About a month or two ago, I shared on Instagram that I was starting a makeover on my kids’ playroom.

I ordered the accent chairs, thrifted a piece of furniture, and ordered the best wallpaper ever from Wayfair!

It’s called Ink Octagon and I love how it’s simple and graphic all at once.

This is where the room started off…  When we moved in, we kind of just slapped some paint on the walls in the playroom and called it a day.  I knew that it was going to be a mess 24/7, so it wasn’t a priority.  Now, that all the kids are a little older, we moved out some of the toys and are ready to make it more of a big-kid playroom!

Okay, and yes, let’s talk about the elephant in the room… that decal!  Good heavens.  I know some people love decals- and I do in certain cases, but that phrase is SO.NOT.ME.  If you can’t read the wonderful sentiment, it says, “So many toys, so little time”  GAG!  I got it as a gift (and I’m sure the gift giver doesn’t read the blog, so I’m in the clear.  Don’t rat me out okay!)  Needless to say, the decal won’t be up in the new room!

I’m going to give you the basics of how I install wallpaper and the number 1 thing I do is find someone (other than my husband) to install it with!  We work together on almost every project, but wallpaper is one of those things that’s just better for our marriage if I find someone else to do it with.

Enter: My Father-in-Law.  Yup, he’s my wallpaper buddy.  I’m fairly confident that he hates it, but so far we’ve done 4 rooms together and he keeps saying yes when I call.  It goes a little something like this…

Ring Ring… Me: Hey dad

Father-in-law (FIL): Hi Monica

Me: I feel like we haven’t spent much time together lately

FIL: Umm… yeah

Me: So, I was thinking that Sunday you could come over and we could spend time together doing something… like wallpapering

Awkward Silence…

FIL: Okay, see you then.  

So that’s my first tip- find someone to help. If your local call my father-in-law… haha!

The second tip is to make sure you have all the right materials. I bought a wallpaper kit that had the mini roller, scraper, knife- pretty much everything I needed.  A few things that I use that don’t come in the kit are a square, pencil, and tape measure.

I measured out each piece on the floor- I suppose that’s a tip too, so let’s make it official… Measure your paper on the floor!

Once it’s cut it’s time to apply the paste.  Even though the paper came pre-pasted, I still like to use an adhesive to seal it well, and it’s easier than soaking the paper in water.  Here comes another tip and this one is muy importante…  Use a long folding table to do all your pasting on.  That way you can spread your paper out and it’s okay if you get any glue on the table (which you will, because you’ll want to get the edges well covered)

When I’m pasting, I do one side at a time and then fold it over onto itself. This way, it won’t dry up quickly and it gets nice and tacky.

I don’t have any pictures of me putting the paper up, because that’s where my father-in-law draws the line.  He wasn’t about to take blog pictures for me! 🙂

You might be wondering why I didn’t go to the floor… I’m building a wall-length desk for all 4 kids to fit at for homework. It should be finished up this weekend!

As soon as the paper was up, I was completely in love!

Step #1 in Playroom Makeover was complete, so the next step was to update the mantel!

I’m such a huge fan of wallpaper.  I know it kind of gets a bad rap sometimes, but there are so many fun patterns these days and it’s not impossible to remove like the old school paper was.  Wayfair has a huge selection of papers that I love!  I almost went with this fabulous wallpaper, but I knew Eric wasn’t a fan and it was a little more expensive than the hex one. I sure do love it though. Maybe I’ll use it in another room someday!

If you’re in the market for some awesome wallpaper- check out Wayfair.  It’s my go-to source!

So, how do you feel about Wallpaper and do you call on relatives to help with DIY projects or am I the only one??

**Wayfair provided me with some of the wallpaper for free and I paid for some of it- so this post is semi-sponsored, but all opinions and smooth-talking persuasive skills are all mine. **