Week 5 Spring 24′ ORC

The week when my vision began to take shape!

Faux Grasscloth Dresser

In a previous week for ORC, I stacked two dressers from Target, covering the drawers and sides with peel-and-stick faux grasscloth wallpaper. You can see the wallpaper I chose here. This project is simple enough for anyone to try. If you mess up, you can easily remove the wallpaper and start again. Now I’m considering whether to add handles or knobs to the dresser or just leave it as is.

Tintable Caulk

One of the sponsors for the One Room Challenge is Sashco. They carry a wide line of caulking products. I was gifted their eXact Color Sealant for my ORC project. The best thing about this product is it’s tintable. You literally mix your paint in with the product and viola, done! I broke down each step to show you how simple it is to use this product. Purchase your eXact Color Sealant here.

Step 1: Snip the end with utility knife (don’t damage threads).

Step 2: Add 20-30ml of your water based paint.

Step 3: Add the cap and shake it up for 60 seconds in a fan like motion

Step 5: Replace lid and shake for 60 seconds in a fan like motion

Step 6: Allow caulk to rest for 30 minutes and then its ready to use!

Step 7: Let’s try it out! The caulk is very silky smooth and not as thick as typical caulk that I’ve used in the past. I found it easiest to apply the caulk and smooth it with my finger first. Then clean it up with a baby wipe. I’d definitely use this caulk again.

Wallpaper

After I finished all the caulking, it was time to start wallpapering. The wallpaper I purchased was untrimmed. The majority of the wallpaper that I have installed comes pre-trimmed. Some printed wallpapers, like the one I’m using, have a selvage edge on both sides of the panel. If you leave the selvage edge on the wallpaper, your seams would not butt up and you’d see some printing on the edges.

I use a long 8-foot table, a 4-foot metal ruler, a sharp utility knife (with extra blades), pencil, and measuring tape to trim my wallpaper. Sometimes untrimmed wallpaper comes with a precut line for the installer. If that’s the case, after making sure the distance from the edge to the cut mark is the same all the way down the panel, you may use this as your guide and cut both sides of the wallpaper.

Trimming the left hand side of the wallpaper

This is what the right hand side looks like installed on the wall prior to a double cut. You can see the selvage edge still intact.

My wallpaper did not have a pre-cut line. So what did I do? I knew I was going to be installing the wallpaper from left to right around the room. I started by only trimming the left-hand side of the wallpaper. I lined up the pattern with my metal ruler and carefully trimmed off the selvage edge. I worked my way down the entire roll of wallpaper. I would not be cutting the right-hand side of the wallpaper edge until it was installed on the wall.

I do what’s called a double cut in corners a lot when wallpapering because it’s sometimes tricky to lay the wallpaper completely flat with a turn. Here is a visual that I think is very handy to see the double cut process. Source of picture here.