It’s been a while since you’ve seen the new powder room and closet but we’ve finally made enough progress to share with you. I’ll get to the powder room progress another day (lots going on there). Today is all about the new closet and hanging wallpaper. 

If you remember, way back in July I shared the new bedroom closet build (you can see it here). We built it in an empty corner of the guest bedroom to replace the closet that was turned into a powder room. Remember, we have a small home so we needed to add a closet back for extra storage (not to mention resale).

We’ve had a ton of challenges with this space from the get-go. First challenge is working in such a tight space. It makes every project more difficult, and time consuming. The next challenge is that the walls are plaster and nothing is square or level. It may be small, but building the closet was not easy. It’s just the way it is with older homes. 

Once we finished building the closet, I filled all the holes and painted the walls. After painting the walls I started throwing around the idea of wallpaper. I’ve never been particularly fond of wallpaper, and we’ve never actually hung it in any of the homes we’ve lived in, but I wanted to try something different in this tiny space.

Deciding I wanted to use wallpaper was easy. Actually finding one that I loved was a whole other ball game. I looked at a ton of samples, and it took me weeks to decide, but I finally settled on one I loved (this one from Spoonflower).

I went into this project like I always do, with a clear picture of what I wanted and a husband who is always on board. (Ok, maybe not always but he usually comes around). This time was different though. He didn’t want me to use wallpaper, actually he hated the idea, and he poo-pooed every sample I showed him. Obviously he was no help, so I picked this out without his blessing and ordered it.

Hanging Wallpaper

Hanging wallpaper is a two person job so I had to employ a bit of groveling to get the hubs to help me out. Of course he did it, he has never refused, but he hated every minute. Ask him, he will tell you so himself. 

I won’t go through a step-by-step but I will tell you a few things that we did that made the job easier.

Like I said, we have never hung wallpaper before so we had no experience to look back on. We just read the instructions that came with the wallpaper and did it, with a few modifications.

The very first thing we did was to work with a small sample piece of our prepasted paper. The instructions said to use a roller or sponge but we didn’t like how it spread out so we used a squirt bottle. We sprayed down our small sample piece and booked it for the time instructed. It came out perfectly. 

Once our test was done and we were ready to start the process, we grabbed a big piece of wood from the basement. This gave us enough space to spread each sheet out so we could wet it down thoroughly.

After we thoroughly wet the sheet of wallpaper, we booked it for 10 minutes and then hung it on the wall.

You want to make sure your walls are smooth, every bump will show. Also, if you paint your walls first, make sure you’ve given them plenty of time to dry. 

We used 4 strips of wallpaper and it took us 90 minutes from start to finish. Compared to the other projects we’ve done in this space, it was pretty easy. The change is dramatic, too.

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It’s just the pop I was hoping for. Of course there will be a door on the closet so you won’t see it unless you open it. 

We also added electric in this space for a light (you can find the one I bought, here). Older homes don’t have lights in the closets so I wanted to be sure we added one in here. It probably isn’t totally necessary, since it’s such a small space, but it wasn’t a big deal to add it while we were building.

This weekend we’ll finish the quarter round, add shelving and a rod.

It’s a small space, for sure, but I should be able to store some of my shoes and hanging clothes. It’s certainly better than hanging them in a bag in the basement, where they’ve been ever since we started.

My final thoughts on wallpaper(?)

I love it in this space but I won’t be doing anymore rooms in the near future. I change my mind about my decor often and if I had wallpaper in a space that I had to look at every day, I would tire of it. 

Wallpaper is expensive, ya’ll! That was part of my issue with picking the right one out. I would find one I loved and it would be way out of my price range. As it was, I paid $240 for this small space. What???? I know, I know…

As for the hubs…he still doesn’t like it and I’ve stopped trying to convince him. You can’t win ’em all. 

What about you…would you hang wallpaper in your home?

You can catch up on the powder room addition here.

A New Addition to the Cottage: A Small Powder Room

And the DIY vanity we built here.

Building a DIY Vanity

 

Although I’ve finished all of the big projects in my 1st guest bedroom, there were still a few small things that I needed to add and tweak. One of the things I wanted to add was a lamp on the desk in the bookcase. There is no overhead lights in this room and I am only able to fit one nightstand with a lamp, so this room needs all the lighting help it can get. When I finished the room in April the bookcase looked like this…

There’s already an outlet in the desk niche so I thought it would be the perfect place to put a lamp.

I auditioned several lamps for the spot and the one problem I kept having was the cord…there was no place to hide it. I did try using books and trays to help camouflage it but I wasn’t liking the way it looked.

Mr. C² suggested we shorten the lamp cord but I would still see some of the cord and the plug and I knew that it would bug me every time I walked in that room. Since there is also an outlet under the desk, I decided to drill a hole in the desk so the cord could be pulled through and plugged in underneath.

Because I didn’t want a huge hole in the desk, we drilled a hole just big enough to fit the plug through and right where the lamp would sit. This way the base could cover the hole.

Just a simple thing that kind of solved the problem. Although I have the stool tucked under the desk, you can still see the cord hanging down so putting a pillow on it helped hide it. I will eventually change the brown cord to a white one so it blends in with the bookcase.

As you can see, I removed the starburst mirror that I had up in the bedroom reveal photos (the first photo in this post). I’m still working on this area but it just seemed like too much with the mirror and lamp. Now I just need to decide between the bird lamp and the tall one.

Maybe I’m being picky but cords are just one of those things that I don’t like to see in my room.

Do you mind if there are cords showing in your room? Which lamp do you like best, the bird lamp or the taller lamp? If you want to see more pictures of this room, check out the guest bedroom reveal here and the all the details and sources here.