Full disclosure: this project was for my mother. Her gym is located in the basement, and it did not inspire working up a sweat - more like tears!

I knew this would be a fun project. The catch? My dad only gave us a budget of $500. Cue record scratch.

Not to worry, though - I knew with some better lighting and some cosmetic upgrades, we could turn this into a yoga studio of her dreams.

The plan was:

Wallpaper a feature wall that you see from the door
New, brighter light fixture
Functional/pretty storage
Zen decor

We were originally going to paint the other walls, but due to the budget crunch, money crunch, and the wallpaper matching her existing walls perfectly, we didn’t have to!

Light fixture before. My dad replaced with a long fluorescent light.

I ordered two wallpapers on Wayfair, and my mom ending up liking this one. I prefer the pasted wallpaper because I find it’s easier to wiggle around and gives you a little more breathing room than peel and stick!

Conveniently, the wall color coordinated with this pretty well, so we opted not to paint.

This wall tool me about 4 or so hours. I needed:

wallpaper paste
scissors
paint brush
wallpapering smoothing tool
wallpapering knife

Basically, you brush the paste on moderately thick. (it’ll soak in). Then you book it - folding both sides into the center. Let it sit for about 5 minutes, and it’s ready to go on the wall! I was very precise with the first piece, keeping it square and level, but I just pattern matched for the rest of them.

Before I trimmed the edges with a wallpaper blade.

After that, we were on to decorating! Simple picture hooks were used to hang up the baskets and the picture. The shelves came with hardware to attach to the wall. And I put this crazy light together from Amazon that literally came in the tiniest box - I thought I’d accidentally purchased the wrong thing!

And that’s it! Super easy, pretty quick. Not a major transformation, but we shifted the energy in here for sure. My mom says she just walks into the room and stares at our lovely work!!

I’ve included product links below. :)

xoxo,

Katie