The Wall

Accent walls are definitely a popular design trend these days. Painted walls, wallpapered walls, plank walls, wood trim walls and so on and so on (pardon that Bubba Gump description). I only have two accent walls in my home (view one of my walls here). A royal blue wall in my family room and a wallpapered wall in my dining room. I love them so much and would have one in EVERY room but I am trying to keep my walls neutral anticipating that Jerry T. (my hubby) will walk through the back door one day and say “hey lets put the house on the market and move to Palm Springs.” If you know us, you know that is MY fantasy, not his. So until then, I am trying to follow the advice of every realtor I have ever known who will always say “keep everything neutral for a fast sale” (particularly Cynthia Welsch – my realtor in St. Charles, Illinois who quickly sold my house after I took her advice). Abby is the opposite. Almost every room in her house has an accent wall. And I must say they are all beautiful. She could care less about a realtor’s advice.

That gets me to the main topic of this blog, Abby’s latest accent wall in her guest room. While visiting Abby a few months back we went on a shopping trip to Walnut Creek in California. We had lunch at Tender Greens (so delish) and made our way to Anthropologie. I absolutely LOVE Anthropologie. My teenile self loves shopping for clothes there. Teenile is a word that I use for someone my age who inappropriately wears clothes that a teenager would wear 🙄. Along with clothes, Anthropologie home decor is absolutely fabulous. This particular Anthropologie is the biggest one I have ever seen. After a few minutes, we spotted a huge wall. Probably the most gorgeous wall ever. It was flanked with gold mirrors and other lovely gold objects.

Abby was having a literal fit over this wall. She said “Mom, I want to do a wall like this in my house”. I said “sure we can do that”, thinking to myself sure someday, a few years from now. However Abby doesn’t think like I do. She decides to do a project and cannot rest until it’s completed. And at times, she even becomes a little consumed with it. Once we got home to Texas, she wouldn’t let up about “the wall” so I said let me do some research and I’ll figure it out. I eventually found some wood planks that I thought would work. What I liked about these planks was that they were not permanently secured to the wall and could easily be removed. Knowing Abby, I knew she would eventually want to remove the planks for her next wall treatment obsession. What I didn’t like about them was that according to the manufacturer, nothing could be hung from the wall because the planks were not permamtely secured to the wall and anything hung on them would cause them to fall off. Didn’t worry about this too much because I had faith that Jerry T. could figure that one out.

I ordered two samples. One was a whitewashed plank and the other was a paintable plank. I found some chalk paint at Lowes that matched the Anthropolige wall perfectly. The chalk paint is thin and worked perfectly for the look we were trying to achieve. I painted both of them and we decided to go with the paintable plank.

One month later we were back in California ready to tackle “the wall”. Jerry T. would do the installation and Abby and I would do the painting. Don’t believe any of these companies that tell you installation is quick and easy. Easy, yes – quick, not so much. Jerry T. literally worked hours on “the wall”, and “the wall” wasn’t even that large.

Lots of up and down on the ladder and cutting these planks outside in the very warm California sun made for a long day. He managed to get it done in a day, but he and Abby came down with a stomach bug so the painting would have to be done on our next trip. A few weeks later we were back and were ready to paint.

We were really nervous about applying the paint. Should we dry brush it or just apply a heavy coat of the paint? We practiced and decided on the dry brushing. We started in an area behind the bed that wouldn’t been seen in case we messed it up. This part went fairly fast. We finished it in about three hours. The painting did get a little tedious around the door molding and adjoining walls. We used a very small little brush and it worked well. “The wall” was gorgeous and turned out exactly like the Anthropologie wall.

Abby had said all along “Mom, I think the brown and white duvet that we have on the bed now will work with the new wall”. I disagreed, but kept my mouth shut. My vision was a white duvet. My plan was to casually make the suggestion. This worked and while we were at HomeGoods looking for pillows we found a white quilt with stitching the same color as the wall. It wasn’t a duvet but we actually liked the idea of a quilt. It was perfect. We used some existing pillows that she had and found two additional turquoise beaded beauties at Pier 1.

On to the wall decor. I saw white wall planters at CB2 that I loved and thought they would look good on “the wall”. They are available in two sizes. A larger one and the smaller ones that come in a set of two. We filled them with faux succulents from Hobby Lobby. The wall sconces were Abby’s idea. We brought home two different sets (all from World Market) until we settled on these. And yes, Jerry T. made all the wall decor work. You simply have to carefully drill a hole through the plank into the wall. White IKEA curtains, artwork and a faux fiddle leaf tree on the opposite wall completed the look. We were absolutely thrilled with the way it came out! The room looked completely different and the good news is, it’s MY room when we come to visit!