Spring 2021 ORC My First Time Wallpapering

Welcome back to week 2 of the Spring 2021 One Room Challenge. It has been so much fun to connect with other participants and see what rooms are getting makeovers. In case you missed it, we decided to overhaul our office for this challenge. We got all our clutter cleared out, and made room for painting and my first time wallpapering this week. The room is already looking SO fresh and it makes me excited to keep going. If you want to put wallpaper in your home, but are feeling too nervous to take the leap, keep reading for some tips and encouragement!

This was my first time wallpapering and I was lucky enough to get some help from my mom. She put up tons of wallpaper back in the day and has since taken down tons of wallpaper. Even though she will never put it back in her home, she was happy to help me!! She was also very impressed with modern wallpaper. According to her, it was much easier to hang and far less messy than wallpapers of yore. So if you are avoiding wallpaper based on nightmare stories from friends or family, know that the “technology” has come a long way!

Materials

1. Wallpaper, duh
2. Wallpaper Glue
3. Seam Roller
4. Trapezoid Smoothing Tool
5. Razor Blade
6. Cheap or old paint brush
7. Sponge
8. Bucket of water

I bought the materials we didn’t already have at our local Ace Hardware. It was a fairly inexpensive project that would cost even less with inexpensive wallpaper. However, I would be cautious about buying truly cheap paper for fear of rips while installing. Rather than give you an extensive guide to hanging wallpaper, I am just going talk through some things I learned and give helpful tips. There are many YouTube tutorials and guides across the internet that do a much better job explaining the process than I ever could. Make sure to watch a few how-to videos before starting your own project!

So what tips did I learn from my first time wallpapering? Most importantly, it helps to have a very sharp razor blade for this project. You want to make incredibly precise cuts and a dull razor just doesn’t cut it. Get it? Cut it…because it’s a razor…anywho! I would also suggest giving yourself plenty of room to work in. You don’t want to be dripping wallpaper glue all over your upholstered couch. Move everything out of the way! A laser level would be a very handy tool to have while wallpapering. An uneven panel will affect every panel following it. You may think you can eyeball a perfectly straight line, but why chance it? Finally, don’t get discouraged if it isn’t perfect. We found out that our walls are not plumb and that affected the wallpaper pattern. There is nothing we can do about it! You are your own worst critic and unless you made a seriously big error, no one will notice!

A final note based on the first picture in this post – make sure you measure correctly! I unsurprisingly didn’t do math correctly and had to pause the project while waiting for more wallpaper. But we got it done! This wallpaper is even better than I expected and I can’t believe how much it brightened up this dark, North-facing room. The Benjamin Moore Simply White paint might have helped a bit too 😉 This is my favorite white paint because it has just a hint of warm yellow. For those interested, the trim is painted Benjamin Moore Northern Air. This was the closest blue paint I could find to match the blue in the wallpaper. Now that the wallpaper and paint are done, we can start working on the credenza! Check back next week to see our progress and as always, thank you so much for reading!