I feel like this post needs to start off with an explanation. You know the kind that your 10 year old gives, when you ask her, well anything. The kind that has a lot of “But I’s” and “Ya, but…’s” in them?
As you have seen this week, DIYing is not all sunshine and Pinterest pictures. Sometimes it is really great ideas horribly executed, or in the case of the worst fail in the history of the internet, it is a HORRIBLE idea perfectly executed.
Which I was reminded of a few weeks ago as I was going through the files on my external hard drive. When I came across the pictures from the first few months that Vintage Revivals was alive, I was overcome with emotion. And not the good kind.
Please enjoy.
This DIY fail is from the infancy stages of Vintage Revivals. (I would say August/Spetember 2010.) When I started my blog I literally had no previous experience with design/decorating. None. Finding your own style and voice takes practice, none of which I had. The first blog that I ever read was All Things Thrifty. Brooke’s style is bright colors and glazed. I thought she walked on water.
I spray painted and glazed EVERYTHING I could get my hands on. Because I loved it. And I didn’t know anything different.
(So basically I am pleading ignorance.)
When we moved in our kitchen had no backsplash.
Can you see where this is going? Its like watching a kid fall off of something, slow mo and all the while screaming “noooooooooo!” and then they still eat it.
Doing things a cheaply as possible was my reasoning for everything. The cheaper the better.
What could get cheaper than a $12 roll of paintable wallpaper?
Which isn’t the most horrible thing.
But then.
You guys.
I cant.
(breathing into a paper bag)
I decided it would be AMAZING if I spray painted it ORANGE!
For the love of everything that is good in the world WHY was this a good idea??!!
But what there’s more.
I decided to “tone it down” a little with black glaze.
Obviously the fumes from SPRAY PAINTING INSIDE MY HOUSE were messing with my mind.
Because I ended up with this:
I know.
Even if. Even if this had been executed perfectly, it was a HORRIBLE idea.
It looks the the back kitchen of a bad Mexican restaurant. And by bad I mean, failed 5 out of 5 of their last heath inspections.
Bad like you probably caught e coli just looking at these pictures. (sorry for that!)
Luckily I could see that this was just not a good result. So to fix it I took the obvious approach. I SPRAY PAINTED IT WHITE.
WHYYYYYYYY?!?!?!
Why did I spray paint it again?!
Why didn’t I just painted it normally?
It is obviously Brooke’s fault for not telling me I could use regular paint. When she said “You can spray paint everything!!” I clearly took that as gospel truth.
Now, normally I would apologize for the horrendous picture quality but the fact that I took them on my 3rd generation iPhone is what saved them from the hard drive crash of 2011. So you are welcome.
So glad to have learned this lesson a few years ago. This time around, the kitchen overhaul is going to be MUCH different.
Now. Do you feel a little bit better about yourself?
I for one am feeling very naked.
I can’t see the end result of white, but I really liked the orange, toned down or not. srsly.
I really liked it too, I know, I know- but we love Halloween at our house (even better than Christmas), and the black and orange remind me of it. And it really did look nice when you toned it down!
I totally remember when you did this!
I tried not to laugh at your hardship. Awww. Love that you shared something that didn’t go well. You tried. And you didn’t waste a lot of money either. Can’t you just strip it and start again?
I baked what I thought was going to be a delicious brownie recipe a couple weeks ago that was my grandma’s recipe. I took photos and everything. Then I sent it with my daughter to school for lunch and none of her friends liked it. I decided to throw out the remainder and not to blog about it. You are so fun!
That’s not a fail. Doesn’t even come close. You must actually catch the wallpaper on fire while something is on the stove for it to be a real and complete fail. Which is where I thought this post was headed. Glad to see it wasn’t a real and complete fail.
Oh my word Mandi – I have had some MAJOR fails with spray paint. I feel your pain! Thanks for sharing my DIY fail – it still makes me laugh!!
Honestly, that isn’t so bad…of course, I am a child of the 1970’s, so I remember living in a house with shag carpet that really looked a lot like that! I think it was very daring of you to go as bold as you did with it…and I am very thankful you didn’t go for avocado green! This is really not a “fail”…just a very bad retro nightmare! :o)
OMG- it is so horrible- i am still laughing about “the failed inspections”….. cuz it looks like that to a T.
I am so glad you posted this and all the others, it makes my fails and less than perfects seem like part of the process of a DiYing- which of course– it is!!! Love you mandi!
Can we see the end picture please? I’m positive you will get it right, it’s only paint after all
Haha, oh man, you’ve come along way! It looks, um, amazing?!
