Unfortunately I don't
have a 'before' - I have a 'during' and 'present' - not an ‘after’ as it's not
100% completed yet.

This whole project was done going into it full of hope, and completely under-prepared – The wife said that she wanted a ‘glitter wall’ for her dressing room – that was my brief – so off I skipped unknowingly into a whole world of pain.

Below is how it looked as of last night:

Actually I suppose the
glitter wall is ‘after’ – as there’s no way on earth that I’m going to be
spending any more time on it. Over the
past few weeks I’ve bought more than enough glitter than any man should ever
have to buy in ten lifetimes! Even the
shop assistants in hobbycraft were getting to know me as I was going in
everyday after work to get yet more tubs of glitter. I even acted like an addict and started buying
from elsewhere, and was even ordering off the internet as it was getting embarrassing.

So the equipment:

Mainly glitter – and absolutely
boat loads of the damn stuff. And it
gets everywhere – be warned if you ever feel inclined to take on this
task. In my hair, eyebrows, eyelashes,
even in my undies when I got into the shower.
It’s all up the stairs, on the sofa cushions, in my car, on my chair at
work – everywhere that I’ve been since doing this I’ve left a trail of glitter!

Below is a picture that I sent to the wife - I found a flake of glitter in my cup of coffee when I was in a meeting.

PVA glue – a good
couple of tubs of this

Varnish – gloss (water
soluble)

Varnish – high gloss
boat varnish

So the glitter – I’m
now an expert on glitter – so sit tight and listen in closely. There are different types of glitter (yeah!,
I didn’t know this either) – jumbo glitter (1.5mm flakes), normal glitter
(0.9mm flakes), other glitter (0.5mm flakes), and frosting (kinda powdery). FYI – I found the 0.9mm flakes the best (big
old tubs available from Amazon).

Colour – firstly all I
could get hold of was 1 big tub of gold, 1 big tub of silver, a smaller tube of
green, and a smaller tube of red. A sparkly
glitter wall is made up of glitter, doesn’t really matter what colour it is - Result
hey ? No not at all ! Mistake number 1. Gold, Silver, Green and Red glitter mixed
together looks like a budget Christmas wrapping paper from the £1 shop. It looks worse than terrible

Anyway I’ve jumped
forward a bit – get a big old tub and get that tub of PVA into it, then about
the same (slightly less) water in in – then about ½ the tin of varnish – to be
honest I’m not too sure what the varnish added into the whole scheme of things,
but I guess that it seemed like a good idea at the time – then bang all the
glitter in, get yourself a stick and start stirring. Consistency – I’d say a runny custard, melted
ice-cream, thick-ish gravy kind of vibe.
Big brush, and get it onto the wall (and the skirting boards, and the
floor, and the celling, and the adjacent walls – seriously, this stuff is a
nightmare to work with!)

Apply first coat – try
not to cry as it looks so bad, leave to dry over night

Get up in the morning
expecting it to look wonderful – it definitely doesn’t !!

Apply second coat –
try not to cry as it looks so bad, leave to dry overnight.

Get up in the morning
expecting it to look wonderful – it definitely doesn’t !!

Yeah you get the gist ………..
fast forward as you painstakingly make your way
layer-upon-layer-upon-layer-upon-layer

Tenth coat – There is
about a 70/30% glitter to wall ratio

Stand back expecting
to be greeted with the most utterly amazing, glittery wall. Slump to your knees as it looks awful ! (revert back to the £1 store Christmas wrapping
paper I mentioned earlier).

A few pictures can say
a thousand words …………. Prepared to be amazed at my Christmas wrapping paper
wall ……… Ta-dahhhhhh

So ……… I considered
this to be my apprenticeship completed on glitter-walling – I could run a
college course on this now.

Moving forward I was
committed to 100% silver glitter and silver only. So I proceeded to purchase all of the silver
glitter stocks from hobbycraft – and I believe that the glitter channels had
also been exhausted over the whole of the UK

Same process as before
– get it all into a tub, add the glue, add the varnish, add the water and mix
etc.

10 coats later – then the
layers had built up to sufficiently look like a full on glittery silver wall.

Then I went over the
whole thing with the high-gloss varnish to give it a seal, and to stop any
glitter falling off.

Wall done!

Once this nightmare was all over, it was just the other odd bits-and-bobs that needed to be done

Next I painted the
skirts, woodwork, and radiator – and also touched up the adjacent walls as the
glitter had flicked onto those as well

Next I did the floor –
standard laminate laying – took a few hours as I’m a bit of a dab-hand at
that. Put up the blind, tried to do
something different with the ‘nets’.
Painted an old chair that we had in the garage, bought a mannequin to
make it look nice. Now I’m just waiting
for the wife to purchase all her stuff (dressing table, mirrors, bookcase etc)
then I’ll pop up some shelves etc and it’s done.