So here's another one of my crazy woman projects....This was probably the craziest. I have seen lots of people painting stripes on their walls and I thought, I could do that. I have also heard it is pretty easy too and it seemed easy reading the tutorials. I pretty much knew from when we moved in about a year ago that I wanted to do that in our half bath and have just been putting it off. Well one night I couldn't sleep. My mind kept racing and got fixated on this painting stripes idea. I realized I had the paint- I would use my oops paint I used on my end table from this post here! Then I thought about how I would go about doing this project. I thought about that for a while until I realized it was WAY too late and I needed sleep so I had to try to turn my brain off.
The next morning first thing I said to Carson was, "I'm going to paint stripes in our half bath. I'm just going to do it." In which he replied with a lot of excuses like, "Are you sure that's a good idea?" and "We have so many other things we should be doing." I told him, I don't care what excuses you come up with and you don't even need to help. I'm doing this. So I got right to work that evening.
BIG MISTAKE!! I will publicly tell you, Carson was right! Husbands do sometimes know what's best ;) Now I in no way am some sort of professional and frankly I had never painted before so I really didn't know entirely what I was doing haha. But the first night, was horrible! NOTHING was going right, including the fact that I ran out of paint! grrr. I started when James went to bed (about 8:30pm) and was up until midnight so I could get to a good stopping point to go to bed. It was a rough 3 and a half hours! I just kept thinking What am I doing? Why do I do this to myself? Why am I going nuts and doing all these projects when I'm almost 7 months pregnant and tired? After I was finished for the evening and cleaning up, I let the best of my emotions get me and just cried. Carson is so good to me and just hugged me and told me it's going to look great. Even though in his mind I'm sure he was saying, I told you so.
So here is how I tackled this project. I found there are two ways to do this, you could tape off your segments and then paint or do your whole wall the lighter color first, let it dry and then tape off and apply the second color where designated. I chose to do the latter. Not sure which is better or easier if there is one but I personally felt that having half of it done before I taped was appealing. Plus if you did it the other way, you'd maybe have to tape in two stages because the tape covers part of where you need to paint anyway.
Here's the run down on how I did it (if you dare to tackle it):
- Removed any decoration on walls and spackled in the holes and let dry
- Cleaned walls with warm, soapy water and let dry
- removed hardware including toilet paper holder, towel rack, and outlet/light switch covers
- Take tank off toilet (if doing this in a bathroom) I did not realize this until I got there and thought I don't know how to take a toilet apart without water spurting all over! So I You Tubed it and it's actually quite easy.
- Taped off with Scotch Blue Tape anywhere like around cabinets etc where you don't want to paint
- Now you're ready to paint! I chose to do white and gray stripes so I painted all of my walls white. I used Glidden High Endurance Plus 2 in 1 paint + primer in semi gloss white GALLON size. I used a large roller and then used a good angled paint brush around cabinets, ceilings etc. I had to do two coats because my walls were a cream color (I didn't realize how dark they were and didn't take into account I'd have to do two coats! arg- more time!) Let dry.
- After second coat of white paint was dry, I marked where I wanted my stripes. First I decided about how many stripes I wanted (I decided 12) then measured the height of the wall (91") so I took 91 and divided it by 12 to get roughly how wide each stripe would be so 7.5" and then marked every 7.5" on one wall. Now I don't have a fancy laser level or anything so I used a good ol' yard stick and hand held level from my tool kit and just drew straight lines on my marks and matched them up around each wall. I was very meticulous with this. I was so afraid I would come out with uneven lines!
- After measuring and marking, it was time to tape. (I actually marked and taped at the same time as I went). Make sure you tape off in the "white" areas because those are already done and don't need to be painted. I also made sure the tape rested just above or below (depending on the pencil line so that I'd be painting over and covering up my pencil marks with gray. So you see here, the "thinner" stripes are going to be my white stripes and the "thicker" stripes will be painted gray but they will all come out to be the same size. Sort of trippy....I kept having to second guess myself and check.
- Then I painted my gray stripes with a small roller. As I mentioned, I used my oops paint from another project. Since it is an oops paint, it didn't have a color name. I just know it was America's Finest line from Glidden. It was a flat finish so I was a little worried about how it would look with the white semi-gloss but I really like how it turned out. Again, I made sure to tape off and use a good angled brush to get up around the ceiling, mirror, baseboards and cabinets. Update: Flat finish paints do not clean well and easily leave fingerprints, dirt, marks etc. I knew this going into my project but decided since I already had the paint I would see how it turned out. The walls still look pretty good now about 8 months later but I do have a couple spots where my son has touched the wall with grubby fingers that I can not get off. So in hindsight, I should have found some satin finish paint.
And that's it!
Seems pretty easy huh? Oh but let me tell you IT IS NOT haha! I easily spent like 5 hours alone on measuring and taping. It was probably a 12-15 hour project. I worked on it for three days every free time I had. I'm not sure if it was just me making it harder than it is or what but it was the project from Hell!
Let's see a before and after
and some more of the finished product from different angles
When I was done, Carson asked me, "Well, was it worth it?" I quickly responded, "NO!" haha but I am happy with the outcome. It is exactly what I had in mind. I am so happy with it, just so glad it's over! In hindsight I would've paid someone to come do it for me ;)
So I promised myself (and Carson) no more projects until well after baby is born. I was SO sore after this and emotionally drained.
I can't wait to decorate now!
That looks AMAZING! So cool :)
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