Our Map Wall Reveal!

Remember when I did that Herringbone Stripe Wall back in January and the fun insanity that led to me even doing that in my laundry room?

It may have taken me six months but I got some more work done on it!
The Lord has been so kind to teach my "I need to get this done now so I don't lose my brain" mind to chill and it is totally fine if projects take months.

Living life in between finishing projects is totally worth it.

As well as having an awesome loving husband who cares about my mental sanity so makes time to help me finish said projects.

For some reason I have poured a lot of decorating into one of the smallest rooms in our house:
The Laundry Room.

I mean, I like laundry. I love to wear clothes, definitely wouldn't make it in a nudest colony. It doesn't bother me to do laundry… it's just I forget that I started to do laundry so I'll go to do another load and find one already sitting in the machine from who knows when. Oops…

So, logically… if I made the room beautiful it would help me stay on top of laundry!

I know. I laughed out loud at that absurd thought too. Oh silly me…

But seriously what is the harm of making a room for chores into something beautiful? Yea, nothing.

First I painted the entire room BRIGHT WHITE. We are taking white out white. I'm not great at picking whites and I picked this one white thinking I would use it to paint all the rooms in the boy's wing.

To be practical I bought a five gallon bucket of this BRIGHT WHITE cause it was on sale!
My husband was horrified and even more horrified when he saw the color.

Fail. We've used it enough that he hasn't thrown up yet and since the room was really dark the BRIGHT WHITE really brightens it up.

By now you saw my Herringbone Wall that I put in there. It was a ton of fun to do and really added the pop of color it needed.

Next I needed to organize…




It wasn't terrible… it just wasn't neat and kinda looked thrown up there. Which it kinda was.



I wanted some basket storage and found the top two baskets at Goodwill for $4 a piece. Then I got the other smaller baskets at World Market for $7 a piece. They were yellow and the bigger ones were brown so I spray painted them all gray!

Spray painting baskets is a great easy fix and baskets take the color extremely well. If you wanted to try out spray paint for the first time, grab a basket and go nuts. It will be very gratifying.

The yellow tin on top I ordered from Crate & Barrel. Eventually I will paint "SOAP" on it.
One day I'm sure.

The wire basket holding white lint cloths is from the Container Store and the Nellie's White Brightener for whites was from World Market. That stuff works like no body's business. Though White Brite works just as well and is $3 cheaper. When my tin of Nellie's runs out I'm sure I'll just buy White Brite and pour it into it cause the tin is adorable.

The brown crate was something I had rescued from a Fossil Mall Dump. Yes. I went looking for boxes to use for packing and Fossil was getting rid of tons of wooden crates and goodies they had used as display pieces. They even loaded into my van for me. Giant Win.

That happened after I had just complained to a friend that all these bloggers find all this amazing stuff and it is so insane and yea… the Lord is still working on me folks.

People aren't really kidding when they say basket storage makes things look so much better.

Looks so much better doesn't it? It makes me feel accomplished to have a clean space… anywhere… in the house so when I pass this it makes me sigh with a bit of relief.
Not all the world is chaos.

The next step was the one I had waited FOREVER to tackle.

Our Map Wall.


I wanted to do two around the entrance doors. One door leading to the garage and the other door leading into the house. Currently we only got around to one wall. It took us a full day to cut the paper, glue it down to the wall and smooth it out.

But… it is my favorite wall almost ever and I get to see it every time I come home!!

Joy.

If you want a tutorial on it… I would not be the girl to teach it to you. I will tell you that yes, it looks daunting but seriously… it is a giant cut and paste craft. If you have an exacto

 knife, a wallpaper sponge, a wallpaper smoother and some Zisser Paste, you my friend have the tools of a wall paper master.

Ok, not really but for our Map Wall that was all we used and all our maps ordered from Papersource.Com. They weren't wall paper but rather thick wrapping paper sheets.
They worked perfectly.

Here is what we started with:

Bryan measured the wall and made a replica of it in Painter's tape on our dining room floor.

We used it to arrange the maps and decide which one went where.

Then we started cutting

and pasting

and on the wall it went!

Thankfully our sweet monsters were a huge help during this process by keeping to themselves…

And it only took us maybe five hours… it would have been faster if the wall had been level and I wasn't married to a perfectionist engineer. But I am and I adore him and he let me use a big paint brush to play with sticky glue. Always fun. :) 

And there you have it. 

One stunning wall that makes you sigh with happiness every time you walk in. 

Well, it does it for me anyway.

It's special to us in the fact that we have actually traveled together to each of those maps pasted on that wall save one: The British Isles. We will get there one day but until then we have had quite some adventures and now we get to be reminded of them every time we come home. 

We have a few more projects to do in the laundry room including the other Map wall and all of my wood projects so stay tuned! 

You never know what will happen next in the McCarty House. 

God bless and Much Love,

 Jessica 

This is linked up at Motivational Monday, DIY Dreamer & Work it Wednesday!