Welcome back! It’s week two of the One Room Challenge and today I want to talk about prepping, painting, and decorating the walls on a budget!

wall art

I’ve mentioned this before on Instagram but one of the biggest frivolous struggles I’ve had with this house is decorating all the walls. My last two apartments were very small and while I had art on all the walls there were just a lot fewer walls. As we got ready to move into the house I budgeted and planned for the extra furniture we’d need, but we also had quite a bit of furniture - in addition to mine Ryan had some and I had some hand-me-down furniture from my grandparents that my parents had been storing for me. It didn’t even occur to me to budget for or try to source wall art. Then we got here and one by one rooms got 90% complete before I realized the walls were essentially blank.

For the dining room I did a gallery wall I absolutely love, and the guest room has some old things for now. I’ve also got a few old RIBBA frames from IKEA scattered around the house. The living room though, needed something big for over our enormous couch. Our IKEA KIVIK couch is 10 feet wide and the blank white wall above it looked absolutely massive. I didn’t want to clutter it with another gallery wall, and even if I had I still would have spent a fortune on all those frames - especially since we can’t thrift right now.

This is also really the only spot in our closed-concept home that could house a really large piece of art. That said, art at that scale often costs thousands and I didn’t have a budget for that. Even the large-scale pretty generic canvases I was finding at HomeSense before this were in the $600-$1500 range and I didn’t even really like any of them.

the art

My breakthrough (not sponsored!) was finding Juniper Print Shop online! They have some incredibly gorgeous prints by a variety of artists and they sell them in a variety of sizes. What cinched this for me was that they sell oversized art, printed on paper designed to work with the IKEA BJORKSTA frames. I was able to order a massive 5’ x 3.5’ print for around $200 including shipping. Then I ordered the BJORKSTA frame in the same size for $90 which we picked up using IKEA Click & Collect this past weekend. This is so much less than I would have spent for any other option and Ryan and I got to choose a piece we really love!

We spent a few hours narrowing down before we chose Montauk by LaurieAnne Gonzalez which is a gorgeous piece with stunning lines and colours that perfectly compliment the house. We first had a blank wall above our couch for several months, followed by a green painters tape box marking out the size of the art for another month and a half, so having actual art we LOVE hanging is still pretty novel and great - we even caught our dog looking at it yesterday which was adorable.

the frame

The IKEA BJORKSTA frame is a simple metal frame that would match most styles and is available in a variety of sizes that will work with the Juniper Print Shop prints and I found the prices really affordable. BJORKSTA is available in matte black and brushed aluminum finishes. I wanted brass as everything in our house has warm-toned metal so I actually spray-painted the pieces with Rustoleum Gilded Brass before assembling the frame. I used three light even coats of spray paint to cover each piece and it turned out perfectly! The frame comes disassembled and does include a piece of IKEA art you won’t be using. We did choose ours carefully and we’ll likely use it for a different art project to go elsewhere in the house!

painting + prepping

Of course before we could hang the art we had to create our own blank canvas with the walls. A few things about our house made prepping and painting walls a little harder and more of a process than it might have been otherwise.

First, the previous owner was a heavy smoker who smoked in the house for all 18 years he lived here. Thankfully the house didn’t have any carpeting, but the smell still lingered in all the walls (and the curtains that were originally left in this room). My partner was convinced we’d need an ozone treatment to remove the smell but with a lot of elbow grease and really thorough paint prep we were able to avoid an expensive treatment - the smell is now completely gone!

Secondly, the house has plaster and lathe walls - common for homes of this age. The plaster is also textured, again common, which makes patching holes or sections a little more complicated than it would be with smooth drywall.

Patching Walls

I mentioned before that patching walls is a little more difficult when the walls you’re patching are textured. I only had small patches for the most part so I did patch as if I were patching drywall because I already had those supplies on hand. When patching, I applied drywall compound to the hole first, sanded smooth once dry, and then applied more drywall compound to add back a little bit of texture. Make sure to wipe with a damp cloth before painting so you remove any excess dust!

Paint Prep for Eliminating Stains and Odours

For all the rooms in this house we used a four-step process to repaint. While it was a lot of work, it completely removed a lot of staining and smells.

Clean all the walls with TSP (using a sponge mop)
Rinse off excess TSP with water (using another sponge mop)
Prime with a stain- and odour-blocking primer (I used Kilz brand)
Paint with high-quality paint (I used Valspar in Swiss Coffee)

Hopefully next week I’ll be back sharing about wall sconces and freshening up the other window in this room which really needs some love! In the meantime make sure to check out all the other amazing projects happening over on the One Room Challenge Blog!