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Friday, November 30, 2012

Stripes of Wonder

Why wonder, you ask? Because rarely do I attempt such a big project that is so likely to fail and actually succeed.  Huzzah!

Despite my husband's severe misgivings and the teeny tiny fight that we got into during the process, I added stripes to our small half bath on the first floor, and what a different a little pattern makes!  Remember that we started with this:


Pinky beige walls, old laminate flooring, outdated fixtures, ugly light, and that gorgeous (barf) country house border on the wall.  No offense if you love country houses, just not my style.

We soon moved to this:

Lightened walls, new flooring, and updated fixtures.  But we weren't at my vision yet.  I wanted a touch of drama in this room.

KABOOM!


That's right, I ventured into a more advanced project and decided to put some stripes in the bathroom.  Inspired, as always, by John and Sherry, whom I pretend to be personal friends with, from Young House Love (met them at a signing last week!), I opted for a touch of color and drama in the form of horizontal stripes on the wall.  First, I measured my wall height (90 inches) and decide on a simple 10 inch stripe, so 9 stripes on the wall.  I marked the 10 inch mark along the wall, then splurged on Frog Tape and connected the dots with that.  If you do this, be sure to keep track of if you are working on a stripe to be painted or a stripe to be left alone.  When you tape it, it will look like every other stripe is smaller than the others, but that's to factor in the stripe you're leaving alone?  Sounds more complicated than it is, but you're smart, you get it.

Then it was time for the painting:


After using the best thing I've ever bought, I picked Glidden's Universal Grey and painted off the 10 inch stripes, making sure to go over the tape to ensure I got a nice solid line on the wall.  And ended up with this:

Love love love
That's a shot with flash and here's a shot with the light on:


What light, you ask?  Yep, old yeller came down and we put up a clean brushed nickel light from Home Depot (can't find the link online though!)  And, courtesy of my dad poking around in our basement, we put up this great poster from our favorite winery in Napa.  Yeah, we're those people that have a favorite winery.  Fancy pants.

Poster from Peju Winery
I love how this looks so much, and I worked so hard on it.  The stripes were ridiculously painful (measuring, taping, adjusting, panicking, repeat as necessary).  And there's still a few details left to go: some storage, cute towels, a more modern mirror.  But I love the progress!

1 comment:

Amanda B. said...

Nice work!! It's looking great. Stripes totally intimidate me! It's one of those things that upon seeing, you might think "oh, that can't be that hard" but then when you start to plot it out, it seems like an evil riddle you'll never solve (just watched Brave last night). I tend to jump right in and have to fix mistakes as I go, so I applaud your patience!

I'm hopeing to post more home updates soon. We've just slowed down in advance of Christmas. *sigh*