Paint Down the Walls!

So none of you get the title? That's OK - like 98% of my humor, it was for my own amusement. But judging from comments about Sarah's last post, a lot of you loved the herringbone pattern wall. I can't blame you, it was a great idea. Now I bet you want to know how it went.

1. Cut a hole in a box Paint the wall the color that you want the stripes to be. In our case, white. We were lucky enough to have the superhandyman (my dad) do the painting for us. Most paint has VOCs (volatile organic compounds*) in it, and that's a no-no for preggos. No-VOC paint is way more expensive, and with Dad doing the painting while we were at work - not an issue.
* VOCs are fake, and were made up by parents and the government to keep us down.

2. Once that wall has cured, it's time to start taping verticals.

It's never a bad time for a guitar solo.

We sketched our layout on some paper, then measured out the verticals along the base trim. We had a little debate about the best way to tape the vertical stripes, as we have fairly high ceilings. We ended up going w/ one strip from the ceiling to the base trim. Even if it's not perfectly straight, it worked out better than trying to align multiple strips of tape.

One down. Notice that I'm also taping the ceiling edge while I'm up on the ladder.

Did you know that pregnant women should not be up on ladders? They shouldn't. It is a known scientific fact that babies steal their mother's brains and balance. So Sarah would somehow squeeze underneath the ladder as we moved down the wall. I'd run the tape down from the top and she'd take it the rest of the way.

She really looks up to me.

And the verticals are done.

3. Do all those angles. This is going to take a while if you're two people who work in architecture and like things to be precise. If you're not, maybe you just do it really half-assed. We used a 30/60/90 triangle - specifically the 30 part.

The angles - precise. The spacing - eyeballingly random.

Taping complete. Total time: Probably about 2 hours. We took a dinner break in the middle sometime. 

4. Paint over all that beautiful tape. In our case, my dad did this (again, big shoot out to Dad!) while we were at work. Let's clear something up real quick - Dad does a fair bit of contractor work. He's done some for several of our friends, and may do yours, too. We'll be happy to put you in touch with him. After he painted, it was time to pull that tape down. I bet you're wondering, "What kind of tape did you use?" We used the 1.88" version of this Scotch Blue Painter's Tape. Now, no tape is going to give you a 100% clean edge unless you're painting on glass, so we expected to have to do some touch-ups, even with the slightly more expensive tape.

Edge Lock Paintlock Protector?

5. Touch up the edges. For the most part, it was pretty clean. There were definitely some areas that needed some attention though. Again, being perfectionists, we were apt to spend all night working on cleaning up every line. It was tedious, and hard to focus while rockin' steady. (If you can't get down to that, then you shouldn't be getting down to this blog.) After an hour and a half or so of this:

... we decided to call this place exactly what it is (what it is what it is what is) - a funky low down feelin' an old rental house. We'll probably do a little bit more touch-up, but we love it!