Now that we are nicely settled in the house it was high time for some decorating! I have always been (and always will be!) the DIY kinda girl! I love crazy, weird ideas and I love, LOVE making something from nothing (I mean, just look at what I’ve done with Raul 😉 xoxo just kiddin’ babe)

Over the past couple of years we have had the opportunity to look inside several historic homes in different areas around town. There are a couple of different home tours that we like to frequent to check out what other people are doing with big, old houses. And we always walk away with a favorite out of the bunch. The “favorite” house always has something unique and special about it. Although our house has plenty of character and charm on its own a little help from my handy hands can’t hurt, right?!

A couple of weekends ago the weather turned cool and rainy.  After months of hot and humid weeks filled with outside work and, more often than not, perspiration, I decided to take advantage of the gray, stormy day and try out my first major DIY- covering an entire wall in fabric. 😀 Our wall is nice and big, and though it is freshly painted, it is B-O-R-I-N-G. This is what is looked like before.

We have a nice space and the wood work is obviously beautiful but I really wanted to make an impression on guests as soon as they walked through the front door. And so it was off to procure an eye-popping, color, texture wall ASAP. 😉

I woke up early and dragged Raul to Jo-Ann Fabrics. I had been scoping out the different patterns and textures for weeks. Finally, with a new paycheck in the bank and coupons in hand, we took the plunge and purchased 20 yards of this fantastic fabric. My advice: do NOT attempt this project unless this stuff is on sale…cuz it is expensive! I got lucky and got it at 50% off for September being National Sewing Month. 🙂

Here’s a close-up so you guys can check out the detail.

The fabric is an organic fiber with lots of different greenish blue hues that complemented the hallway paint color marvelously! I also liked the striated markings because it would help to lengthen the entry way wall even more.

I had spent a lot of time researching the best method for hanging said fabric. I stumbled on some cool blog posts detailing how fabric could be hung on walls using regular old liquid laundry starch. Apparently the idea originated with some Army wives who wanted to make their Army barrack houses feel like homes without permanently changing the walls as this was not allowed. The cool thing about using starch to hang the fabric is that it can easily be peeled away from the wall when you are ready to take it down.  The fabric would have to be saturated, just like wallpaper, and hung in much the same manner. I looked high and low for liquid laundry starch- nada. So I ended up with 6 cans of this stuff.

We washed down the walls with soapy water and set to work measuring and cutting the fabric while the walls had a chance to dry.

My number one tidbit of advice? Measure twice and cut once! And in this instance, I am referring to the cut made by the sweet old lady at Jo-Ann Fabrics. I ended up buying approximately 4 extra yards of this stuff due to a miscalculation (hey! Math was never my strong point!) At $25 bucks a yard that’s some serious change…thank God for coupons and tons of other DIY’s that I can use this leftover fabric for (heck, one lady told me she used this fabric to make the lining on her bed comforter?!). Anyways, we soon got right into the project.

First things first- pull away all the old trim and moldings. I wanted the edges of the fabric to be tucked away under the molding, hence, the necessity to rip it all off first!

I then cut off a small square from the scrap fabric and tested out my spray starch method…

…hmmm, seems to work! Let’s do this thing already!!

We set up two ladders on the stairs and my dad and I each grabbed an end of the fabric and a can of starch. We coated the wall in the  sticky stuff and placed the fabric on the wall. My intention had been to hang the fabric using starch only. The advantage of this is that when I grew tired of the look the fabric would easily peel away from the wall and after a quick cleaning the wall would be clean and free of damage. Yeahhhh….soooo not so much. Lol The fabric did not want to stay flat against the wall. There were a lot of bubbles and I don’t know if this was due to the size of the area we were covering or lack of saturation or what. We ended up securing the fabric with a staple gun along the bottom and top of the wall in order to keep it in place.

And voila! It was that easy! And to top it off my house smelled like fresh laundry!

Now, on to the more complicated trim cutting side of this DIY (DAD-it-yourself). If you don’t have a DAD for this project I suggest you get one at your nearest Home Depot 😉

We bought some crown molding pieces and also some 12′ boards to make a corner covering like the one that we had removed. I decided to extend the corner cover all the way to the ceiling in order to hide the seams from the two separate fabric pieces we used to cover the wall..and well, honestly it just looked better!

After we attached all the trim and let the fabric and starch dry I found that there were quite a few large bubbles where the fabric did not adhere to the wall. I continued to spray on top of the fabric with the starch but I found this was not enough in a lot of areas….so I got out the wallpaper glue. Luckily, I still had plenty of this stuff leftover from my adventure in wallpapering.

I simply took a bit of the paste and brushed it over the top of the fabric- the stuff  penetrates and dries invisibly. It was enough to soak through the fabric and literally glue it to the wall. I then used the wallpaper brush and roller to smooth out the bubbles toward the open side of the fabric that had not been attached completely yet. My recommendations for any other DIYers who attempt this project would be either find a gallon of the liquid starch and saturate the heck out of your fabric OR if you can’t find that, make you own out of cornstarch! I think the sheer size and weight of this fabric made it hard for it to stick to the wall using the spray starch technique- although I definitely think that this would work for small areas.

The end results are Ah-mazing. I love the effect the wall gives when you walk in the door. It complements the dark wood beautifully and makes my home look like a dollhouse.