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    Home » Home Decor

    A Powder Room Makeover with DIY Wallpaper and Board & Batten

    Published: Apr 6, 2016 by Christina Dennis · This post may contain affiliate links · This blog generates income via ads · 22 Comments

    You know those home renovation projects that take about a BILLION time longer than you planned? And the ones that are a TON harder than you thought they'd be? This powder room makoever in Our DIY House was one of those. It seemed to take me forever, and we experienced a lot of hiccups along the way, but I'm excited to finally share with you today our DIY powder room makeover with wallpaper and board & batten!

    A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim

    Wallpaper: Phoebe Wallpaper in Teal from Amazon

    This project began innocently enough. I wanted to make our downstairs powder room feel more "finished", look more interesting, and feel less like an elevator.

    (This room has got to be the WORST one in the world to photograph since it's so tiny with no natural light. I hope you'll be able to imagine how it looks in real life!)

    A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim

    This bathroom is only 25 square feet big and our main floor ceilings are 9 feet high, so this makes for a very small but tall room.

    A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim

    Here's what our powder room looked like before. I had simply painted it the same green/blue that's in our laundry room and our sitting room (Distant Valley by Valspar) and hung a shelf above the toilet. The vanity is originally from The Home Depot and it has a faux marble top.

    The room just felt BLAH. The storage was all wrong.

    Powder-Room-Before-1

    The first thing we did was install some DIY board & batten wainscoting to the room. I thought this would be a great way to add a horizontal line to the walls to make it feel less tall and skinny.

    I also think this type of trim matches the traditional look of our home (and I plan to do it in other spots of our house eventually!).

    We used baseboard pieces (4" wide and ½" thick) so that they'd match the thickness of our current baseboards so that we wouldn't have to remove the latter.

    We put up the horizontal piece as shown above with a nail gun, and then we used the same baseboard pieces to install the vertical strips. My hubby rounded off one of the sides of the baseboard trim so that both sides would match.

    Powder-Room-Before-2

    Next was installing the wallpaper. I thought this would be a piece of cake since I didn't find the last little wallpaper installation I did hard at all.

    It was horrible.

    The wallpaper was beautiful and great quality (here's where you can buy it if you love the look of it too), but it wasn't pre-pasted. I had to apply paste onto it, so that was really time consuming and MESSY!

    Matching the pattern from panel to panel was really challenging too.

    Once the wallpaper was FINALLY done, I was so proud. I even took a selfie in front of it:

    DSC_1421

    My idea was to leave off the top trim that would cap the rest of the wainscoting (it's a ¾" by 1 ½" piece of MDF) until the top half of the powder room was wallpapered. This way, I could disguise any unevenness at the bottom of the paper.

    However, after we installed the top trim, I had what I thought was a brilliant idea that went all wrong. I thought I'd put painter's tape on the wallpaper just above the trim before I caulked it...

    Powder-Room-Before-3

    IT DOES NOT WORK. Don't do it. Don't ever put painter's tape on wallpaper. I ended up with a huge strip of wallpaper torn off just above our board and batten trim! I was heartbroken!

    A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim

    After a few tears (mine), we decided to flip the top trim around so that it was higher and would cover the rip in the wallpaper.

    I think it looks just fine, and Hubby did a great job of trimming around the plug over the sink to make it look "built in". Originally, the trim would have nicely sat below the outlet, but we had to get creative now that we'd flipped it!

    A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim

    After that debacle, it was simply a matter of painting all of the trim. I had to caulk the trim and give the wainscoting a good four coats of white paint (Benjamin Moore's Simply White), so that took a long time!

    A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim

    I really love the new white & bright walls, though. And the colour and horizontal lines do make this tiny room feel a little more grand!

    A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim

    I also hung open shelves over the toilet, and I'm using wicker baskets to conceal things like toilet paper and hair supplies.

    A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim

    A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim

    The shelves are from Ikea, and I painted the brackets in Simply White.

    A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim

    This wallpaper is so darling - I just love it! It has a chinoiserie feel to it, and it's still that green/blue colour that I love.

    A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim

    Our powder room is on the way to our formal sitting room, so I also really like how it has similar colours and a similar feel in style to the sitting room.

    A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim         A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim

    I also installed a pretty towel ring in polished chrome to match the other hardware in the powder room. I originally had a towel bar across from the sink, but that was a poor choice in retrospect. This is much easier for the kids and our guests to use!

    A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim

    As a finishing touch, I quickly switched out the knobs on our original vanity from a brushed silver to a polished chrome to match the rest of the space. Those little details make a difference!

    Our powder room update is complete, and I'm SO GLAD IT IS. It makes me smile, and I think our guests will find it fun too!

    A DIY Powder Room Makeover with Chinoiserie Inspired Bird & Floral Wallpaper and Board and Batten Trim

    What do you think of our powder room update? Would you ever put wallpaper in a powder room?

    Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. Thanks for supporting The DIY Mommy!

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    Reader Interactions

    Comments

    1. Chy

      April 06, 2016 at 8:20 pm

      I love how this turned out. We have a very similar small half bath on our main floor, with 9 foot ceilings as well, and I've thought about putting wallpaper and wainscotting in. You've inspired me!!