I honestly think after the glaze it looks good! But I don’t know anything about decorating. Couldn’t see the end result so I’d love to see how it turned out!
hahaha! That’s awesome! I love your honesty and, er, nakedness…? Anyway, it’s SO refreshing when us bloggers are honest about the good and the bad, and not pretend like we bust out HGTV worthy crafts every single day. It makes the whole process less intimidating! Thanks for the entertainment :D!
Alyssa
Well, I admit, that does look like the before picture when you are starting a project but you are safe from owning the very worst DIY project ever. I’ve done so many horrendously bad things I didn’t even bother sharing them here. They are just everyday life for me. *sigh*
I AM impressed with how quickly you have learned and moved past this though. I don’t think I learn as quickly as you…
OMG… Mandi! I love that your sharing this. I think its so important for us DIYers to show our failed projects every once in a while. Yes, it does look a little like a Mexican restaurant, but good thing is that your a DIYer and can change it 🙂 I’m sure your next back splash attempt is going to kick butt!!!
If you squint- it’s not so bad! At least you were brave enough to try something so daring!
It didn’t look that awful before you put the black paint over it. Now it does look dirty. Can’t you remove the paint and start over? I think it would have looked better in a different color as I am not much of a fan of orange unless it is for accents. I love those tiles though!
Love this! I’ve had my share of fails, but I’ve always conveniently forgotten to blog about them. Of course, I could just show you my kitchen full of rather large, rorsarch-esque paint samples…it’s hell when The Man decides to have an opinion!
Lol! Love the honesty! I made some of those painful mistakes with my kitchen about the same time. I had painted our cabinets white-in a hurry as we moved in-to tide us over until we could replace them-which never happened. About two years later my hasty paint job was looking awful, so I “glazed” the ugly white paint with… watered down brown paint. OMG. Hideous!
This wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. Once many many years ago we were trying to remove old wallpaper. It was really hard to get off so we just painted over it. Big mistake. It started rolling right off the wall in huge sheets. Landing on us and the carpet. Huge mess. I thought that was going to happen to you. Spray painting the paper is really funny though.
Ohhhh my goodness! I am laughing so hard right now! Enchilada, anyone? 🙂
Ha! You are welcome! Xoxo
HAHA! What gets me is that to fix it, you again turned to spray paint. 😀
You bring up something interesting though, I guess we bloggers often expect that readers know why we are doing what we’re doing. Maybe we should occasionally explain what is obvious to us, like why we are using spray paint instead of regular paint…
Thanks for sharing, don’t be embarrassed, it’s cute, as always. 😉
You must love halloween. Had you used a color other than orange as a base color, like gray, the idea might not have been bad with the glaze. Your heart was in the right place.
Oh honey, it’s not that bad! I thought you were going to say the spray paint’s overspray ruined your cupboards and your stove, clogged the vent in your microwave, and you had to buy new appliances just to have a functioning kitchen–now that’s a FAIL. This is just paint. I hyperventilate at the thought of spray painting anything inside my house because of the overspray.
I would be terrified of the overspray and fumes spray painting in the house..the kitchen no less..wow, such bravery..
Hmmm, I’m thinking at LEAST 51% of my DIY fails involved glaze. Glaze is just stupid. That’s all.
Ha! More than the orange and glaze, I can’t believe you spray painted in your kitchen. How did you keep overspray off of the top cabinets too?!? My husband would have KILLED me.
This is awesome. At least it was a cheap mistake! Have a great weekend, lady!
EPIC FAIL HIGH FIVES, YO! LOVE.
I don’t know that I would categorize this as a DIY failure. I mean, it looks like you did a good job on the painting and glazing. It maybe just wasn’t the best idea you’ve ever had. But look where you are now?!!! Gosh, if this is the worst DIY failure you’ve ever had then You have nothing to be embarrassed about. It reminds me of something from the late 60’s or early 70’s. My Mom went through a phase (when I was very very very young) and we had a LOT of orange like that in our house. You were just a few decades late that’s all!
you had me laughing out loud. too much!
Love the blog even more now that you’ve shared this. Best post ever!!
Aye carrumba. This looks like something from a 70’s Ranchera.
oh how I love when you post YOUR fails… I soooo look up to you and all your awesomeness that it is nice to know that you are human too. Love it! the glaze almost made me pee!
I have to be honest with you…my mom had vinyl tiles in her galley kitchen that looked remarkably, and I mean remarkably, similar to the orange w/black glaze….I loved it..now keep in mind her cabinets were cherry, walls were paneled (as was the whole house save for the bathrooms) and the burnt orange (very 70’s..) added a great ‘pop’ of color..Thanks for being so honest and really thanks for the good memory..I miss the house I grew up in!!
My dear girl, I LOVE LOVE LOVE that you write EXACTLY the way you speak – broken sentences and all.
Laughing and laughing… The Mexican restaurant part cracked me up.
