retropolitan: Contact Paper Chronicles-Part 2

If you asked me how I felt about contact paper fifteen years ago I would have said, "that stuff is hideous. Not just hideous, but HID.E.OUS!!!"

I'm sure every one of us has had an ill fated run in with the stuff at one time or another. I'm taken back to the first apartment Studly and I shared. It was 1996, we were young and newly married and sporting ridiculously, embarrasing hair-do's {I had a shag...or the Monica as it were, and he, the short lived Caeser}. We were so excited to start playing house together. The apartment was perfect...aside from the nightly cockroach rave and the fact that every drawer in the place was lined with peeling, dated, disgusting contact paper. Good times, good times.

It took awhile for me to acknowledge the existance of contact paper again. I mean, I would occasionally bump into it at the Home Depot or Walmart, but thought nothing of it. Eventually, we made ammends and I started using it for homemade stensils and what not. We were on good terms but nothing serious. But then one day I had a vision...a vision of a gorgeous lamp with a wood veneer drum shade. I didn't want to spend a ton of money on wood veneer, so I used the cheapest alternative I could find...wood grain contact paper. After my $3 Lamp Shade Revamp project, I realized that this stuff {I once considered an interior design faux pas} could have potential when used in the right way. So, I took that ball and ran with it...down the hall and to my daughter Quinn's bedroom.

Quinn's room had been lacking something for awhile, so I started toying around with the idea of putting in a wood accent wall. I kept putting it off because I wasn't sure if I wanted to commit to something that permanent, especially when it required a moderate amount of labor. Then I remembered that I had an extra role of faux wood contact paper lying around, so I decided to conduct a little experiment. I decided to try making a focal wall using contact paper instead of real wood. I was a little skeptical at first...worried that rather than looking like a tasteful, wood accent wall, it would look like, well, a wall with a bunch of contact paper on it.

But I persisted, and once I had filled up a large portion of the wall, I realized that it didn't look half bad. In fact, I was really starting to dig it. It gave the room sort of a cool, reto vibe.

Once I brought in all of the bedding and accessories it started coming together and made sense.

It took about two and half roles to fill the entire wall...which translates to just under $20. I was able to complete the project in four or five hours...most of which was spent cutting the contact paper into squares. The application process went by fairly quickly. Ah, I'm such a sucker for a quick transformation.

It definately adds and element of warmth and interest to the room, which it was lacking before.

And the best part about it, I can remove it all in a matter of minutes if I decide to.