Celebrating Bead Board Wallpaper With a Party

Wallpaper is not just for walls anymore!

Bead board wallpaper must certainly be the hottest trend in decorating projects  right now  and if it is, it most probably was single-handedly started by Rhoda @ Southern Hospitality when she used it on  the exposed ends of her kitchen cabinets. 

Within a day or two of  Rhoda’s  tutorial  post (or maybe it  was within just HOURS),  HomeDepot.com  sold out of it!    I told Rhoda I could just imagine the Home Depot warehouse employees who fill the on-line orders shaking their heads and asking each other, “What the heck caused the huge,  sudden  demand for that bead board wallpaper?” 

Rhoda is now so graciously hosting  a Bead Board Wallpaper Party so we can all share the various ways we have used it.

First, before I show you what I did with it, let me say, if you haven’t tried it,  the Graham & Brown (Super Fresco) bead board wallpaper from HomeDepot.com is fantastic.  It looks like the real deal and  has actual texture and grooves  like wood bead board.   The wallpaper  is  already pre-pasted and  extremely easy to work with.  I didn’t even have to use caulk between the seams because the pieces went together so nicely. 

I had a set of  old, tired, out-dated bedroom furniture  and  I wanted to use the  bead board wallpaper  to give it a fresher, coastal cottage look. 

The three drawers on the left are how the  dresser looked “before.”    The three drawers on the right are after I applied the bead board wallpaper to the center sections of the drawers and added new brushed silver drawer pulls.

With a little bit of the wallpaper, the lattice design on the top of the dresser mirror went from this…

to this…

I also used the wallpaper on the corner hutch and desk chair that goes with this furniture set, as well as the exposed sides of the pieces.  If you would like to see photos of how the other furniture pieces came out,  you can go here.

Next, I used the bead board wallpaper for a couple little bathroom projects.

Several years ago,  my husband installed  real bead board in our bathroom.  I’ve mentioned how my husband hates carpentry work so I wish I had known about this look alike wallpaper then because it  would have saved him us a lot of grief.

 

Anyway, there was  one awkward 5 inch section of wall between the bathtub and walk-in shower that seemed too narrow to apply the real stuff. We felt that only a very small piece of the real bead board would end up being exposed once   trim  molding was  put on to hide the raw vertical edges.  Therefore,  Hubby just applied the same horizontal molding that was on all the other walls  and then I  painted the lower section  white in a lame  attempt to avoid drawing too much attention to the fact that little section of wall  didn’t have bead board on it.

This is how that narrow section of wall looks now with the bead board wallpaper applied to it.  I don’t think anyone would immediately realize it’s not real bead board, do you?

 

There is a removable panel on the front of our whirlpool bathtub to allow for access to the motor and plumbing.   I’m not sure there is really anything that would truly improve the looks of it, short of building a false front,  but  I applied the wallpaper to the panel anyway.

 

Hmmmm….like I said, not much will improve this.

 

I was really on a roll now so I moved on to the kitchen to see what I could use the  wallpaper on in there! 

It was about this time that my husband walked by and I heard him mumble, “It’s a good thing I like bead board.”    LOL. 

On the wall behind the cook top,  was a piece of white laminate that really stuck out like a sore thumb and irritated me.

I cleaned the laminate good with a degreasing cleanser, applied the bead board wallpaper, painted it the same color as the rest of my kitchen walls and …

voila!

It doesn’t irritate me anymore!  :)

I’m not really sure how practical  using the wallpaper in this location would be over a long period of time.  Continually scrubbing  cooking  splatters off  this area might eventually cause a good deal of wear and tear on the wallpaper but a  total kitchen remodel is  in my  future anyway…whenever  I can get it together and finally decide exactly what kind of cabinets, countertop, backsplash,  flooring etc.,  I want.    Since I already had  leftover wallpaper,  I didn’t mind trying a little of it here  as an easy short-term  fix for something that had been bothering me for a long time.

With all of the creativity that exists in Blogland, I know you will be utterly amazed at all the different ways this  bead board wallpaper has been used so please visit the other bloggers who are participating in Rhoda’s Bead Board Wallpaper Party and prepare to be inspired.