Mandy, I’m laughing out loud…not necessarily at the DIY disaster, but I’m looking back 30-40 years! LOL LOL We thought that was just hot stuff in the 70’s! That and green shag carpet! Girl, you’re lucky that spray paint wasn’t all over everything! LOL
I have yet to try to spray paint anything and admire those who do. I just don’t trust myself to get a nice clean layer of paint with a spray can 🙂 And I have to say that I kinda liked the orange paint with glaze….maybe not so much for a kitchen backsplash, but it was a bold color and the glaze looked good on it. I love that other’s have DIY fails so I don’t feel sooooo alone! Thanks for sharing yours 🙂
Mandi, it is so good to see that your style has evolved from the ’70’s into the hip, cool style that you have now. It reminds me of the sofa that my family had in the ’70’s…..ugh! Thanks for sharing and keeping it real 🙂
Not sure what to say. Umm… it looks retro?? I think glazing and faux finishing projects have a high chance of going bad. I remember one of my early projects was faux finishing my sisters dorm room. To save money we bought 1 gallon of white paint, divided it into 3, and got the guy to give us the tinters in paper cups so we could colour each part ourselves. We sponge painted that baby blue, purple, and green. We were really proud of ourselves.
Your head must have been spinning after the second spray paint session. Thank you for making me LOL.
It’s bad….but it’s not THAT bad. I say it was a valiant attempt to make silk out of a sow’s ear, and you may hold your head up proudly. 🙂
“to live a creative life, you must lose the fear of being wrong.” Joseph Chilton Pearce
I carry that in my heart…
LOL LOL LOL!
Thanks for the laugh! The backsplash had a Halloween look to it so maybe good a good tutorial for some Halloween parties or haunted houses. I’m very limited in my use of materials since I’m new to this whole DIY thing. I see something like this happening in my future…
really? this is your worst? i’m so jealous. it was a well executed idea that turned out to not look GREAT but mannnn, it looks better than some of the garbage i’ve put together!! lol if this is the height of embarrassment for you then i’d say that’s just more evidence you are in fact the home decor prodigy we all know and love 🙂
You are adorable! Girl- if I could count all the times I painted my house ridiculous colors…Once I painted a 30 high wall that was visible from the whole house Red…the walls next to it were Blue and Yellow….it looked like an Enormous Taco bell…fortunately with help I was able to turn it back to normal before the Hubby got home from a biz trip. I think we should all post our ‘What was she thinking?!’s and I applaude your brave spirit!
Mandi, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!! This post had me laughing historically! (to the point of tears ). My baby (6 months) stopped eating and my oldest (3 yrs old) had to ask what was so funny to me…I appreciate your honesty because it helps to know that all projects do not turn out how we envisioned but we must press forward. Please don’t blame Brooke (stopping to laugh!) for you spray painting the wallpaper twice (this is too much for me…still laughing)…but I do understand b/c you probably figured the second time around would be better. I know as I embark on this journey of decorating our home, I will have failures also and I pray I can laugh at them also b/c this is how I will learn. Again, Thank you and pray your weekend is Blessed.
O-o-h such memories! I laughed so hard I had tears running down my cheeks when reading your blog about your backsplash fail. I’ve been there and done that (failed) so-o-o many times over the last forty five years of crafting. My only save is that most of mine were done pre-technology (phone and video cameras) so there’s NO evidence or witnesses left to my many project fails except for a couple of enthusiastic (and equally embarrassed) accomplices (friends) and one very sweet ex-husband all of whom have been sworn to take my crafting failures to their graves!
When one of my projects exploded in failure, I remember a lot of head banging, teeth gnashing and whining “what WAS I thinking” but hey, it’s how we all learn. I have learned more from all the stupid mistakes I have made than I ever would have learned if everything had gone perfectly. Experience (both positive and negative) is a wonderful teacher and the negative can sure keep us humble!.
Love your blog—keep sharing!
Ah, the most common rookie mistake: being unable to admit we were wrong about a color choice, and trying to “tone it down” instead of just painting over it. I’ve done it, too! The worst one was the pink accent wall in the dingy mustard-yellow guest room. Both colors were wrong, but I tried to tone down the pink with a brownish terra-cotta…which was also wrong. 🙂 Here are some pictures of the vomit-inducing result, which I lived with for like, two years. Sorry guests! Luckily I learned my lesson about swallowing my pride and just repainting ASAP, but I’ve still got a terrible track record for getting it right the first time — most recently was the avocado disaster in the kitchen. Thanks for sharing, Mandi! You’ve come so far, it gives me hope that someday I may have taste as good as yours.
xo, Sarah
I’m dying. It’s just so fantastically bad. Glad to know there’s more than just me with a bad history 😉
You made me chuckle this morning (and that’s only because I’ve been there, too). Have a great holiday!