Let's put on some 3d wall tiles

We've been eyeing these wall flats at Inhabit Living, specifically the braille design as it looks really cool. The tiles come in 18x18 size and they have to be put on the wall either with mastic or with contact cement. The tiles are flexible but relatively had, they just feel like cardboard.

I've decided to go with the mastic route and started putting them on. It is fairly straightforward, but it is time consuming to ensure that mastic is spread properly and tiles are set properly. Here is the work in progress:

The hardest part is ensuring all corners stick the wall properly. Sometimes a corner refuses to stay in place and keep popping up probably because I didn't spend time to bend all to make them flat prior to installation. For those persistent corners, I used a couple finishing nails as installation instructions recommended. 

I've also had difficulty in cutting these tiles for the edges or around outlets. The instructions recommend using a razor knife, but it is impossible to cut through bubbles correctly without damaging them using a knife. Then I realized that oscillating cutter is the perfect tool to cut these 3d tiles without messing up the bubbles:

After two days, here is all the wall tiles in place:

Still, I need to

-caulk the edges and between tiles to minimize the seams.

- prime it

- paint it.

We'll see how hard it will be to prime and paint this 3d wall with a brush, not a sprayer...

After a looong time, here is a quick update on the 3d wall tiles.

Painting this is a total pain in the neck. I had to do two coats of paint with a brush and had to paint every single bubble one by one to ensure they look uniform. Next time, I may want to hire a painter with a spray gun and let him take care of it!

After all done, here is what it looks like. From distance, it almost looks like it is not painted, because I painted it off-white. We were initially planning to paint all of it to off-white and paint some of the bubbles with bright colors like red, orange and yellow randomly. We've never quite executed on that. We might some time in the future...