How I Did It-- The "Striping" Part

Good news, got stung by another bee today. I was over at camp though. My finger is taking it better than my ankle, but it's still pretty swollen.

Sooo, here's part II of that post earlier.

On to the project…

Despite the fact that we have, uh, three days until we actually move in and I have a BOATLOAD of other things to do—I decided that I had four hours to spare. That four hours turned into eight and so the story goes. 

10.30 am

I decide that I want 9 inch stripes of Spring Hills (a slightly darker green) on the walls. I was reading some websites last night and I saw that most people use two different glosses of paint—but I’d already bought both of ours in eggshell finish, so that’s what we got.

Then I made 4 9” pieces of tape to measure the Spring Hills stripes and 3 7” strips to measure out the Palm Breeze stripes. Both colors of stripes are nine inches when they’re finished, but you tape over the base color and the tape is 1” each, so you have to account for that.

Then I spent 4 hours taping, re-taping, measuring, and taping. I’m pretty sure I have no stickiness left of the pads of my fingers. The “Xs” in the picture are to remind me of the the stripes that I should not paint in case I inhale too many fumes and get a little wild.

2.30 pm

Regardless of the brand, lots of people seem to have problems with colors bleeding under the tape. I got around this problem by sealing each of the edges I was going to paint with Palm Breeze first. Any paint that got under the tape would be the same as the base color, so no problems! It took an hour and a half, but I’m glad I did it because I’d be pretty angry if the color bled under the tape after I did all that work.

4.00pm

Time to paint the stripes! The most wonderful part. Paint the top, the bottom, and then roll the rest. You have to take the tape off while it’s still wet to get the clean lines—so it’s like instant gratification. Granted, I still spent 3 hours doing this part but it didn’t seem like it took as long as the other parts.

Post project work

Cleaned up some drop cloths. Washed the windows and window trim. Jeremy swept the floor and fixed the noisy closet doors. Tomorrow I hope I’ll get to washing the floor. We’ll see.

Here are some nighttime shots of the room with the floor showing!