The Mom Cave

Kelly Condie Thompson
by Kelly Condie Thompson
11 Materials
$100
60 Hours
Advanced
Our builder lovingly called this small room in our home, "The Mom Cave". For all of you who work from home, this would be your office. Some people had even built a door on it that would keep everyone out while they were working. I chose to bring the outside in! The room had a granite counter top and drawers already set up in it, with room for my laptop and printer and a small closet. But who wants to look at a boring wall all day? The window to the outside was behind me. So, I decided to do something about it. I decided to make the wall my happy place. It all started with some pieces of wallpaper that I had hung onto that were from another house. They were favorites of mine and I wanted to use them here. I put them together as best I could with some other pieces that I had saved and it turned out looking like this.
You can tell from the edges of the wallpaper on the bottom of the leaves that it was going to be tricky no matter what I decided to do with it. The squares with the X's in them would serve as the tops of my columns. These fake columns would separate the parts of my wall and ended up working out perfectly with the space that I had for the printer, the laptop, and the other parts of the office. Next came the trellis.
This is what the wallpaper looked like up on the wall without the trellis.
We ended up using two pieces of fiberglass trellis because the wall was so large. My husband cut it to measure for the length of the wall above the counter top to the top of my newly installed wallpaper. BUT, I wanted the leaves to look like they were on top of the trellis. We pulled out out handy tool. This tool was introduced to us when we were getting ready to install our back splash in the kitchen. It can mirror any obstacle that you need to go around and then you trace that mirroring onto your tile (or in this case, the trellis), and we could then cut it precisely to the exact specifications and pattern of the leaves that it was going to but up against. It worked perfectly!
I can't stress enough how handy this tool was to copy the exact lines of the leaves. I just traced the lines that this made onto the trellis and cut on the lines with a dremel tool. Perfect! We had to screw the trellis to the wall and glue with construction glue the ends to hold everything in place until it was all permanently fixed to the wall. It was held to the wall with blue painters tape.
But you can see that I was very excited. I put several other parts up before It was actually all the way attached to the wall. I had two small poster sized pictures that I wanted to go up over the printer. They were easy enough to attach to the wall with a couple of pipe cleaners wrapped around the trellis. I put up some family pictures by wrapping some wire around the trellis and then making it extend out from the wall in little circles that would hold the pictures. These will be easier to trade out this way. I put some beautiful ribbon down the sides to disguise the edges and make it more finished. I made some ribbon roses to put at the top of the columns with buttons in the center to help add to the top of the columns. I then threaded the same ribbon through the trellis to make the column and added some other leafy trim down the column for more delineation. I wanted to pick up the colors that were in the granite. and it turned out that they matched really well.
These were the trims and ribbons that I used.
This is how the ribbon and the leafy trim looked to make the columns.
These were the ribbon roses that I put at the top of the columns with pipe cleaners for easy attachment.
I wanted to have some bulletin boards on my wall to hang notes and calendars and reminders on. So I took 4 cork squares and edged them with the same ribbon that I had used to make up the columns. To attach them to the trellis, I poked holes in the corners and used green metallic pipe cleaners to attach them and then used what extra was left from the attaching and shaped it into leaves.
It was finally finished. My Happy Place.
It wouldn't all fit in one picture.
But it sure makes for a nicer view than just a plain old wall.
The other half of the wall.
This was as much as I could get in one camera view. Just another idea of bringing the outside in. It makes me happy!
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Frequently asked questions
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3 of 5 questions
  • Judy Judy on Jun 11, 2018

    What is the name of the imaging toll you used and where can I buy it. Thanks

  • Monique Monique on Jun 11, 2018

    Very confusing instructions.....doesn't say anything about the wallpaper border....where & when did that come into play???

  • Rebecca Parrish Rebecca Parrish on Jun 11, 2018

    Was the contour tool used to trim the trellis? It sounds like it was used on the wallpaper, but then you would have had to lift off the parts that the trellis covered, which makes no sense to me. (I think I will order the wall paper for my kitchen makeover that I am going to do this summer)

Comments
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5 of 38 comments
  • Sue Sue on Jun 12, 2018

    Love your concept! A very happy area for sure.

  • Phyllis Williams Phyllis Williams on Jul 04, 2018

    I love this. You could put a small mirror up to reflect the window.

    • See 1 previous
    • Phyllis Williams Phyllis Williams on Jul 05, 2018

      Lol well you have it covered very nicely!

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