Fun with Contact Paper!

First, let me say this:

Look, I followed through!!  I told you I was going to post something and I did!! After all those times when I say I’m going to show you pictures from a trip or recap a weekend or post a recipe or tell you where to eat in Savannah and I NEVER do it, I finally did it!!  I tell ya, I have a graveyard’s worth of unfinished, never published posts… But this isn’t one of them!

Okay, now that I go that out of my system, you can return to the regularly scheduled edition of Barefoot Daydreams.

What can you do hanging out solo on a Thursday night that will completely transform a small space and cost you nothing?  I’m so glad you asked!

You guys know I’m a sucker for a horizontal stripe.  And I have loved the idea of a tan and white striped wall ever since I saw this bathroom on Young House Love.  Striped walls have really hit the scene since then and I have been salivating over rooms like this and this and this.  Remembering an idea I saw on Pinterest {see how I’m tying this all together?}, I was bored one night and realized I had all of the tools I needed to join the striped wall gravy train.

A roll of white contact paper, a measuring tape, level, and a pencil is all I needed. 

I measured the wall floor to ceiling and figured out I could have eight 12 inch thick stripes—four white and four beige.  I measured the width of the wall—about four feet—and cut three strips of contact paper to a little bit more than four feet.  The stripes on the back of the paper made this whole process relatively easy.

Ready to go!

At this point, I was still a little skeptical this whole thing was really going to work.  Sure, it looks great in a picture or from a distance, but in reality, isn’t it just going to look like I stuck contact paper to my wall?  But this was literally going to cost me nothing but time, so what did I have to lose?

Before: entry way wall

I taped up a few just to get a feel if I was really going to commit to it.  I realized these stripes were way too big for such a small wall, so I recalculated to put up 16 stripes instead of eight.  I cut the strips 6” and got started.

Using the level, I penciled in a line across the wall to help me position the contact paper evenly.  I found it easiest to start positioning the paper from the center and adhering it moving outward.  It’s just shelf-liner, so it’s not too sticky and easily came off if I needed to reposition it.  {Avoid doing this too much though so it stays sticky}  Since I’d cut the stripes slightly longer than the width of the wall, they rounded the corners a bit.

After just three I was spazzing out I was so excited.  I l-o-v-e-d it!  The contact paper adhered perfectly to the wall—it looks just like paint.

Once I got the hang of it, the rest of the stripes went up in a breeze.  After they were all up, I just took a sharp knife down each corner and pulled off the excess paper that rounded the corner.  The whole thing, start to finish, was done during the two hour season premiere of Gray’s Anatomy.

Now, are you ready for the after??

You sure?

It looks pretty fantastic, so I just want to make sure you’re prepared.

Okay….

TADA!

Isn’t it adorable?

What was that?  You want to see a close up?  Okay!

I was thrilled with the outcome.  Except when I was done, NO ONE was there to appreciate it so I just sat on the sofa beaming for a few minutes.  I texted a picture to my mom and went to bed, deciding not to point out the change to see how long it took Mr. Husband to notice the change… I waited…and waited…and waited…

Finally, I brought it up later the next day.  “So did you notice anything different about the house?” He looks around.  Makes his I’m-trying-to-think-of-something-so-I-don’t-get-in-trouble face. “No?”

“YOU DIDN’T NOTICE THE STRIPES IN THE ENTRYWAY??”

“Oh. Yeah. I saw those last night.  Looks cute babe.”

Boys.

Whatever.

Anyway, heads up to my fellow renters—this project was easy, fun, cheap, and drastically changed the space.  The stripes have been up for about a month now {or whenever the Grey’s Anatomy premiere was} and there is no sign of them budging, curling, or coming off. 

So, do you think it would be bad to have striped walls in every room of the house?  {I know, I know….}