Thursday, August 18, 2011

wallpaper madness

I recently undertook a little project of transforming the laundry closet.  In order to do so, I found this great little shelf I wanted to hang, and to give it a little pizzazz I thought it'd be fun to find a unique wallpaper pattern to line the back of the shelf...you know, maybe a little something like this:


I went online and scoured Home Depot's website to find a fun pattern before I headed into the store to buy it.  I found a few patterns I liked, and off I went.  I marched into Home Depot in search of the paper, and after scanning shelf after shelf, the closet thing I could find was contact paper.

I finally went and asked a worker where they kept the wallpaper...and to my surprise, they DON'T SELL IT. I was astonished.  Now, I realize that wallpaper is the sin of all sins, and after spending an outrageous amount of time helping my grandparents de-wallpaper their bedroom one year, I had sworn to never use this awful stuff...yet here I was, shopping for wallpaper (call me a hypocrite, but in my defense, but it was for a small little shelf - I would NOT cover an entire wall covered in the dreadful material).

Need I say any more about the negative effects of wallpaper?

Despite my distaste for wallpaper, I have been reading that it is making a comeback in the design world (in much more elegant patterns...NOT such as those exhibited in the above photo), so I was flabbergasted that Home Depot of all places did not sell it (at least in the store).  So what did I do?  I got in my car, whipped out my phone, and literally googled "where can I buy wallpaper?"  The first result was a link talking about buying it from Sherwin Williams, and after reading a significant part of the site, I headed off to the nearby Sherwin Williams.

I walk into the store, and low and behold, there is no wallpaper.  Correction: there is book after book of wallpaper you can SPECIAL ORDER (seriously?!) but nothing you can buy in the store.  RE-donkulous.  So I left, got back in the car, and then called Lowe's to see if they sold it.  No dice.  I was ready to admit defeat, when I figured I may as well call Menards...and to my surprise, they sold it!  So I made the trek to Menards (which I usually avoid since it is located in never-never land in relation to our home), and was pleasantly surprised by their selection.  But that wasn't the most of my surprise.

As it turns out, not only do they sell wallpaper, but they carry this brand called NextWall.  It's relatively eco-friendly in the sense that it does not include any vinyl or PVC and it utilizes 100% water-based inks as opposed to chemical solvents.  Translation: there's no offgassing and this stuff will PEEL off the wall WITHOUT the use of chemicals.  Umm...amazing?  Does this mean I will never again will I have to deal with this:


or this?


Let's hope so!  In the end, despite my excellent find, I left Menards empty handed (I only need 8 SF and was not about to drop $30 for 200 SF)...so, I may have to get crafty to finish this product.  But at the very least, I maybe, just MAYBE, gained a new appreciation for an otherwise disgraceful material.  Maybe :)

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