Inspired....

Pictures:
1-7 Better Homes and Gardens

8-9 Country Living

Did you notice a theme in these pictures? Yup, wallpaper. I have a weakness for it, always have.

When we bought out first house and everyone else thought wallpaper was evil, we were putting up rolls of it in our foyer and stairway. It was a country pattern that I would now hate but I loved the look. Can you see it in the background? It was a floral top and gingham bottom with a border the middle. It's atrocious, I realize, but I loved it a long time ago.

(Oh and sorry about the screaming baby, that's all she did for her first year of life so we had no choice but to snap pictures anyway. Love that kid.)

In our second home, we did wallpaper again. This time it was a pinkish-red toile on our family room ceiling. The inspiration came from this kitchen which I believe was in Country Living magazine. I wish I had a better picture but after googling for an hour, this was all I came up with. How adorable is this?

This is the room we did using the toile. The "Before" pic of this room was scary, dark wood paneling, ugly floor tiles and a drop ceiling. My poor hubby spent a lot of time putting drywall up on the ceiling just for me to want to cover it with wallpaper. Oops.

The room during our remodel.....

This was the finished room, you walked in from the living room through an adorable french door, down a couple steps....

It served as a playroom/TV room for our girls. I had picked out cottage looking fabrics for the wicker and really tried to make it feel like a cottage porch. I'm mad at myself for not taking more photos. Hubby and I spent days with our arms above our heads hanging that wallpaper, days recovering and resting our sore arms and this is all I have to show for it.

You can see the rest of this house by clicking HERE .

I'm sure that room doesn't have that sweet wallpaper anymore as a single guy bought the home and immediately began trashing it. Five years later and I still tear up over that so moving on....

Where was I? Oh yeah, the point of this post. It has a point, I promise. Last night we were in Lowes and I started looking through this beautiful book while waiting on my hubby (he was looking at boring stuff).

Book can be found here: Amazon



I didn't buy it but I might go back for it. There was a picture of a white kitchen with the sweetest toile wallpaper you ever did see. It looked to be on the lavender side but it looked adorable in the room.

I showed it to hubby and said, "Isn't this cute?"

And he said, "Yeah, actually, it really is nice."

Don't tell him I told you that, I'm sure he would deny it but yes, he does sometimes appreciate a nice toile. I love my white kitchen but I've been doing some tweaking lately and adding color. I wondered if I should wallpaper it with a toile too? While he looked at more boring stuff, I took off to the wallpaper books. I love the smell of them. If someone handed me a coffee, I could have looked through those books all night. I found a few nice patterns but nothing in the color I would want. Still thinking on it but who knows, I might surprise you one day with a wallpapered kitchen.

We'll see.....




So what are your thoughts on wallpaper? I know we all have taken down some horrible stuff and it's a lot of work but I would never shy away from it. The time it takes to remove it is worth the joy I get from having it up for a time. Completely, undeniably worth it.