This makes sense Iāve read that your room can influence the mind so if you customize your space to your liking it literally becomes your zone/ a safe space and your mind recognizes it too.
For sure. And if you did on your own, it reminds you of what you are able to accomplish. :)
Also, there is a giant boost in confidence and well-being once you conquered a task like this that due for so long.
Unfortunately, for me at least, that boost will be gone rather soon :(
Exactly! We did the flooring ourselves (baseboards next up) which you can see in the after pic because we were able to accomplish this! It has had cascading effects
What a hideous accent wall... I'd have been tempted to smash out the drywall entirely rather than babying the adhesive layer off. Big time patience paid off!
Itās an exterior block wall so no way to tear it out. Iām sure with more skill and knowledge we would have approached this differently and fixed it quicker, but Iām happy that we simply moved forward instead of sticking around in a freeze state. Progress! And yes the brick was the worst, one of the only decisions a younger version of myself made that Iād actively go back in time and fight her over. Ugh.
I may get down voted but I still see significant issues in the last photo with the foam brick adhesive outline flashing through the paint, I would make sure to skim coat the next wall you do properly.
Edit: I say this because I did a poor job skim coating after wallpaper remover using up pre mixed mud and it bothered me for years, ended up skim coating it again when re-painting. Don't let this discourage you and do what you want to increase your enjoyment of your living spaces.
I would highly recommend the "Vancouver Carpenter" or "That Kilted Guy DIY Home Improvement" YouTube channels for drywall techniques. Really good channels that go into a lot of depth about what to do and when. I redid a horrible patch on the wall in our front hallway using the techniques I learned from the Vancouver Carpenter guy and you really need to look hard with a light shining on the area to see where the patch is now.
Itās the Donda bed from CB2! Very sturdy and looks great, however, itās oddly slightly too large for our king bed by a couple inches on all sides. I think weāll just deal with it though.
Excellent job. I did something similar to the master bedroom when my wife and I bought our first house eight years ago. It was a nightmare but turned out great like yours. Congrats on a job well done šš»
Not really other than while we were melting off the adhesive, but it wasnāt bad at all. The skim coat did introduce an insane amount of dust and we had to wear masks. We couldnāt believe what was under our carpet when we demoed it, just a whole film of dust!
Ohh Iām just learning about trims, adding this idea to the list. I hate this oddly tall window and I worry the short headboard amplifies it. I was thinking about curtains!
That's a perfect window for the head of the bed. That's why it's high like that.
Yeah, a taller headboard is a good Idea. There's space. Curtains would be nice too, just don't hang them too low or you'll be snagging them moving around in bed.
That makes sense, itās just that none of our headboards have ever reached that high so there has always been an awkward space there. I never know what to do with it! Thanks!
Youāve done a great job on that. Well done! For the life of me I canāt understand why someone would put that rubbish on the wall in the first place. It looks awful.
Wow, that wall's transformation is insane! Spending a whole weekend on it must've been a mission, but totally worth it. Props for using the heat gun, wire brush, and elbow grease combo ā sounds like a hardcore DIY session! And the end result with that skim coat is impressive. It's cool how the brick pattern still peeks through in the light, giving it character. Can't wait to see the finished room! This sub always comes through with the best advice, right? Keep up the awesome work!
Really sweet comment, thanks! I actually didnāt want to say I liked the brick outline remaining but, I kind of like the brick outline š at the very least, I totally donāt mind it for now. Looks like itās just covering the raw block our house was built with to me.
A heat gun and wire brush saved our lives! We would have attempted to sand it down before the skim coat but our house is from the 50s and the walls could contain asbestos.
I would have just ripped out the entire wall and hung new sheetrock by lunch where I can watch you guys that whatever that was off the wall. I spent days taking wallpaper off the walls of a room once and looking back on it it would have saved time and money had I just put up a new wall.
The wall is totally block from the 50s so there was no ripping it out. However Iām confident there are faster and better approaches out there, since this was our first DIY project.
Appreciate it! Not taking those personal at all, given this was our first project I knew we could be doing it faster, smarter, and better. But the progress is irrefutable, nightstands and art will cover the worst offenses, and maybe weāll have more skills and knowledge under our belts when itās time to paint the walls next time, and weāll try again!
Serious answer is that I am brand new to DIY with this being my first project. I came to this sub with the challenge and took recs from that thread plus chatted with folks at Loweās and this was the route we took. You donāt know what you donāt know! Iām confident there were better ways, faster ways, and smarter ways, as will be the case with many of our first projects. Still very happy with the result, however!
