The wall.

Oh man, this title makes me think of Game of Thrones....and you know how much I like me some GoT! OK, back to what this post is really about......

In our old condo, I had started a bit of a wall collage over our couch. I loved that you could just bring in all sorts of random items, mix 'em all together and have this cool, almost scrapbook type thing on your wall. When we moved into our new home, I knew that I'd def want to do something similar somewhere in the house. Our living room is a funny shape so I didn't think it'd be appropriate there and I've seen many cool ideas on Pinterest for an entry area, but that didn't feel right either. I finally landed on our hallway/laundry area, which is located smack in the middle of the house. I know, I know....it's a bit of a weird place to just have your washer and dryer hanging out, but I've got plans people, plans.

Wall paper removed, revealing some funky walls.
But until those plans are executed, I thought this wall would be a perfect place for my collage. Like in our other rooms, these walls are wallpapered (yay.) so I began by removing it. Unfortunately, the walls underneath the first section I removed were extremely beat up and rough. No amount of sanding and puttying seemed to do the trick. Bummer. I decided that the rest of the wallpaper was tacked on pretty good so gave all of the walls and wainscoting a few coats of primer in hopes that that would do the trick. I'm toying with the idea of somehow texturizing the messed up wall to help camouflage it, but for now, it is what it is.

I painted the wainscoting with my white semi gloss that I've already used all over the house. That darn dark wood ended up taking 3 coats of primer and 3 coats of paint! And lucky me, that wainscoting carries into our kitchen too :-/ I used American White by Ben Moore from the entry and living room for the walls and painting went pretty quick. This paint color showed up super white in the hallway and less grey like it did in the other spaces. I think I'd like to go a bit darker down the road, but this is a good start.

Primed and ready for paint!
Now it was time for the fun part....I gathered up all of my various knick knacks and photos and laid them out on our kitchen floor. I arranged, re-arranged, switched out some photos, arranged some more and I still just wasn't satisfied. I then realized it was the frame color that was throwing me off more than anything. I didn't like how there wasn't enough contrast between the wall color and the white frames. Gawd.

I made an executive decision and snagged my fav framed piece in the house, a Queens of the Stoneage concert poster framed in black and hung it on the wall. Oh myyyyy. So much better! Unfortunately, black frames aren't in abundance in our house so I had to make a quick trip to the craft store to pick up a few more. For now, I think this will work, but I do plan on adding more fun (and colorful) items to the mix. That or repaint those walls :-/


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