Adding Some Character: Part One

The worst part of new a construction home is the lack of character. When we bought our house we did not select the trim package; as a matter of fact, we purchased our house with very little upgrades. 

In our model, the Savoy, the entry from the garage brings you directly into the kitchen.  We never use our front door to enter our house.  So, therefore, our walls were taking a beating.  I knew that even with getting rid of the builder grade paint, my walls would look bad again.  So, what could I do?  My contractor suggested wall paper on the bottom half of the wall.  I pretty much nixed his idea and thought I would do bead board or wainscoting. But after thinking it through, I thought bead board would be too "farm/country" of a look for my kitchen. My style of decorating is transitional--a mixture of traditional and contemporary.

Wainscoting is lovely, but the angle of our kitchen wall would make it pretty hard to do. So, I went back to the wall paper idea, and visited Atlas Wall Paper and Paint in Cherry Hill, NJ.  I met with Michael (a wonderful designer) and he immediately showed me this vinyl, durable, textured wall paper. All I can say is I'm very pleased with the product.  I selected to add chair rail to act as a boarder and to add some character too.  Below, see our before and after shots.  I can say that our "vanilla" builder grade house is finally starting to feel like my home!

Happy building and decorating!

Here is the sample of the wall paper against our selected wall color, Sherwin Williams Accessible Beige. 

Our kitchen wall before.

Here we have the wall in progress picture.  We chose a textured, vinyl wallpaper.  My friends at Atlas Wallpaper in Cherry Hill, NJ helped with the selection.  Pictures don't do it justice…it's a bronze color and it's really beautiful in person.

No chair rail yet and the brown shoe molding is still there.

Next we added chair rail. We also pulled up the brown shoe molding below. 

Here is a close up of the white shoe molding. 

Then we added some accessories.  I went "shopping" in my house and moved these pictures from my bedroom into the kitchen.

Final product…white shoe molding added.

This is the wall directly in front as you walk into the kitchen from the garage. 

The photo is a little dark, but this is the view from the morning room. into the kitchen/hall.

And here is the final look of the entryway from the garage into the kitchen.