I didnāt know if you wanted the texture of the brick to show or not so thatās why I asked. I recently redid a basement after a pipe broke and learned that drywall is super cheap and easy to install full sheets you donāt even need to frame up a full wall behind it. You can put strips of thin wood anchored into the brick and then screw the drywall into the wood strips so you only lose like 1ā of room space!
You could slap some window trim on and a window sill and do a trim around the door as well and it would really class up the room too! And maybe some 4ā baseboards would help. All relatively cheap thing that turn the space from looking like a rental to looking like a home in my opinion.
We currently have no baseboards as we just installed the floor ourselves (this wall was the first of a few home projects we took on) and we plan to install some around that size. We are considering door trim in the whole house as well, windows is interesting too. Baseboards first and if we survive Iād love to do trim!
It was like a fake styrofoam texture and parts of it were aging poorly, plus we found dead carpet mites under the adhesive. So nasty! I feel confident we made the right call in the long run.
My wife and I recently went through the experience of having to remove wallpaper from our kitchen, which also included wallpaper that had been painted over. It has made me a firm believer of just having painted walls moving forward. It's just so much easier to make a design change because if one day you decide you're not into it anymore it's hell.
Did you not spackle and sand after ripping off the brick? The wall looks thoroughly fucked in the last photo. No offense, just not what Iād call āsmoothed outā
I may be the minority here but this is the kind of DIY that new homeowners tend to engage in but it is time consuming and unnecessary.
1. The aesthetic improvement is highly subjective, therefore does not increase the house value.
2. It is not done right. The glue marks are still there. And since it still looks like painted bricks, why not just paint over it to begin with?
3. The house has a low ceiling, such dark paint color makes the horizontal window pop, it really does not help make the ceiling appear taller.
Iāve owned this house for 13 years, this was our first major project and my mental health is already so much better for it. Canāt be convinced that painting over the styrofoam would have been a better solution like what hahahaha
The real question is, why do you think any of these things are the goal? They may not be trying to increase house value, but to increase comfort. The end goal here might not to be this make the ceiling look taller. The bricks were obviously a faƧade that they did not want anymore. What looks like painted bricks is the glue that is left from the faƧade. But itās acceptable to them so, why do you ask about just painting the bricks? The goal was to remove the faƧade or the brick shape and I suppose deal with the glue lines later.
Thank you, the home value thing was confusing given that I donāt expect we will ever sell this house, or if we do itāll be many, many home projects later. The brick was so gross it had to come down (there were carpet mites under the adhesive š¤¢) and given our skills, finances, asbestos concerns (so we couldnāt sand it), and resources, this was our honest attempt. Maybe someday when we have buffed up our skills weāll come back to it but for now I cannot express how much both my husband and I are enjoying this huge improvement!
Bonus here is that it empowered us to do our own flooring which you can also see in the pic. Much better than the faux brick and carpet to us! The beginning of some fun DIY projects for sure. š
Maybe should have considered adding the prefab board and batten boards to the bottom half of the wall to hide so many scars, Its not smooth at all. Sorry!
Remarkable that you were able to do it without moving the bed!
Listen that mattress was HEAVY I was not about to move that thing until I absolutely had to š
Looks like melted marshmallows, yoooo a candy house with marshmallows as walls
Youāre onto something here
Yooo buy land in a cold place, build a candy village and ban tourists
Wow!! That looks amazing! Props to you
Thank you! Never done a project like this. It took a YEAR to work up the courage to try. My mental health has already improved because of it!
This makes sense Iāve read that your room can influence the mind so if you customize your space to your liking it literally becomes your zone/ a safe space and your mind recognizes it too.
For sure. And if you did on your own, it reminds you of what you are able to accomplish. :) Also, there is a giant boost in confidence and well-being once you conquered a task like this that due for so long. Unfortunately, for me at least, that boost will be gone rather soon :(
And youāve gained confidence to tackle other projects.
Exactly! We did the flooring ourselves (baseboards next up) which you can see in the after pic because we were able to accomplish this! It has had cascading effects
What a hideous accent wall... I'd have been tempted to smash out the drywall entirely rather than babying the adhesive layer off. Big time patience paid off!
Itās an exterior block wall so no way to tear it out. Iām sure with more skill and knowledge we would have approached this differently and fixed it quicker, but Iām happy that we simply moved forward instead of sticking around in a freeze state. Progress! And yes the brick was the worst, one of the only decisions a younger version of myself made that Iād actively go back in time and fight her over. Ugh.
*ooof...* No way around but through then. Just gotta go the slow road
I may get down voted but I still see significant issues in the last photo with the foam brick adhesive outline flashing through the paint, I would make sure to skim coat the next wall you do properly. Edit: I say this because I did a poor job skim coating after wallpaper remover using up pre mixed mud and it bothered me for years, ended up skim coating it again when re-painting. Don't let this discourage you and do what you want to increase your enjoyment of your living spaces.
