Originally Posted March 2019

You asked and I have answered. I am going to attempt to walk you through how I got that perfectly, imperfect faux wallpaper.

I could just dive right in and lay it all out for you but where’s the fun in that? So here’s the backstory…

When we moved into this house 3/4 of the downstairs was covered in layers of wallpaper, with the original layer having been hung in 1910. That translates to being hung in a way which made it impossible to get down. Enter one very determined 70 year old handy-man, who after two weeks of scream swearing at the walls and scraping until the point that we had to re-plaster all of them, rid us of every square inch of paper, as well as most of our bank account.

So obviously it went over like gang busters when I mentioned that I maybe, possibly, wanted to re-hang wallpaper. But as I have said before I do not take “no” very well. After some brainstorming and a little crowd sourcing on Instagram, I settled on trying to recreate the wallpaper I wanted with paint. The paper I had my eye on was essentially just a bunch of marks dashed in a haphazard way. So not a terribly complex pattern.

I started by taping 6 sheets of 8″x 11″ paper together in two rows and started making vertical dash marks until I felt comfortable with the spacing and the length of the marks. I used a 2″ sponge brush to paint the dash marks but if you want a smaller or larger mark you can go down to a 1″ or up to a 3″. The brushes do become too saturated at a point, I ended up going through 15 brushes once it was all said and done. For the black I used Sherwin Williams Tri-Corn Black in satin finish and the base color is Sherwin Williams Eider White in Matte.

Here is the tricky part there really is no rhythm or reason to the way I created the dash mark the best way I can describe it would be dip it in the paint –don’t use a lot of paint– and then gently press it on to the wall, drag down however long you want it and quickly lift it.

Side Note: We have 12 foot ceilings, so in a perfect world I would just grab the 12 foot ladder and go to town but I needed to work in horizontal swaths in order to keep the randomness somewhat consistent. So I started with a step stool, then a 6 foot ladder, and then finally graduated to the 12 foot ladder.

Here is the finished product in all her glory!

I’m actually really pleased with the way it turned out and surprise, surprise so is the husband! Here is a close up shot along with an adorable puffin print.