Creating A Diamond Accent Wall

Hello, hello! This post is just a few months overdue, but I’m happy today to finally share the details about creating our living room diamond accent wall. It was completed back in November as part of our total living room overhaul, but I thought it deserved a quick post of its own.

You may remember that when we partially built our home (i.e. went under contract on it shortly after the walls were dry-walled) that we didn’t splurge on any upgrades. I knew that I wanted to start adding some “frills” to the home to make it feel more personal and less builder-grade at some point though.

I thought “If we moved tomorrow and took all of our things out of it, what would make this house stand out to a buyer? What would make it less “cookie cutter”? What would make this house a little different or add a little character?”

I also wanted to make this house feels like “ours” (most importantly because we have zero plans to move any time soon). I know this wall may be a little untraditional and funky, but I kept in mind the best piece of home decorating advice I’ve ever received: to always remember that it’s your house, and that it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Nobody has to live with the decisions you make for your home but you, so if you love it, GREAT. 🙂

So, I actually really liked how the wall looked originally. I worked really hard (and spent decent money – yeesh) on that nine-frame grid, and the console table pulled well together with all things we’d brought from our previous home. 

I knew I wanted to overhaul the whole room though and give it an entirely new look and feel, and something about this wall just bugged me. It’s 18′ wide and massive. Somewhere along the way it hit me to do an accent wall, and once I landed on my inspiration picture (and approved it with Jamie), I moved quickly. 

Once I found my picture, here were the steps I took to put it into action:

1. Went on a local Facebook group, posted my inspiration picture, and asked for recommendations for who in the area could do this.
2. Called every single person who was suggested (11 people). Touched base with seven of them. Received quotes from four of them.
3. There was an obvious choice when it came to who to select, so I hired a guy named Travis and his team. 

Within two weeks, Jamie and I were clearing out the space and ready to receive a couple of guys to do a full-day’s worth of work. 

Do you remember when I shared these pictures on Instagram? You can find the whole room under my “living room” highlight.

My DMs blew up! LOL. I think the word “intriguing” was used about 20 times. You guys were curious, but I was more nervous than anything! I knew that this was a little bit “funky”, so my concern was growing that I might not like it in my house. 

But I trusted my gut, received the contractors, left them alone for four hours while I went to get my hair done, and hoped when I got home that a significant chunk of the work was done. 

I’m SO GOOD AT ART. 😉

And when I got home, they were about 75% done! (Obviously this picture below is of the completed wall, but it made my heart do a great, big leap!) I let out a huge sigh of relief and immediately drove the contracts bananas by squealing over how great they did and how much I loved it. I couldn’t wait for Jamie to see it!

Quick note about hiring someone: We knew this wasn’t a traditional “board and batten” situation. This required some legit math, angles, working around outlets, the temporary removal of crown molding, etc. THIS WAS NOT EASY.

We actually had a friend who thought it was unnecessary to pay someone and said that he and Jamie could knock it out in a weekend. When I told him how much we were paying for it though, he immediately threw his hands up in surprise and said “Yeah, you go on hiring that guy!”

He knew I was getting a deal. We are big believers in the idea that “time is money” in this season of life with three kids, so we’d rather something be done once and be done right. (That doesn’t mean we spend what we don’t have. We just wait to save for it. We spent too much time years ago climbing our way out of debt to do that again.) Just where we are at. We DIYed for four years in Kansas, and while we learned a lot, we also screwed up a lot. In this season right now, we are happy to pay for what we cannot do or want to learn how to do. 😉

The contractors actually had to remove a piece of this molding and then put it back on. They did a flawless job!

So we actually only paid the contractors to shop for/buy the materials and put up the boards. We decided to save money on labor and do the rest ourselves. This included filling in nail holes, caulking the entire wall, and painting it. I knew this would be time-consuming, but I also didn’t want to pay a few hundred extra bucks to do something that is very easy for us to do ourselves. 

To fill the nail holes, I used this INCREDIBLE product right here! It’s called the 3M 4-in-1 Patch Plus. Every household needs this! It’s truly an “all in one” hole repair product.

A user squeezes out the spackle, then uses the top part as a putty knife to smooth it, and then finally uses the bottom part to sand it. BOOM! With over 100 nail holes to fill, this little buddy earned its keep! Also, it’s like $7!! Get you one!

I used a caulk gun to seal all of the edges of each board and my fingertip (covered with a paper towel) to smooth it all out. These projects were more tedious than I imagined, but it wasn’t hard. Just long. We got it done though and then moved right along to paint!

I painted this wall “Newberg Green” by Benjamin Moore. I designed this entire room before actually making any purchases because I wanted to see how it would all work together. With so much light furniture and neutrals around the room, I knew that I wanted some contrast.

While searching for an accent wall idea, I kept seeing navy walls pop up over and over. I swooned over the combo of navy paired with light wood, whites, and pops of green, so I officially decided to paint this wall a true navy. 

My friend Emily suggested on Instagram that maybe I should look into “Newberg Green” instead of “Hale Navy”. After seeing how it looked on a ton of walls across Google, I purchased a gallon and hoped for the best! And my goodness, do we absolutely, positively LOVE IT. 

So that’s the process we walked through to make this mega accent wall a thing!

While we loved the “before” and how clean and crisp it was (minus that fig tree that I nearly killed within a month)…

… we sure do love how “lived in” and fun this wall makes this whole room feel. (Remember this goofy picture from my laundry routine post? LOL.)

I’m open to the idea down the road of painting the entire room – including this wall – a lighter color, but for now I’m super glad I scratched the itch to give this room a pop of “drama”. 

Mission accent wall (and blog post, finally!): COMPLETE!

More: We also did a wallpaper accent wall in Jillian’s nursery that I love so, so much. 

Let’s chat!

Have you ever gone a little “out of the box” with a home decorating idea?