Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Perfectly Imperfect


One of the last projects my mom and I tackled in our Tennessee house was the hall bathroom. What was supposed to be a quick fix (taking down the wallpaper and painting) turned into a much bigger ordeal, of course! After stripping the wallpaper (the bottom layers of which were affixed directly onto very, very old sheetrock), the walls were a total mess. We ended up putting a texture under the paint to disguise the disaster, but this homeowner decided to leave the beautiful mess exposed.


When guests ask how to get a similar wall treatment, he says to put up several layers of wallpaper, wait 50 years, and then peel it off. You really just can't fake a good patina, can you?

Photos: Martha Stewart Living.

7 comments:

Notes From ABroad said...

I love it ! It really is atmospheric, isn't it ?
Although I live in a 100 year old building, with walls that are not perfectly smooth and ceilings that are way way high up there, I think of all the work we could have skipped if we had left the walls, semi-undone :)
This is great :) Thanks !

Brooke @ Blueprint Bliss said...

I doubt my mess would be looked at as 'beautiful'!

Erika said...

I just finished stripping 50 year old wallpaper from the playroom. I cannot imagine keeping that disaster! I happily textured;) and then primed/painted. But his walls do look gorgeous.

Doug Davis said...

I bet it's a lot easier to love that mess from afar than to have been there for the steps that led to it...I couldn't live with a failed project right there in front of me everday. But then I guess it's not a failure if it turns out this well!

Tanya (a Taste of T) said...

Wow. That is beautiful

Southern Lady said...

I love it!! Carla

katy elliott said...

I love the way this looks in a styled photograph but I don't think it would be so great in real life.

I have walls like this right now. I stripped off 100 years of wallpaper. Looks much cooler in photographs then in real life.