Woot! Woot! We are at the halfway point of the One Room Challenge. This week’s project is an accent wall made from rope. Yes, you heard that right. We are DIYing an accent wall out of rope.

After our very rough week 2, we took a step back to regroup.  I am happy to announce our Laminate Cabinets are repainted a stunning Navy and are looking great!  We have also started working on the Rope accent wall. I think I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel!

For this 3rd week, it has been all about the Accent Wall. I knew from the beginning I wanted to bring in some sort of texture. The space is small but has 13 ft ceilings. The texture will add some warmth to the room. Because we already have a vertical wood wall and a skinny wood wall in this house, any type of wood accent walls were out.  I also felt I wanted to add a very causal nod towards the nautical. So with texture in mind, I began to search.   One day, while traveling in the UK, I was googling ideas for accent walls and found this wallpaper on a UK decor site by a company called Direct Wallpapers.

Although this is photographed rope made into wallpaper, I immediately thought real ROPE!!!  YESSSSSS. Hubs will love this! 😉  To my surprise, he did and immediately set to work figuring out how to attach it to the wall.  Side note: My Husband is an Engineer.  His first instinct is always “how,” while mine is to run for the glue gun, and then I am ready to go.

After deciding to attach the rope horizontally after realizing it would be much easier to install the 5.5 ft x 13 ft wall in sections.  We secured the rope to 1/4 inch plywood (cut into 4.5 ft wide ft x 4 ft high) with my very favorite tool, a GLUE GUN.

WARNING: This was extremely time-consuming, and we ran into a few snags.

1. The ends of the rope fray easily.  So we wrapped the ends with electrical tape before cutting for each cut. We used a PVC pipe cutter to cut the rope. Thanks for that suggestion Home Depot!

2. We applied hot glue to the rope’s ends after cutting to prevent fraying once the electrical tape was removed.

3. Did I mention it’s time-consuming!

Next we installed the plywood using drywall anchors to attach each section to the wall.

I’ve been asked several times about the shelf attached. Here is the link to the leather we used for the leather straps and the shelf We haven’t decided if we are going to finish the edges next to the wall or not.  We could run a piece of rope or perhaps something else??  We will figure that out in the next week. Next up is the countertop for the washer and dryer.  We have decided to go with a wood counter instead of the original plan of concrete.  I think I will like the wood against the gorgeous Navy cabinets.

More to come next week,

Libbie

You may also be interested in:

Slat accent wall

Coastal Accent Wall