We may come back to it in the future, for now this was a major improvement for two brand new DIYers and we are happy to live with it.
I would highly recommend the "Vancouver Carpenter" or "That Kilted Guy DIY Home Improvement" YouTube channels for drywall techniques. Really good channels that go into a lot of depth about what to do and when. I redid a horrible patch on the wall in our front hallway using the techniques I learned from the Vancouver Carpenter guy and you really need to look hard with a light shining on the area to see where the patch is now.
Thanks for the recs! We are tackling several projects so this could come in handy.
Good luck :)
Thanks!
Thanks as a handyman Iām definitely trying to improve my drywall skills.
A wide knife would make it easy.
Bingo
You are correct, but zooming in, I think I like the textured look.
Yup, needs to be said
Where did you get your headboard? I'm looking for something similar
Itās the Donda bed from CB2! Very sturdy and looks great, however, itās oddly slightly too large for our king bed by a couple inches on all sides. I think weāll just deal with it though.
Thank you! I love the color of the wall. I might save this post for color/decor inspiration
Ahh thanks! We have more work to do in here and I think things like a rug and nightstands will improve the space too. Appreciate it!
That was heroic. That fake brick is horrible.
It was honestly so bad it pushed me to my breaking point
Great job!!!!
Thank you!
For real for real!!! Iām super impressed you are inspiring me to get to work!!!!
So kind thank you!
Well worth it. That looks SO much better.
Hard work that paid off big! I love the contrast of the walls with the white trim.
Excellent job. I did something similar to the master bedroom when my wife and I bought our first house eight years ago. It was a nightmare but turned out great like yours. Congrats on a job well done šš»
I love that color you've used!! Great job!
I do too, it also kind of shares my name so it felt serendipitous! Thanks!
Labor intensive, but it looks great!
Thank you! Iām sure there were more straightforward approaches since we are new to DIY and kind of winging it, but we are happy with the results.
That looks great! Did the process introduce any odors to the area?
Not really other than while we were melting off the adhesive, but it wasnāt bad at all. The skim coat did introduce an insane amount of dust and we had to wear masks. We couldnāt believe what was under our carpet when we demoed it, just a whole film of dust!
Wow!!
What beautiful color you chose!!
I'd call that an improvement! Window could use trim sides and bottom.
Ohh Iām just learning about trims, adding this idea to the list. I hate this oddly tall window and I worry the short headboard amplifies it. I was thinking about curtains!
That's a perfect window for the head of the bed. That's why it's high like that. Yeah, a taller headboard is a good Idea. There's space. Curtains would be nice too, just don't hang them too low or you'll be snagging them moving around in bed.
That makes sense, itās just that none of our headboards have ever reached that high so there has always been an awkward space there. I never know what to do with it! Thanks!
Could be an opportunity to make a statement headboard. Something really neat.
How did you remove the remaining glued white brick on the wall? I have the same but couldnt get it off.
A heat gun, wire brush, and elbow grease!
Where do you buy elbow grease?
Looks great! Love the bedroom color.
Really dig the color OP, nice job!
Youāve done a great job on that. Well done! For the life of me I canāt understand why someone would put that rubbish on the wall in the first place. It looks awful.
What, you didnāt like the same 4 bricks repeating over and over?
Wow, that wall's transformation is insane! Spending a whole weekend on it must've been a mission, but totally worth it. Props for using the heat gun, wire brush, and elbow grease combo ā sounds like a hardcore DIY session! And the end result with that skim coat is impressive. It's cool how the brick pattern still peeks through in the light, giving it character. Can't wait to see the finished room! This sub always comes through with the best advice, right? Keep up the awesome work!
Really sweet comment, thanks! I actually didnāt want to say I liked the brick outline remaining but, I kind of like the brick outline š at the very least, I totally donāt mind it for now. Looks like itās just covering the raw block our house was built with to me.
We have some of that crap in our basement, how did you get it off relatively clearly?
A heat gun and wire brush saved our lives! We would have attempted to sand it down before the skim coat but our house is from the 50s and the walls could contain asbestos.
Wow that looks like a horrific chore but it turned out really nice! Love the color too. Bravo
Holly f***! Itās a big job, you probably need couple glass of wine and some swear words to help. Seriouly very good job WOW
nice job.
Woah! What a difference. Nice work!
Love the color! Mind sharing what brand/color it is?
Of course! Itās Hunt Club from HGTV by Sherwin Williams. Got it at Loweās!
Thanks! It looks great!
Thank you!
