I had a productive weekend- as I mentioned Friday, Jon and I painted some accent stripes on our wall as part of our office makeover. Seeing as how I'm still alive, you can deduct that the project was a success and I was not, in fact, murdered for my life insurance money. The office is far from done, but I am really happy with the results!
Now that I'm an experienced striper (not stripper, mind you), I've got a couple pointers if you ever decide to give it a try:
- This goes for any project ever, but recognize that everything will take longer than you expect
- Be aware that floors are not always even so measuring from the floor may not give you a good result. A laser tool is essential for this project, as is a second person to hold said laser.
- Be crazy psycho meticulous with the first line: mark the walls every 3 feet or so and then apply the blue painter's tape as flatly and carefully as possible. It may not seem like a big deal if there are wrinkles in the tape, but this can screw you later in the process
- I measured all the subsequent lines off of the first line of tape to make sure that the lines would be parallel to one another
- Be mindful that the painter's tape is negative space, not color. That means if you want a 6 inch stripe, the space between the tape must be six inches, not 4 inches plus the width of the tape. This means sometimes you'll be aligning the tape from the bottom and other times you'll be aligning it from the top
- THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT! After you've applied the tape, take a credit card edge and run it over the tape to make sure it's completely adhered to the wall, particularly the edges. If you don't do this, paint will seep under the tape and your line will look like it was applied by epileptic donkeys.
- After you've done your coats of paint, remove the tape while it's still not completely dry. I'm not exactly sure why, but that's what other sites said to do and I think the lines looked cleaner when I did it wet than when I forgot and had to do it dry.
For the BEFORE, go here
The IN BETWEEN:
X marks the DON'T PAINT THIS IT'S NOT A STRIPE!
