Skip-Trowel to My Lou

That looks like a kid took some sort of craft project and moved it to my walls, doesn’t it?

Well, it wasn’t them…it was ME!

If you read the post about my kitchen island, you’ll remember that I was not happy with the busy wallpaper. It wasn’t horrible, but the design made the room look too busy, and the red on the bottom made it feel smaller.

This is a real estate photo taken before we purchased the home.

I had a friend who had recently started a kitchen renovation, and I was really impressed with the walls…just an earthtone color with some skip-trowel patterned texture.

Skip-trowel technique is just taking some drywall compound and applying it in a nonsensical motion, so you get sort of a stucco type of texture that is a bit more subtle. There are tons of “how-to’s” on the internet. So I decided to de-wallpaper the room and texture it myself. It was SO MUCH FUN. Okay, well, not the de-wallpapering part. I don’t have pictures of that beating process, but what I did was the following:

• Moisten the wallpaper with warm water in a spray bottle (some folks put vinegar in their water, but I did not).
• Use a putty knife to gently get underneath the paper and scrape it from the wall without damaging it.

You will want to do some research prior to doing this…there are many different methods of removing wallpaper, and you want to make sure that you do it safely and without any damage to the walls underneath. For more recently applied wallpapers (like 1990′s and newer), there is a decorative layer and then a backing, and they may come off in separate pieces. There are chemical sprays that you can buy or steamer doodads you can use, but I just used warm water and it worked fine for me. You can also use a tool that “scores” the wallpaper (leaves tiny holes so that the water/solution can get behind it). I was lucky in that my wallpaper was already starting to peel off the walls. I think it depends on the type of wallpaper that was used and the glue with which it is applied. Centuries-old wallpaper will NOT come off easily, from what I hear.

After all of the wallpaper was removed, I started applying a pre-mixed joint compound with a wide putty knife right out of the bucket. Some will say it’s a good idea to use a diluted drywall compound that you mix up and an actual trowel, but I was LA.ZY. I wanted to git ‘er done without a lot of muss and fuss.

The wider the tool you use to apply it, the more subtle the effect will be. I wanted something like a Venetian plaster that looked sorta rustic.

The bottom line is that there are really no rules about applying texture to your walls as long as it’s kind of uniform. I had a blast just slapping that stuff up and was really amazed at how easy it is. This is the product that I used: It’s applied kinda like this:

This dude is laying it on pretty thick...I was a little more light handed. There are no rules!

I liked this stuff because it was a LARGE bucket that was all ready to go – no mixing needed – and it’s pink until it dries, so you know when it’s ready for paint! It didn’t take long for me to get it all on. I was done with this step in a day.

Here’s a picture of a finished wall with paint. On the left, you can see the pattern of the skip-troweled drywall a bit better. You can also see the GIANT mess that is made when doing this sort of thing…yikes!

Hubby helped me add some crown moulding after I was done, to add some architectural interest. We also replaced the ceiling fan over the table area. I had already painted the walls, but I wasn’t really happy with the color… So after I got the moulding up, I re-painted the walls with Valspar in “Khaki”. I’m not going to lie. I change my mind a lot. Much to my hubby’s chagrin…and my own. I really do not like painting. Then this happened: I have no idea what that’s supposed to be…a dog wearing sunglasses? Then there was this: Not sure on this one…”Rabbit Spider in Repose”?

And then I decided to add trim around the big opening between the kitchen and the TV/family room: …and now I have decided that I don’t like the Khaki anymore…okay I’ll stop.

I’m going to paint it with Valspar’s “Swoosh”, which is just a hair lighter than the Khaki. Some day. Not now. The “Swoosh” is a great earth tone color that I used in the laundry room re-do. I really like it…for the time being, anyway. Apologies for the dark pictures…it’s another cloudy day here…and I’m still learning how to mess with the aperture on my camera.

This part of the kitchen looks much bigger and less “cluttered” now that the seizure-inducing wallpaper is gone. The light from the windows reflects more naturally from the lighter walls. I am really happy with the way the texture turned out (and ANYONE can do this – so easy).

So just to take you back…

Here’s the before:

…and after:

I’m planning to use the same technique in our master bathroom once I get to a point where I can address that mess.

I’m not kidding, you won’t believe the horror that is waiting for me up there…

I’m linking up with Thrifty Decor Chick and Serenity Now…lots of GREAT projects on display!