new: wallpaper
If you ever want to be humbled, hang wallpaper.
A few rooms in our house have peel and stick wallpaper from previous tenants, and most are not my speed but manageable. I took the wallpaper out in the bathroom, which was a quick and easy fix. The kitchen will be a bigger project, so it’s staying for now. But the biggest eyesore to me was the living room. Above our fireplace mantle hung peel and stick wallpaper covered in gold, metallic pineapples.
If you love gold, metallic pineapples, fantastic. It is not for me and I hated them. So one day, being the super chill person I am, I ripped them all down. And behind it, I found an incomplete paint job and a big hole. This house is a gift that keeps on giving.
Sensing my escalating annoyance, my husband patched the hole in the plaster as I started a plan on how to fix it visually. Because why would I start a project with an actual plan? Knowing that our living room overhaul is going to be a much bigger project down the road, which will include redoing the floors, I wanted to plan a temporary fix that would last at least a year.
One of the issues with the gold pineapple wallpaper (beyond me hating it) is that it was so neutral. To me, the fireplace acts as a central piece to our living space and I wanted to accentuate it. I was originally leaning toward a dark motif, picking out deep greens with florals, embracing my desire to be consumed by moss. But inside of me are two wolves: a crow and Jem. Or something like that. And this time, I chose to go bright. Considering this room gets a lot of light and the walls are a light color, I decided to play that up (for now.) I found a peel and stick wallpaper from Love Vs Design that is such a pretty pink/purple, reminding me of the Thistle crayon color.
While the tutorials to hang said wallpaper were straightforward, the process was infuriating because I got to learn just how crooked our house is and just how poorly work has been executed. Despite my measuring and mapping for the hanging process, I fought trying to get everything to line up. I raged, I hid in the bathroom, I pulled my hair. It took two days to hang three panels because I was so irritated. At one point, my husband check to see if the mantle was level, and spoiler alert, it very much is not. And the plaster job above the mantle, you know, the one with the hole in it, is also not even. It is what it is, and what it is, is done. These issues will be fixed as part of the big living room fix, but for now, I think it looks lovely.
It’s also provided the perfect backdrop to start adding plants. I had hung two tension rods from the ceiling beams for holiday decorations, and I was hesitant to take them down because the space felt empty. Enter: plant takeover. Some of my pothos and philodendron were looking for climbing room, so why not make it here?
Anyway, we did it. Happy spring!