Fabric as a Wall Covering

***I can't believe I'm just now getting around to writing this post... This was a DIY project I did several months ago, but things have been so hectic since then I haven't had time to write about it! When I realized that, I wanted to get on here right away and share this with you because I was so excited about it when I did it, and I think it turned out great!


The bathroom in my apartment has been in dire need of a makeover, but there is only so much you can do when you are renting. After the whole "tree-incident" (if you don't know about the tree growing into my bathroom through the wall, well that's a whole story in itself for another time!), the landlord did some "repairs" and put in a new floor, but I was still desperate to overhaul it and decorate. The wall where the tree had once grown has never been the same since, even with repairs, and I wanted to cover that thing up with wallpaper or something. Alas, wallpapering is a forbidden sin for renters...

Here is the boring old bathroom wall:



In comes an absolutely brilliant idea - DIY fabric wallpaper! Originally I got the idea from this blog post on Design Sponge about a faux headboard made of fabric that had been attached to the wall with liquid starch - absolutely adorable (and by
the way, the headboard project itself is still a coming attraction in my apartment!). The selling point - attaching fabric to the wall with liquid starch makes a wall covering that is totally removable later! I did some research (i.e. googling - or as we call it in the Watts family - doing a "whoogle search," haha) and found all sorts of articles and blog posts about this technique. The more I read, the less skeptical I was about it, and I started to believe it would (1) really work, and (2) actually be removable. Some people even claim you can take that fabric off the wall later, throw it in the washing machine, and then use it again for a whole different project! Genius!

Next came the search for fabric, which was already documented on the blog here. I chose a white, red and pink striped fabric that coordinated with the "birds in a cage" fabric I had previously chosen to make a sink skirt out of (don't ask, that project has been going nowhere fast!). Then came the search for liquid starch. Would you believe you cannot actually find liquid starch in the store? Any store! I looked at Target, grocery stores, Walgreens. OK, maybe I didn't do an exhaustive search, but it was enough for me to decide to just go online. Back to google and I found it online at Walmart. Having no idea how much liquid starch I needed, I over-ordered, as usual, and ended up with something like 4 large containers (hey, they were only like $1.97 each!). My final shopping trip for supplies was to the hardware store, where I purchased spray starch (the regular laundry kind), drop cloths, painters cloths / towels, paint rollers, plastic putty knives, blue painters tape (which we didn't actually use), and paint pans. What I should have bought also in this trip was gloves, but I'll get to that later.

Having all of my supplies assembled, I planned a weekend day for the project and enlisted Mandy's help. We decided to use the outdoor patio area to assemble things and to measure the fabric so we'd have plenty of room.

Here's a step by step of what we did.

1. Measure the wall - Multiple times!!!

The first time I measured the wall was before I went fabric shopping, so that I'd be able to estimate how much fabric to buy. I measured all the way across, then from top to bottom. When I picked out a fabric, I figured out how wide it came, and decided how many yards based on how many lengths of wall I would need (basically the width of this particular fabric was about half of my wall space, so I doubled the height of the wall and then rounded up).

After purchasing the fabric, we measured the wall again, multiple times. We then did various calculations to determine the best use of the fabric, deciding to basically divide the wall into three "sections" across - the middle section would be above and below the window, and then there would be one section on either side with a panel going from floor to ceiling. We then measured each of those sections separately to determine how to cut our fabric.

2. Measure and cut the fabric into panels

After all of these overly complicated calculations, we laid the fabric out on the ground, measured for each section, and cut the fabric into two long strips of the necessary width for the two side panels, and two squares for above and below the window.




3. Prep for application

We then brought the fabric back inside into the bathroom, where I had removed almost everything, put down drop cloths, and set out the paint pans and rollers. We poured the liquid starch into the pans. Each strip of fabric was then sprayed with spray starch to stiffen it up before we applied it.




4. Roll liquid starch onto wall

Next we rolled liquid starch onto the wall on the section we were working on first. We started at the top of the wall and coated the starch on about 1/3 of the way down to start. Liquid starch is really messy - and sticky! This is when I wished I had gloves! It kind of went everywhere, but thankfully it was easy enough to clean up later.

5. Attach fabric to the wall, and apply more starch as needed to attach

Then (and this part definitely took both of us), we placed the fabric onto the wall at the top, smoothing as we worked our way down onto the area that had been starched. This part was especially difficult due to my fabric choice - those stripes had to be straight! After that section was "attached" we starched the wall the rest of the way down and continued smoothing the fabric onto the wall. Once one entire panel was on the wall, we used painter's cloths drenched with more liquid starch to apply additional starch on top of the fabric. We didn't do this over the whole panel, just in the corners, sides and areas that seemed to need it. We also used the plastic putty knifes to help smooth the fabric down and into the corners. Then we repeated this whole process for each section of the wall.



6. Let the fabric dry (break time!)

It took a while for the fabric to dry out. During this time, we cleaned up our mess, walked the dogs, had some food and took a break!

7. Cut "edges" off around the fabric wall

Once the fabric was fairly dry, we made sure there were no areas that were not attached (and where they were, we just dabbed on some more starch using the cloths). Then we cut the edges off of the fabric where there was "extra" using a box cutter. If I was doing this again, I probably would not have calculated for "extra" around the edges - I had read that the fabric would shrink as it dried and therefore this was necessary, but my fabric did not shrink at all and cutting off the edges was a pain.

8. Voila! Fabulous Wall!