Tuesday, March 15, 2011

More Cheap Tricks: Homemaker's Edition

We bought a house a few months ago and it has been SO much fun doing projects and making it our own!  One of the first things I knew I wanted to do was install a tin ceiling in the guest bedroom.  My favorite coffee shop back home in Minnesota had a purple tin ceiling that really made the joint.  Our house kind of reminds me of that place- antique/ artsy/ shabby chic.    So a tin ceiling was a must.  They are so pricey though... who can spend over a grand on a ceiling when there are cats to feed.  I decided on a faux technique I found on the internet.  Initially, when I ran this by Joe, he looked at me like this...
and said- that's a project.  You have fun with that.  Lucky for me, I've been known to seize fabulous opportunities when they slap me in the face. Early in the ayem one fine snow day- the fine fella got on board with my plan:)  Never underestimate the power of a captive audience- emphasis on captive- hehe:)  Here's what we did:

1. Selected a ceiling to tin.  Removed light fixture:

2..Purchased Allen and Roth Paintable Wallpaper, Pattern:  Ceiling Tile
3. Covered the floor in with plastic drop cloths and soaked the prepasted wallpaper using this thingy:

3.For the next four or so hours we stood on these contraptions with our arms above our heads sticking and smoothing the wallpaper sheets:


We started out using really big sheets.  But- these proved to be more trouble than they were worth.  We begin cutting smaller squares and putting them up faster.  Here we are in progress:


5.  Finally- we finished! 

6. Over the next few days- half of the paper fell down- oh dear! We bought a bottle of boarder paste, which is technically used for hanging wallpaper boarders as well as a few tubes of seam repair.  This stuff did the trick.  Nobody ever said wallpapering a ceiling would be easy- not even me. 
7. Next, I ordered some paint off of Ebay.  I used Roman's Paintable Wallpaper Coating in Silver.  They used to sell this stuff at Lowe's, but I believe the product itself has been discontinued.  Hence the reason I ordered it off of Ebay.  USPS- pay no attention to this blog post... is it legal to mail paint?  My guess would be not-so-much, but I'm not totally sure. I applied the paint using a medium texture roller.  I ran out of paint and had to order a second can off of Ebay.  Nobody ever said this project would be a quick one either! 
So- here we are- the final product:


Overall- this was a heckuva project!  I might do one more glaze over the top to bring out the detail... we'll see!  For now- I'm happy enough to leave it alone! 





No comments:

Post a Comment