      Reply
      • Christina Dennis

        April 10, 2016 at 9:01 pm

        Thanks, Chy! I think wallpaper + wainscoting are so fun for such a small room. You should do it!

        Reply
    2. Sara

      April 06, 2016 at 8:39 pm

      LOVE IT!!!! That wallpaper is to die for! Your hard work definitely paid off, and I never would have known that you had to change your trim to cover the torn strip of wallpaper. That bathroom was cute before, but it's stunning now!!

      Reply
      • Christina Dennis

        April 10, 2016 at 9:01 pm

        Thanks, Sara! I'm so loving the wallpaper too. You'll have to come see it in person soon! I think it turned out pretty well and you can't even see where the rips are close up. 😉

        Reply
    3. Kristi

      April 06, 2016 at 10:49 pm

      Oh Christina!!! I've never loved a powder room so much! That wallpaper, the board and batten ... it's all PERFECT (hidden rips and all)! SO gorgeous!!!

      Reply
      • Christina Dennis

        April 10, 2016 at 9:00 pm

        Thank you!! I love this room too. I wanted it to make a statement, and I think it does. I can't wait to have some friends over soon so that they can see it!

        Reply
    4. Danielle

      April 07, 2016 at 4:17 am

      I absolutely LOVE the end results of the update! Your choice of wallpaper is gorgeous!

      Reply
      • Christina Dennis

        April 10, 2016 at 8:59 pm

        Thanks, Danielle! I'm so happy with how this turned out.

        Reply
    5. Emily, Our house now a home

      April 07, 2016 at 4:15 pm

      This is beautiful! I love everything about this bathroom! I want to do something with wall paper so bad, and this bathroom reveal has helped me decide I will do it. Even if it was hard work. I love the final look!

      Reply
      • Christina Dennis

        April 10, 2016 at 8:58 pm

        Thanks so much, Emily! It was really hard for sure, but I think it was 100% worth it. It's such a statement!

        Reply
    6. Julia at Home on 129 Acres

      April 08, 2016 at 11:12 am

      It looks great. I can only imagine your heartbreak when the wallpaper tore. Way to overcome. It reminds me a bit of this powder room from Sarah Richardson: http://www.hgtv.ca/sarahshouse/gallery/?gid=fc00113c2c4bb4baad1c380f4fa689f3#!/2 for obvious reasons, but more just for the overall tone. A beautiful well-put-together space. I particularly love how it plays so well with the living room.

      Reply
      • Christina Dennis

        April 10, 2016 at 8:55 pm

        Thanks, Julia! Yes, I was so upset. I'm really happy we were able to fix it without having to tear the wallpaper down there and start from scratch! Oh, I love Sarah Richardson and her powder room does have the same feel. Thanks for sharing!

        Reply
    7. Maria @ Pastels & Macarons

      April 09, 2016 at 3:03 pm

      Christina I'm IN LOVE!!! How absolutely gorgeous!!! That wall paper is perfection and wow, what a difference those few changes make to your powder room! Love it all!

      Reply
      • Christina Dennis

        April 10, 2016 at 8:51 pm

        Thanks so much, Maria! I'm so smitten with this wallpaper, and I'm really happy that my Hubby went along with it despite its flowers and birds. 😉

        Reply
    8. Larissa

      April 11, 2016 at 3:50 pm

      Beautiful job Christina! I've always wanted to do a powder room in wainscoting and seagrass wallpaper (in a natural colour with a bit of green woven in). There's just something about the texture of seagrass and in such a small space you know you'd just want to reach out and touch it every time you were in there... perhaps while sitting on the toilet, but hey that's okay!

      Reply
      • Christina Dennis

        April 20, 2016 at 9:50 pm

        Thanks so much, Larissa! Seagrass wallpaper would be a gorgeous choice - such a classic!

        Reply
    9. Jacklyn

      April 13, 2016 at 2:51 pm

      IJWTS wow! Why can't I think of thigns like that?

      Reply
    10. auto insurance

      May 15, 2016 at 7:05 pm

      I was just looking for this info for a while. After six hours of continuous Googleing, finally I got it in your web site. I wonder what’s the lack of Google strategy that don’t rank this kind of informative sites in top of the list. Usually the top sites are full of garbage.

      Reply
    11. Amy

      December 08, 2018 at 10:24 am

      I have a similar powder room. How many rolls of wallpaper did you use?

      Reply

    Trackbacks

    1. Tex Mex Lunch Bowl + The Creative Corner #92: DIY, Craft & Home Decor Link Party | The DIY Mommy says:
      April 10, 2016 at 7:01 pm

      […] Powder Room Makeover from The DIY Mommy. […]

      Reply
    2. The Creative Corner Link Up says:
      April 10, 2016 at 7:02 pm

      […] Powder Room Makeover from The DIY Mommy. […]

      Reply
    3. How to Hang Wallpaper (Video Tutorial) | The DIY Mommy says:
      August 15, 2016 at 7:00 am

      […] use when you want to make a feature wall in a room, or I also love it in powder rooms. Remember my bird wallpaper in our powder room? I’ve done a few wallpaper jobs now, so today I wanted to share with you how I hang […]

      Reply

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