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DIY Wall-Mounted Gardening Idea

Indoor gardening has really become a passion of mine over the last decade. Right out of college, though, plants weren’t at all on my radar. They felt way too intimidating, and I don’t really remember my parents keeping many in our house growing up, so maybe it just wasn’t something I was even that used to from a DIY interior design standpoint. Now? Well, you probably know that there’s not a single room in our home that isn’t packed with plants. Some are real, a few are fake, but they all go so far in adding stylish texture and color to our spaces.

One of the most frequently asked questions that I get here on my blog and on social media is how I keep our pets out of the plants throughout our house. To be honest, it used to be much, much easier (get my initial set of tips here). Our three older cats were never all that interested in digging in soil and chewing on leaves, but our kittens in this house have been a totally different story. Now I understand why you guys are struggling so much—we’re right there with you! I’ve had to make a lot of compromises with our plants because of the kittens in the past year and a half, and one of the very best solutions that I’ve come across is hanging our plants up high so they’re out of reach from curious paws and teeth.

DIY Wall-Mounted Gardening Idea

So far, I’ve done this by using hanging plant holders installed into the ceiling, but last month I decided to test a different method—wall-mounted plant hangers. I saw someone on TikTok using this technique, and I thought it was genius. I find that it can be really difficult to find a wooden rafter to screw my ceiling-mounted plant hooks into (especially if the ceiling is textured), but the wall-mounted method means that I can just use my regular old stud finder to drill into a good support for my plants.

I purchased these metal planter pot ring holders on Amazon, and was able to screw them right into a stud in our guest room. Before installing them, though, I took the rings with me to our local gardening center to buy pots that fit them exactly. The gray plastic ones that you see pictured above were the only ones that fit the ring holders I had bought, so I didn’t really have a choice when it came to color. Gray isn’t a tone that I often gravitate toward in home decorating, but I figured I could always paint the pots later on if the color really didn’t fit our aesthetic.

Fast forward several weeks, and that gray just stuck out like a sore thumb to me. There was nothing else gray in our guest room, so the pots drew the eye in a not-so-great way, which meant that I ultimately broke out my paint brush and a can of old paint. I decided to use the same creamy white color that we used on our kitchen cabinets last year when we painted them (“No Filter” by Clare Paint), and it went on the pots like a dream.

The plastic pots themselves had sort of a rough texture to them, so I didn’t need to prime them. I just painted three thin and even coats of the new color on the pots and let them dry for a few hours before popping them back over the wall-mounted rings. I didn’t even take the plants out! Just painted right around them. I stopped the new paint color right at the pot rim’s edge since the original gray color blended well with the dark brown soil inside.

I think the new creamy white color of the pots looks much better and more (dare I say it) demure against the 1960s botanical wallpaper in our guest room. Now, the plants feel like a softer focal point in the space, and help nicely fill this awkwardly blank wall where I didn’t want to just default to hanging art. I wanted something more unique and interesting, and these wall-mounted plants check all the boxes for me. The plants are pretty wimpy and tiny now, but just imagine them when the vines start to trail down beyond the rim of the pot and the leaves get bigger and more sculptural. I can’t wait to watch this installation evolve over time. Stay tuned for growth updates!

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This post is for all you folks out there who have ever experienced a disheartening “whoops!” moment while wallpapering…That was me a few months back when I worked on adding a DIY wallpapered feature wall to our hall bathroom. I did the project entirely on my own, which usually isn’t a problem for me, but the tricky thing about this particular job was the fact that, at one point, I had to work in the dark. In order to install the wallpaper behind our vanity light, I needed to remove the fixture entirely, which meant I was doing the project with only a flashlight to guide my way. I was understandably a little nervous about doing this, and rushed through one of the panels, cutting it just a little bit too short at the bottom before sticking it in place, as you can see pictured below.

The mistake was small, only leaving about 3/4 of an inch of bare wall visible, and I was able to hide it from sight for the most part with a tray of bathroom products, but it was something I knew I eventually wanted to fix. Three months later, my aunt booked a flight to come visit us here in Waynesboro and I knew she would want to come over to take a tour of our house since she’d never been here before. That was all the motivation I needed to get this little wallpapering mistake fixed once and for all.

As for how I was going to fix it, I went through several different ideas in my head. I debated trying to recreate the missing pattern on the wall by hand-painting it using acrylic paint. Then, I considered using leftover wallpaper to fill it in as best I could. Ultimately, though, I decided to use a piece of decorative trim (similar to this, but not quite so thick) to hide the accidental gap entirely from view. I bought the fluted trim piece you see pictured above from Home Depot, and cut it to size using my miter saw, then painted it to match the wall color throughout the rest of the room (a color called “Pediment” by Sherwin-Williams).

After the paint was dry, I held the trim piece firmly up on the wall above the vanity backsplash, and nailed it into place using my brad gun. I did my best to aim the nails in the center of the trim so they didn’t hit the gaps in the fluted design, but not all of them ended up where I wanted them (it was awkward aiming the gun in certain tighter areas of the vanity). For those nails that stuck out a little too far, I used a nail setter and hammer to get the nail head to sit just below the face of the trim.

The last step in this process was hiding the nails from view and just generally cleaning things up. To do that, I spread a tiny bit of spackling compound right over the nail heads using my fingertip. I needed to slowly build the spackle up in layers over certain extra-deep nails, so I waited about 30 minutes between each layer to accomplish that. Once the spackle was flush with the face of the trim, I let it dry completely for a couple of hours, and then I came back and carefully touched up the paint in those areas.

I also ultimately decided to caulk a few of the edges where the trim wasn’t sitting right up against the vanity backsplash. This meant I had to do another coat of finishing paint, but I think this detail really helped the trim look intentional and built in. If you do this step, make sure you buy paintable caulk. Finished results are pictured below!

You can see this process in video format (with a cameo by our late kitten, Joe…) here on my Instagram. Seeing the DIY job in motion may give you a better idea of the process. I appreciate how one commenter suggested that I could have left the trim in a raw wood finish to make it stand out a little bit more. I love that idea, and can’t believe that I didn’t think of it! If you try this project, consider celebrating the raw wood aesthetic. I would just make sure you give the wood trim a clear coat or some kind of water-proof stain to make sure it stands up against incidental water splashes from the sink. I hope you like how it turned out!

DIY Wall-Mounted Gardening Idea

Fix A Wallpapering Mistake With Trim

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