Updating paneled walls in a closet with textured wallpaper

Today I’m showing you the dark, ugly corner closet in my basement laundry room – and how it was transformed in a few hours for just $40.  Updating paneled walls in the closet was fast and easy with textured beadboard wallpaper! Paneled wall makeover in a closet with textured beadboard wallpaper | AMerryMom.com

When we bought our 1960s-era house, there was a lot to do.  Wallpaper had to be removed.  Walls had to be painted.  The kitchen had to be gutted and updated.  The basement needed to be finished to provide more living space for our family of five.  We accomplished those improvements, but several projects are still waiting for us.

One project that has been lingering on the to-do list is a makeover of the laundry room.  Back in the day, previous owners were thrifty about adding a closet and cabinets in the laundry room.  By thrifty I mean that everything looked like it was cobbled together from scraps of materials.

After living with the yucky, empty cabinets taking up space in the laundry room for a while, we finally got around to pulling them out because they weren’t salvageable.  We decided we could save the closet because the framing was sound.  It just wasn’t pretty.  So we cleaned it up, used the closet lightly for stashing storage containers, and put the project on the back burner.

This spring I’ve decided it’s finally time to get the laundry room spruced up.  I tackled the closet makeover to get things rolling.  It actually was a fast and easy transformation, so I wish I would have done it sooner!

The closet had been finished with pieces of paneling that were not cut correctly, resulting in walls that were ugly and uneven.

Pre-makeover left side of closet

You can see the uneven paneling in this photo of the left side of the closet before the makeover with textured wallpaper.

When I saw textured beadboard wallpaper at Lowe’s for $20 a roll, I decided that would be a cost effective choice for updating the paneled walls in the closet.  I’d read that textured wallpaper can cover paneling so I bought it and got ready to wallpaper.  After removing so much flowered wallpaper from elsewhere in the house it seemed weird to install wallpaper, but ultimately it felt like the right solution for the closet.

First I had to paint the shelf in the closet.  I couldn’t remove it to paint or to paper the closet walls because it was installed as a stationary shelf with the paneling holding it in place.

Closet makeover with textured beadboard wallpaper| AMerryMom.com

The beadboard textured wallpaper did a good job covering up the lumpy paneling after the makeover. (Whoops – I took this picture before trimming the excess paper around the shelf and wiping off the wallpaper paste that got on the shelf!)

The next day, when the paint on the shelf was fully dry, I spent a couple of hours wallpapering the closet.  The beadboard textured wallpaper was easy to install, and it did a great job covering over the ugly paneling.  While it was wet, the black lines in the old paneling were visible through the wallpaper, but I can’t see them now that it has dried.  The wallpaper can be painted, but I decided I don’t need to bother with it since I like the nice, fresh look of the white wallpaper.

I covered the whole closet with the beadboard wallpaper – even the closet ceiling, which the previous owners had inexplicably made from scrap pegboard.  The prepasted wallpaper adhered well, even on the ceiling.

One roll of wallpaper almost covered the whole closet, but I needed a small strip of wallpaper from another roll.  Still, $40 for the two rolls of wallpaper was a reasonable price for updating paneled walls in the closet.  (I already had the paint and supplies for the closet makeover.)

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