We are making lots of progress over at #HOHSouthernCapeCod! I started talking about wall texture on Instagram stories and it was a hot topic! Today I am sharing all about our smooth walls.
If you live in many areas across the world this post will be a bit unusual to you, because your home comes standard with smooth walls. If you live in Texas you probably don’t have smooth walls…you have a texture called orange peel, which I lovingly refer to as “wall cellulite”. Based on a poll I took on IG, Florida has a lot of orange peel walls as well. Below is a photo of what orange peel walls look like. Do you see why I call it “wall cellulite”?! 😉
Listen, there is nothing wrong with orange peel. I have had it in every house I have ever lived in and honestly, most people don’t even notice it. Orange peel is used because it is an easy, inexpensive way to hide imperfections in dry wall. They just spray it on your walls and it covers any blemish. Smooth walls take a lot more work because they have to use extra mud when putting up your tape and bedding on the drywall and then sand it down so it is smooth. I love old homes and they have smooth walls which is one of the reasons I love them so much. I want our home to feel older and timeless so we decided to go with smooth walls as well. Below you can see a difference in orange peel vs smooth texture.
Again, many people in other states have smooth walls standard in their homes. It is just worked into the cost of your home. You probably didn’t even choose your texture. If you don’t have them standard and want them, prepare yourself for sticker shock. Smooth walls are $$$$. To me it is worth it, but to many it is not. There are also many different levels of smooth. Level 5, also called museum quality, is where they add an extra layer of skim coat and sand to get it perfect . . . we didn’t need this level. We went with the cheaper smooth option. Basically they just added a skim coat where they needed to and sanded like crazy to get everything smooth. This saved some $.
We didn’t need the entire house done, because in some sections we are doing cabinets, trim or wallpaper. Those areas didn’t have to be treated. Every where else has smooth walls though. Besides just liking the look better, it was important because we are doing high gloss paint in some areas and you want your walls smooth for that. Also it allowed us to save $ in a few areas where we were able to apply picture molding directly to the wall and since they were smooth, it looked like there were wooden panels there. This saved a bunch in lumber cost. I will be going into much more detail on this when I do my trim post. Here is a quick highlight though. . .
In the entry of our home we did upgraded paneling because you see it more. We used wood panels on the wall and then wood picture molding trim on top. This requires more labor and more material so therefore it is more $$$
In the office and a few other areas of our home we used our smooth walls as the base and applied the picture molding directly on top. This uses way less material and labor so we definitely saved $ in these areas. Once painted, it will look very similar.
Some people add picture molding over orange peel walls, but personally I don’t think it looks as good. Here is an example. The photo above shows our wood directly on the smooth wall.
Anyway, do not go hating your walls now if they have texture, it is fine. I just knew when we built I wanted to do it differently to appear like an older home. Comment below and share what type of walls you have in your home!
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**We are building our home with Joe Vastano with Joseph Paul Homes. The Joseph Paul Homes website is under construction. You can see his work on his Instagram and Facebook **