My $13 Paper-Covered Wall

I spent $13 to make this paper-covered wall. No joke! It's amazing what a pad of scrapbook paper and some glue dots can do.

Our basement is mostly unfinished, meaning it has cement floors and exposed brick walls. The one basement room that is finished is one big rectangular area. We use it as a craft room / workout room / kids' playroom. Until I win my dream $10,000 Pottery Barn Kids Makeover, I'm doing what I can as inexpensively as I can to make it pretty.

I bought a stack of the premium type 12 x 12 scrapbook paper. I chose the Vibrant Treated Paper Pad because it's super colorful - perfect for my kids' play area. And you can't tell from the pictures, but some of the sheets are embossed and some have some sparkly elements.

I refuse to buy anything full price at Hobby Lobby since they usually have 40% off coupons and tons of weekly specials. It's a matter of principal/obsession for me at this point. Anyway, 90 page stack of paper - $19.00 on sale for $10.00. Glue dots - $4.49 on sale for $2.25.

Disclaimer: I know for sure that those glue dots are going to be a complete pain to take off the wall later. I'm choosing to live recklessly in the now.

So I figured out how many sheets I needed up and across to cover the wall. Since the paper is 12 x 12, it was pretty easy to figure out. When I was doing the math, I noticed that I did have a few vertical inches left, so I left 2 inches at the top and bottom of the wall bare. I could have cut some of the paper to make it fit, but I really wanted perfect 12 inch squares, so I just left a little bit of the wall blank. I would suggest that if you do a wall like this you do an entire row across and an entire row down before you do anything else. Just to make sure they fit the way you want. After that you can go for it!

Here's what the playroom looked like before:

3 hours and 2 margaritas later it looked like this:

Well, it kind of looked like that. There might possibly have been some rehanging and staging and picking up of a zillion toys before this picture. And maybe it's because it was dang cheap to make, but that wall just makes me happy.