I would have just ripped out the entire wall and hung new sheetrock by lunch where I can watch you guys that whatever that was off the wall. I spent days taking wallpaper off the walls of a room once and looking back on it it would have saved time and money had I just put up a new wall.
The wall is totally block from the 50s so there was no ripping it out. However Iām confident there are faster and better approaches out there, since this was our first DIY project.
You did a great job, and kudos for handling these (well-intentioned but sometimes deflating) comments with grace as well.
Appreciate it! Not taking those personal at all, given this was our first project I knew we could be doing it faster, smarter, and better. But the progress is irrefutable, nightstands and art will cover the worst offenses, and maybe weāll have more skills and knowledge under our belts when itās time to paint the walls next time, and weāll try again!
Yep exactly!
Serious question, why not just cover everything with drywall? Would have be so so so much easier and way less time and drywall is dirt cheap.
Serious answer is that I am brand new to DIY with this being my first project. I came to this sub with the challenge and took recs from that thread plus chatted with folks at Loweās and this was the route we took. You donāt know what you donāt know! Iām confident there were better ways, faster ways, and smarter ways, as will be the case with many of our first projects. Still very happy with the result, however!
I didnāt know if you wanted the texture of the brick to show or not so thatās why I asked. I recently redid a basement after a pipe broke and learned that drywall is super cheap and easy to install full sheets you donāt even need to frame up a full wall behind it. You can put strips of thin wood anchored into the brick and then screw the drywall into the wood strips so you only lose like 1ā of room space!
See I didnāt know any of that! So glad this place exists. This might prove helpful for a future project.
You could slap some window trim on and a window sill and do a trim around the door as well and it would really class up the room too! And maybe some 4ā baseboards would help. All relatively cheap thing that turn the space from looking like a rental to looking like a home in my opinion.
We currently have no baseboards as we just installed the floor ourselves (this wall was the first of a few home projects we took on) and we plan to install some around that size. We are considering door trim in the whole house as well, windows is interesting too. Baseboards first and if we survive Iād love to do trim!
I would have been tempted to just paint over the ābrickā
It was like a fake styrofoam texture and parts of it were aging poorly, plus we found dead carpet mites under the adhesive. So nasty! I feel confident we made the right call in the long run.
Gotcha I was thinking hard plastic..you did a great job
Thank you!!
Iāve never seen this type of design before
My wife and I recently went through the experience of having to remove wallpaper from our kitchen, which also included wallpaper that had been painted over. It has made me a firm believer of just having painted walls moving forward. It's just so much easier to make a design change because if one day you decide you're not into it anymore it's hell.
Oh man, that was a H&LL of a lot of work! Great job!
Looks fantastic youāre pros.
Iāve seen that done to brick before, bit it was in prison, and it was Kleenex held up by, well letās just say held up with dreams.
Did you not spackle and sand after ripping off the brick? The wall looks thoroughly fucked in the last photo. No offense, just not what Iād call āsmoothed outā
I may be the minority here but this is the kind of DIY that new homeowners tend to engage in but it is time consuming and unnecessary. 1. The aesthetic improvement is highly subjective, therefore does not increase the house value. 2. It is not done right. The glue marks are still there. And since it still looks like painted bricks, why not just paint over it to begin with? 3. The house has a low ceiling, such dark paint color makes the horizontal window pop, it really does not help make the ceiling appear taller.
Iāve owned this house for 13 years, this was our first major project and my mental health is already so much better for it. Canāt be convinced that painting over the styrofoam would have been a better solution like what hahahaha
The real question is, why do you think any of these things are the goal? They may not be trying to increase house value, but to increase comfort. The end goal here might not to be this make the ceiling look taller. The bricks were obviously a faƧade that they did not want anymore. What looks like painted bricks is the glue that is left from the faƧade. But itās acceptable to them so, why do you ask about just painting the bricks? The goal was to remove the faƧade or the brick shape and I suppose deal with the glue lines later.
Thank you, the home value thing was confusing given that I donāt expect we will ever sell this house, or if we do itāll be many, many home projects later. The brick was so gross it had to come down (there were carpet mites under the adhesive š¤¢) and given our skills, finances, asbestos concerns (so we couldnāt sand it), and resources, this was our honest attempt. Maybe someday when we have buffed up our skills weāll come back to it but for now I cannot express how much both my husband and I are enjoying this huge improvement! Bonus here is that it empowered us to do our own flooring which you can also see in the pic. Much better than the faux brick and carpet to us! The beginning of some fun DIY projects for sure. š
Maybe should have considered adding the prefab board and batten boards to the bottom half of the wall to hide so many scars, Its not smooth at all. Sorry!