Originally Posted by
BibliophileTRJ
O.K. I was going to ignore this thread (because my solution is A LOT of work), but since you specifically asked me to comment, I will.
I once faced this exact problem in one of my apartments, except my wall was 10+ feet wide by 8 feet high. I covered the entire thing in a special contact paper onto which I drew (using stencils) a Hibiscus pattern. Then, using an X-acto knife I painstakingly trimmed out the pattern leaving the contact paper only where the flowers were. The vast majority of contact paper was removed. At that point I rented a sandblaster from a specialty craft store and sandblasted the hell out of the wall. (of course that was after setting up a plastic containment tent over the wall and donning a respirator and safety glasses) Clean up the sand, remove the last bits of contact paper, take down the plastic tent, spend DAYS cleaning the dust from the rest of the apartment (the containment tent only contains a large portion of sand.... the fine dusty stuff gets free & gets EVERYWHERE) and the end result is a large frosted glass wall that still reflects a lot of light but not images, it also has a nice floral pattern of actual mirrored surface that breaks up the monotony of a huge pane of frosted glass. Now that it's no longer a mirror you can use sticky-backed hooks to hang pictures, etc.
It's an enormous task; but the result was VERY nice. I did have to get permission from the landlord..... he was all for it.... never liked that mirror from the day he bought the place.
I had tried the gauzy curtain solution for a while, but kept catching my reflection in the mirror behind the curtain and scaring myself thinking that there was someone sneaking around my apartment behind the drapes.
Hope this helps..... let me know if you want any additional info.