The walls in my dining room are white & I knew that I wanted to jazz them up a little, but I wasn’t sure how. I want to put more trim on the walls, but until then, I want to make a statement on the back wall with something of interest. My mom had some leftover wallpaper from her house that she let me have & I decided to put it to use. The huge plus to these panels is that they can be taken down easily if I decide I don’t like them anymore.
The first thing I had to determine was size. I knew I was going to add framing so 48X24” felt like the appropriate size for the room. Hobby Lobby conveniently had a canvas in that size, which I liked for securing the paper and hanging.
Next, I laid my wallpaper out and made my cuts. I tried to line up the design on the three panels as close as possible so they still appeared to flow across the wall as wallpaper would. The rolls were a little over 28” wide which worked perfectly.
When all three strips were cut out, I got ready to paste. I did these two different ways, and I don’t think there is a right or wrong. The first way was pasting with all-purpose wallpaper paste on the canvas and the paper. I used a scraper to make sure all the bubbles were smoothed out & let it dry. When I wasn’t confident that the paste wasn’t going to leave bubbles, I took my staple gun and stapled the paper to the edges of the canvas (similar to recovering a cushion with fabric).
Both worked great! Next time, I would probably put a little more faith in the wallpaper paste and do them that way.
Next came the frames.
I had an idea in my head of how I wanted these to look, so I went to Lowe’s & figured out what kind of decorative trim I wanted. I built a simple frame using my square and poplar wood. Poplar is paintable & I knew I would be painting. I found a decorative trim that I liked. Over the top of the basic frame, I used my miter saw to frame the canvas with the trim that I selected & nailed them to the frame. I used wood filler to fill my nail holes.
Then I was ready to paint!
I used this satin finish metallic paint by Modern Masters. It was my first time trying this product and I was really happy with the shine that it brought to the wood frames. I just used a simple craft paintbrush to paint the frames.
I am so happy with the outcome of these that I want to do it again. This is such a great way to be able to use wallpaper and not make it so permanent. It is also a great way to use leftover wallpaper that would otherwise be wasted!
XXX
