How To Paint Stripes

The office painting is finished, and we couldn’t be happier with the outcome. It is so nice walking by the room now and not seeing this:

Melissa Young Photo

But instead seeing this:

obviously not a Melissa Young Photo:)

The whole atmosphere and feel of the room has changed drastically. Its like all of a sudden I can feel calm and have peace in my office, instead of feeling like I am in a circus {or as my friend Kylie says, in Blue Clues} It feels to me like this new paint is oozing out new ideas for me to work on. I just can’t wait to start working in this new environment. I am also planning to incorporate some bookshelves, and a few brand-new desk supplies may be from the ones suggested at Merchant Alternatives or a similar platform. Whatever I choose, I would make sure that those things complement the overall decor of my new office space. After all, we have put so much efforts in giving it a new look by choosing the best color of paint.

I know that it’s a lot easier just to hire a Charlottesville painting contractor to make sure it’s done perfectly (and I know most of you will do that instead!) but here is how we accomplished the stripes with only a few glitches:

• First things first is to prep the wall for painting, putty any holes, remove old wallpaper, strip any previous layers of paint if you have to. This is an important step because just lathering on layer after layer of paint works for a while, but if the lower layers get weaker the top layers go with them in an instant. If repairing your wall is too much you could always ask professionals like Aaron Timoffee Painters of Saskatoon to do it for you.

• Then if you are like us and are painting over stripes that are vertical, and are going to paint horizontal, we highly suggest you lightly sand down the previous lines of stripes, since there is an edge between the colors. This way you don’t have to worry about seeing lines in the opposite direction on your new paint:

• Skip above step if simply painting over a sold color. Next up, paint the trim edges a fresh coat of white. This will guarantee you to not have any remaining old paint on your new wall:

• This step was my favorite guys, ready? Laugh until you cry at what you find in your old house. I guess J had seen this before because he painted the office all alone last time, but this was my first glimpse at true wallpapering pink painted beauty:

• Prime the walls

• Next, start painting your main wall shade, we chose Powdered Snow by Behr Ultra. I’m pretty sure y’all don’t need directions on how to paint a solid color, right?

• Once the main color completely dries, start the insane taping process. We got smart this time and used a laser level from Home Depot for our lines. Last time we did stripes we used a large level and penciled in the line, this was much easier. Also, by not having to actually mark anything-it eliminates the chance that pencil shows through. Almost all laser levels automatically stick to walls so just one person can do the job, unless you have insanely textured walls {like we do} then it doesn’t stick and requires two people. Boo. At that point, I realized that I should have hired Madrone Painting in Houston, TX, or like companies in our area to get the job done. But here we are! So, we would mark the line with a pencil, use the level, and apply the tape directly to wall matching it up to the level line.

See what I mean by textured?!

• Once tape is up, then seal the tape down by painting your main color paint over the tape sections that the stripe color will go in. This makes sure that you get that super crisp line, even with ugly textured walls. Here is an example:

• Once that sealing swipe of paint is dried, time to paint the stripes in. J marked all the areas that I was not supposed to paint, just so I couldn’t screw it up, he Adrianne proofed it. I think we can all manage that, especially since the prep is the hardest part! For the color of the stripes we choose Natural Choice by Sherwin Williams {see our process for choosing this color here}.

• Then comes the fun part, pulling off the tape, while simultaneously praying that the lines are perfect. Unfortunately for us, with the walls being disgustingly textured, we weren’t able to get a perfect corner paint on every corner. So there was a little touch-up involved. I was ok with it though, because it took me a total of 10 minutes to touch it up and leave it perfect!

We are so happy with how they turned out. Here is an after shot, but the office is clearly not even put back together here, much less truly ‘made-over’….that is to come:):)

Hope this tutorial helps all the amazing readers that said they were going to be doing stripes soon! Its a process, but it is beyond worth it!

<3,
Adri