Hi! You might have spied some changes to the living room in recent posts. The most striking of which, hands down, is the brick wallpaper Bret and I applied a few weeks ago. You might remember that we were considering the wallpaper for our front entry way, to span across that wall and back the kitchen main wall. But, two things happened. First, I ordered only half the amount of wallpaper I needed, because although I knew wallpaper is sold in double rolls, I still managed to get confused about how much I was getting. Second, as we examined the walls, it became clear that the far wall made a lot of sense - it was an external wall, so it sort of worked to be a brick wall, and it would offer maximum impact, because it's the natural sight line, as opposed to the side wall when you come in the door. And, fingers crossed, I had enough wallpaper to do the whole thing. So, we got started. Here's a little before for ya:

Clearly, we've made more changes than just the wallpaper, but let's ignore those for the time being. We started off with two double rolls of Sure Strip Up the Wall RB4304 from Decorator's Best. The wallpaper is marketed as easy on and off, so I was sort of expecting a heavy duty contact paper, but it turned out to be more along the lines of real wallpaper. After cutting strips to the right length and soaking them, you "book" the paper, which is to say you press the glued ends together and let sit for about five minutes to get things activated. Then you start applying!

We followed the directions and started in the middle, adding additional strips from that point. The paper's pretty heavy and would slide down the wall, so we used thumb tacks to keep it in place until it dried. We decided to wallpaper the insides of the windows as well, because realism.

When everything was dry, I went back over things with an Exacto knife to cut off the excess. Overall, it took us/me (Bret helped with round one) two days, but it could have been faster: I think one full day is realistic, if you ignore all pleas for food from children, and then allow a full night to dry before trimming the excess.

The number one awesome characteristic of this particular pattern? Its flexibility. This stuff was so forgiving. At the end, we were really working with the last scraps of paper, and we had to cut and paste scrap pieces to provide coverage, and to go around weird, unnecessary wires like that one in the photo above. But even when we couldn't make things line up perfectly, when you took a step back and checked it all out, we thought it looked pretty good.

You can see a little gap in coverage at the corner here, and also where the two paper strips aren't quite meeting up. But I cut a strip of scrap to cover the blank spot and others like it, and kept on my merry way, and I think it all turned out great.

I love the result. Looooove it. Cannot stress enough what a huge difference it makes in here. I am a sucker for exposed brick - I can overlook any flaw in a prospective house that boasts the stuff - but it also really works with this space. I'm not sure I would go for a brick-patterned wallpaper in a new suburban development home, because I think one of the reasons it works so well here is plausible deniability: You believe that this space, with its views of the brick buildings out the window, might have an exposed brick wall. And that lets you sort of overlook the imperfections and just accept it. At least, that's how I feel about it.

The wallpaper cost $25/roll, so two double rolls cost about $103 - plus $21 for shipping. That was a good price compared to other vendors, and it came very quickly, but I was still a smidge annoyed because I think Decorator's Best contributed to my confusion about the amount of paper I needed. If you go to the site and it all seems perfectly clear to you, which is totally possible, then I'll just chalk it up to math failures.

Either way, $135 isn't the cheapest decorative element I've ever invested in, but dollar-to-impact ratio is pretty high. And I'm really glad to have the experience - this is my first time putting up wallpaper (as opposed to just double-sided-taping wrapping paper to the walls, which I have done, with gusto). But I will say that working with this stuff has upped the intimidation factor of wallpaper rather than decreased it. There were so many times when I was messing around here, knowing full well that any pattern even a tiny bit less forgiving than this faded, low-contrast brick would look TERRIBLE with my hack job. So I guess what I'm saying is, if you're a beginner, and you have wildly uneven walls and only exactly the amount of wallpaper you need, with no extra for pattern alignment, then go with faux brick. It'll still be nice to you. Otherwise, be very, very afraid. Or just order enough wallpaper so that you can do it right, find some good podcasts to carry you through the process, and commit yourself to patience.

Here's a final before and after. I'm not even sure the photos fully capture the difference.

Clearly, we have a lot of 'splaining to do about the rest of the family room, which I totally love but am still working on. In fact, I've got a couple reader polls coming up on some choices we're facing in here and the kitchen, so stay tuned for those. And thanks so much, dear readers, for weighing in on the stencil v. wallpaper question, both in supporting the brick decision, and in urging the wallpaper over the stencil. I am so very glad we went wallpaper. The stencil plus paints and materials wouldn't have been that much cheaper, and would have taken for.ev.er. And probably not looked nearly as good. Let's be honest.

So that's it for today! I'll see y'all on Wednesday!