When we bought this lovely mid-century modern house a few years ago, my only real complaint was “I hate that fucking wall!”
Short term solution was to bury it behind bookshelves, but it’s still there… LURKING. It irks me just knowing it’s still there, that half-assed wainscoting made of plywood strips and blue paint.
At a minimum, my plan is to pull the plywood off and re-paint before putting the bookracks back, but there has to be something nicer.
Maybe something like this above the bookracks where the wall is exposed? I dunno. I’m open to ideas.
If money is an issue you can just try to convince yourself that it looks good.
I’ve seen enough HGTV to know the answer is always shiplap.
I’m betting that behind it is drywall. It looks like someone just wanted an accent wall for I’m guessing furniture(chairs) to not bang against a softer material like drywall. I’d check behind it first, you might get a nice surprise.
What they did was staple a horizontal slat, then some extra vertical slats, and painted the bottom half of the wall blue.
It’s all plaster except for the crappy wood slats they stapled on. LOL.
I found some old photos from before they did this, it was a perfectly fine wall. Maybe a little plain, but fine!
Just remove them and give it a coat of paint then. Or are you wanting to change it to something else thats not plaster?
That’s the minimalist basic plan, yeah. Hoping to do something complimentary above the bookshelves though.
Maybe art?
The ceiling is too low for ay sort of accent wall. Your plan of just removing it and restoring/replace it with drywall is the way too go.
I had a wall like this in the basement of my old house, behind it was cement and the 2x4s and drywall didnt start till above it. I started to take it down and realized it was better then the cement and put it back up and painted it. Sometimes one ugly is better then another.
get yourself some cheap appliques or onlays, paint them and install them.
How about plain old plaster? Strio whatever this is, finish it with plaster and a paintjob and you’re done. Easy peasy (actually a fair bit of work,but renovating a wall is a fair bit of work)
Not a bad idea, a bit beyond me doing it, but that’s what contractors are for! 😉
Nah mate, that’s something you can do.
Pull the slats and the ugly ass accent strip off and you’ll almost certainly find plan ole drywall or plaster. Get a little fix tube, it will even have a little scraper attached to the bottom as part of the tube, and just spend an hour squirting plaster in to the holes and scrape it smooth. Grab a sanding block, and sand it down once it’s dry. Prime, paint, forget about it.
Even if it’s a nasty gouge you can still manage the plaster yourself. It might just take a tub and a wide plaster knife but it’s certainly not hard.
I mean like my (well not technically my house, it’s my parent’s) house has like cracks in the walls and in the ceilings. Like sometimes water from the bathrub area starts leaking…
Like… average Philly house
It’s been like this since like I was still in middleschool/highschool many years ago.
Never really got fixed.
Also, heater is semi-broken, since like 2016/2017 I think. Randomly stops working and my dad has to use some weird temporry fix and it would last a maybe a fee days to weeks, and like next winter its the same shit.
Also, the refrigerator/freezer sometimes has like the top freezer part the it would get above 0°C and icecream would melt. Ruined a lot of icecream lol.
I feel like your standards are too high… just live with it. Like my current shitty house is not even the worst house I’ve lived in, I’ve lived in much worse in my home country.
Oh yeah, FUNCTIONALLY, the house is fine.*
*“fine” defined as “built in 1951 so there is not a single ground wire in the entire house so we have 4 GFI outlets for the important stuff.” 😉
