It seems like after this point, I started layering a lot more (and I
think that caused me to move more quickly).
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| You’ll see what I mean about the top – I cut some pages in in half or more or less to keep it interesting... |
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Finished product! |
Tips:
- Make sure your floor is vacuumed so you don’t get any dust or pet hair in the tape.
- Dust the wall where it meets the ceiling, and especially in the corners, to get rid of any cob webs.
- After every few pieces on the wall take a step back and look at how things are lining up to see if you like the pattern you've created. I could see doing this uniform all across the wall but I staggered them and layered them for a messier look by just eyeballing as I went.
- You may have things on your wall to take off or cut around – I couldn't remove the door stop shown in that last picture so I used my Exacto knife to cut a circle into the paper.
- I did this in October, and here we are in February and none of the papers have fallen off the wall. As the humidity/dryness changes you may want to press everything down again just to keep everything in place. I've done this once or twice just using my hand.
I think this project cost us under $20. I started it one night and woke
up the next morning to finish it. I think it took me three to four hours to
complete. And I am very happy with how it turned out! It’s definitely a
conversation piece, although a little odd being in a bathroom.
Enjoy and get to work!
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