Wallpaper Alternative

There's the craze about Wallpapers now. I chose two types for two rooms and decided to try this Wallpaper paint for the remaining room & hall.  Actually, the savings is quite a lot. It's more than 70% savings from the cost of the Wallpaper.

The Wallpaper paint comes in a full set of Primer, Top Coat and Kit set. 

Honestly, I feel that the kit set is a waste of money. It's just a jumbo ice-cream stick for stirring the paint, a plastic scraper and a nylon paint brush. You can easily substitute the stirrer with any long scrap wooden stick. As for the plastic scraper, a hard plastic sheet can easily do the trick and for the nylon brush, just make sure to get a short, stiff one. 

I included some safety gear and other tools that are used to prepare the wall.

Yes, there's an idiot's guide how to DIY that comes with the kit. It's surprisingly easy.

Step 1: Apply 2 coats of Primer & allow to dry for 2hrs
Step 2: Apply top coat using criss-crossed strokes
Step 3: After 15min, use spatula to smooth over semi-dried coat (be gentle on this, on my first try I ended up with scratch marks OR best, just omit this part)

One coat of primer is good enough unless your previous wall colour is an intense colour, you'll need two coats of primer to cover that. For mine, I used just one coat. After drying for 2hrs, I continued with the top coat.

Walla! My completed project.

I find that one coat of Top Coat is good enough. 1 coat of primer + 1 coat of top coat give a very good contrast and texture. It's my first project and I wanted a perfect wall, so I did two coats of top coat. 

The second coat made the colour more intense and covered up most of the contrast. I was a little disappointed, however lucky for me, this room is very bright and the sunlight brought out the shine from the metallic parts of the paint.

If I knew that this paint will give such an effect and cost just a fraction, I would not have chosen Wallpaper. You can save quite a lot. It took me a day to do this by myself. Well, my other half is especially anal about doing a good job "preparing" the wall. So that the paint will stay and last longer... yes, yes, I got it. So, much of my time is devoted in "preparation".

I'm happy with the end result. :))