Guest Room - Modern Lattice Wall

This is our guest room, also known as the catch-all room.  It is filled with an assortment of furniture and decor that has been replaced in other parts of the house and ended up here.  The feeling I want for this room is a neutral room that anyone would feel at home in, regardless of gender.  Also, I love old stuff (antiques, linens, art, glassware, etc.), but I tend to like more of a modern decor for my home.  So, although our house has a bit of  a modern edge to it (except for the guest room), I love to mix in the old stuff too.   Also, I'm very sentimental so some things are just hard for me to get rid of and I need a place to put these treasures. The room is comfortable and certainly adequate for a guest, but it's not complete so I won't show the entire room yet.  But what I DO want to show is this wall detail that I'm calling "Modern Lattice".  I know, it's a little crazy, but I'm thinking it's funkitastic!  Yeah, Baby! (in my best Austin Powers voice).

This is what the room used to look like......BORING.  I started by painting the room a chocolate brown, which was a HUGE improvement over the Spongebob theme that used to adorn the walls. (Sorry Spongebob Squarepants). Don't get me wrong, I love me some Spongebob, and I'm sure the previous owner got lots of enjoyment from the room, at least I hope so. But it had to go! See that flea market mirror over the bed? I've had that thing for so long that I can't even remember how I ended up with it but it was originally brown. I've seen a gazillion of these things over the years. I think it must be one of those Home Interior items from the 70's. Anywho, I sprayed it white and have used it in several places over the years. Believe it or not, that was the inspiration for this modern lattice wall. Although the mirror frame is plastic, it's made to look like cane webbing.  Never really liking this room, one day I wondered what it would look like to sort of magnify that cane webbing onto the wall in a modern way, in an attempt to marry the old and new.

  

My initial thought was to paint this idea on the wall since I tend to paint anything that's not moving, but after mulling it over in my head and with the hubbie, and over, and over again, it turned into a 3-D project which is so much better than just paint. And, it can be taken down very easily since it's put up with a nail gun instead of adhesive, with minimal damage to the wall. I measured and sketched it out taking the placement of the bed, mirror and ceiling fan into consideration. I wanted the center verticle board to be lined up with the ceiling fan and I wanted a horizontal board to be centered behind the old mirror because I knew I wanted to hang the old mirror back (perfect mix of old and new which is what I like). Then I measured out how far apart the boards might need to be to look right with the wooden rounds that I wanted to attach to the boards.  I then calculated the material I would need. I decided to paint the boards and wooden rounds before installing them  - which was definitely the way to go.

There's the hubby working hard (not really because this was such an easy peasy job).   We started by installing the center verticle board first.  You will notice that the verticle boards don't go all the way down to the trim.  This is because we will eventually be replacing the 3 inch trim with 5 inch trim.  I decided that we won't do crown molding around the ceiling because I've raised the window treatments so high that I don't think it would look right, unless of course I lowered them again.  But I like them high and I thought with this "modern lattice," the room wouldn't need crown molding.  After installing the center verticle board, based off my drawing, we measured and cut the horizontal boards which made spacing the remaining horizontal boards a cinch.  The level was essential in this project, and the nail gun was a big plus.  We literally threw this up in no time!  Literally!!!

Next came the wooden rounds.  I chose the 8 inch rounds which also determined the board size which I think are 3 inches wide.  There were several options when laying this project out (wider boards, thinner boards, bigger rounds, smaller rounds, placing boards closer together or further apart, etc.).  I had to check to see what size mirrors and wood rounds I could find because I knew I wanted the mirrors to be smaller than the rounds so the mirrors would appear to be framed like the old mirror on the wall. 

So once I found the mirrors and rounds, after driving all over the creation to get enough of them, from three different suppliers and seven different locations (grrrrr), I decided the 3 inch boards would look the best. We used the nail gun to attach the rounds, nailing towards the center so the mirrors would cover the nail holes. Then, I applied the mirrors with mirror adhesive. When attaching mirrors, always be sure to use adhesive for mirrors because it is specially formulated not to desilver electro-copper plated mirrors. I used painter's tape to secure the mirrors until the adhesive dried. It takes 2 or 3 days to completely dry!!!  That was the most time consuming part of this entire project, watching the liquid nails dry!  Nail biting, I know!

I think this project, or a variation, would look so cool in a living room as a feature wall behind a sofa, or maybe even in a foyer.  Instead of mirrors and rounds, frames of similar objects like botanicals or maybe even black and white photographs might also look cool.  And I'll have to say, it looked pretty cool before the rounds and mirrors were even added for that Home Girl that may not be as adventurous as myself,  but that might be dying to step out of her comfort zone.

 I hope you like my "Modern Lattice" wall detail.  Please let me know what you think about it.  :-)

 And thanks for checking out my blog!!!!

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