Need wall covering ideas

[Ariel]

DH & I are moving into a different house. It is 10 miles from no where on 160 wooded acres.

We are remodeling it with a natural or rustic theme. Our problem lies in the sheet rock walls. They were originally poorly mudded and taped and have some water circles so we must do something about them.

DH wants to kilz the water circles and texture with splatter and knock down technique. I have issue with this because to me it looks to modern.

Does anyone have any ideas that you might have used? It can't be too expensive or DH won't go for it.

Ariel

[FolioMark]

Id use that sand textured paint laid on with a big brush very thick. We had a little bathroom with really badly mudded joints and we took plain old joint compound and smeared it all over the walls with our hands like finger paint and then just lightly brushed it with a broom. Its got a very hand made look and texture and it takes a day or so to dry but its held up very well and hides a multitude of sins. You might try covering the walls with cheese cloth or light burlap stuck on with a thin slurry of joint compound. Like making a cast for a broken leg. And you could go for that old time depression look. cover the walls in sheets of newspaper and then varnish it. Remember originally wallpaper came in squares not rolls and had lots of seams. I once saw a kitchen where one wall was papered in the pages from an old cook book. And then varnished to make it washable.

[AngieM2]

Dip inexpensive fabric in liquid starch and "wallpaper" it. Or use paste to do it, but if you use starch, it will come off when you want it to.

Seen this on HG TV for apartments when they want fancy look, but cannot harm the walls.

AngieM2

[dscott7972]

What your husband wants to do is a nice technique especially with a poor drywall job because it hides so well. We call it skip trial, I do it with dabbing the mud on the walls and while its still wet smooth it out with a spackling knife/trial about 8"-10".
This actually is far from being modern, its an old mediteranian look.

[SteveD(TX)]

My wife just did a cool thing to a couple of walls in my home office. "Different" types of wall coverings seems to be her passion. Plain brown paper - it comes in long 36" wide rolls at your local Home Depot or Lowes (or other home imp. store) - and cheap. Just tear it off in irregular pieces, and apply to wall with wallpaper paste, overlapping in irregular patterns. After a day or so, apply a translucent color glaze. It looks fantastic! The paper has slight wrinkles in it, and the glaze really makes them look good. Kinda like a patchwork leather wall or something. Trimmed in border paper of your choice. It only took her a couple of hours and I am extremely happy with it.

[Milking Mom]

There used to be a restaurant that had their bathroom wall papered in the funny papers out of the newspaper.

[Ravenlost]

That sand textured paint is expensive and hard to use. We tried it in our stairwell, hated it and are now going to cover it with textured wallpaper that you paint. It comes in different textures and is white. Once it's up you paint it. It was $9 a roll.

[Terri in WV]

Steve, How heavy was the paper your wife used? I got some to do this to what will eventually be the game room but I think it might be too heavy.

What I did in my entry way(bad walls and layer upon layer of old wall paper) was to put some mud(joint compound) in a paint tray, drizzle 3 different colors of paint over it(about 1T of ea) and used a roller to roll it on. Kind of gave it a marble look and had to work in little batches at a time so the colors wouldn't blend.

For my kitchen I got the economy pine plank boards, stained and sealed them and I love the way it turned out. With the boards used for the backsplash it gives the kitchen a really old time feeling.

[cloverfarm]

How do you put up paneling? Do you have to take the existing base board off ... or ...

[westbrook]

back in the day when lathe and plaster was used, textured walls was the norm. I grew up with an almost spanish swirling of the plaster on the walls.

[SteveD(TX)]

Originally Posted by Terri in WV

Steve, How heavy was the paper your wife used? I got some to do this to what will eventually be the game room but I think it might be too heavy. ....

I would guess it's about the weight of a regular grocery sack (remember the brown ones before plastic?). They come on large rolls and are comparatively cheap. I forgot the name of the technique; I'm sure she didn't invent it. She just filled a small paint tray full of the wallpaper paste, tore off and dunked each piece in and slapped them up at random. Very easy and quick. She did basically the same thing using much heavier vinyl rolls of what look like to me, flooring of some kind. But it's probably something else. She used smaller pieces and just glued them all over the walls of a small bathroom, overlapping at random so the whole surface is covered. We get lots of compliments on it from guests (it's the downstairs half-bath).

[Jan Doling]

Check out the "Venetian" plaster now on the market. Tuscan any one?

[SteveD(TX)]

Originally Posted by Jan Doling

Check out the "Venetian" plaster now on the market. Tuscan any one?

Ahhh, Venetian plaster. Another of my wife's projects. She did this in our kitchen about 3 or 4 months ago, right over the old wallpaper. Looks great, but she did have some difficulty in making it look good. After applying it (kinda like a very thick paint), she wasn't happy with the look, too rough. So she sanded it with a palm sander. Still looked funny. Then she painted over using a very watered down latex paint applied in circular patterns using rags. Now it looks great.

[joan from zone six]

Originally Posted by SteveD(TX)

Ahhh, Venetian plaster. Another of my wife's projects. She did this in our kitchen about 3 or 4 months ago, right over the old wallpaper. Looks great, but she did have some difficulty in making it look good. After applying it (kinda like a very thick paint), she wasn't happy with the look, too rough. So she sanded it with a palm sander. Still looked funny. Then she painted over using a very watered down latex paint applied in circular patterns using rags. Now it looks great.

hey - has martha stewart heard about your wife ? maybe you all are looking at your 15 minutes of fame -

she sounds very creative - beware though, "fine arts" can get to be an expensisve hobby -

[Ariel]

Wow, there are some really great ideas out there! If you have any pictures of your work I would love to see them. If you want, you can e-mail them to me at aairyll@yahoo.com

[BeeFree]

I was looking at the ceiling in my dentist office yesterday. Started discussing it with DH. He said it looked like they had trawled [sp] on plaster mud with a trawl and then took a smooth trawl and spread it smooth in places. Effect was smooth and rough ceiling. It looked good. Then they had painted it.

If you want to skip the part of painting, get your plaster mud already mixed in a 5 gal bucket and mix your paint right in. Then do your plaster. It is painted at the same time.

[CMATE]

Originally Posted by SteveD(TX)

Ahhh, Venetian plaster. Another of my wife's projects. She did this in our kitchen about 3 or 4 months ago, right over the old wallpaper. Looks great, but she did have some difficulty in making it look good. After applying it (kinda like a very thick paint), she wasn't happy with the look, too rough. So she sanded it with a palm sander. Still looked funny. Then she painted over using a very watered down latex paint applied in circular patterns using rags. Now it looks great.

Steve, could you please send your wife over to my place, I think I could really use her help!
Actually, if you can't spare her, could you post pictures of those walls, they sound great.

[Animal]

The next time that we redo our bathroom we are going to get a copy of an early 1900s Sears catalogue and make copys of the pages and paste those to the upper half of the walls and some kind of paneling on the bottom. With some old items to decorate with it should look pretty good.

[Leay]

Do you have access to any old red barn board? We had a couple of old outbuildings on my SO's farm that we tore the barn board off of and used that as wainscotting (sp?) in our bathroom. Very rustic! I have pics I could send if that is an option with you.
Leay

[OUVickie]

When my Aunt re-painted the walls (color paint) in her living room, she used a feather duster to make patterns in the wet paint. It looked pretty and unusual.

I've also seen the brown paper-sack treatment. It does end up looking like leather walls and it's great for houses where you want a rustic or ranch look. I've seen patterns made with tree leaves too.