Friday, August 24, 2012

Herringbone-obsessed.

So. For the last few weeks we have been working on a little kitchen facelift. I finally took down alllll pineapple wallpaper and Shannon helped me paint all the walls and the ceiling white. You don't realize how not white something is until you put white on top of it....

Yuck. I think we all agree, non?

Anyhoodle, We put down the white, painted the cabinets gray, and put on new hardware. It's nice. Clean and sharp and all that but kiiiind of boring. I didn't want to paint any actual colors because they would be doing battle with our turquoise countertops and flooring so I decided on geometric accent wall. In gray.
I should have taken more pictures during the process but here's what I did.

First, cleaned my walls. Thoroughly. Then, put green frog tape around the perimeter of my wall. I measured the length of my wall - 110". You want to divide your sections as evenly as possible so, using a tape measure, I marked the tape every 11" along the top and the bottom of the tape. I "connected the dots" from top to bottom to create 10 even, vertical stripes.
Then, using the tape measure I marked every 5", running vertically, on every one of my tape stripes. Then, it was just a giant game of connect the dots. I chose to connect and paint them to make a herringbone pattern but you could totally do a chevron or zigzag pattern at this point. On the areas you leave white, you have to put the tape on the inside of the markings. Smooth down every single piece of tape and make sure to put a little piece of tape in the white areas so you don't accidentally paint it. That would be sad.

This is what it looked like when everything was taped. To reiterate: you want the to-be-colored areas to look bigger than the to-be-white-ones because the wall underneath the width of the tape will also be white.

It took about an hour and a half and 1 1/2 rolls of tape to do this.
Then, using the tiniest little trim roller you can find, get to painting. Don't drench your roller in paint as the paint may bleed under the tape (also, get some good paint to do this. I used Benjamin Moore Advanced. It is awesome. It's a water-based paint that acts like and has the durability of an oil-based paint). I did 2 coats. By the time I was done with the first coat at one end of the wall, the other end was dry enough for a second coat.

I began back at my starting spot and started to take off the tape. This is key: DO NOT wait for the paint to dry completely to take off the tape. You increase the chances of ruining your clean lines by like, 100% if you do. You need to allow it time to try just a little (maybe 10 minutes depending on the paint you're using) but, again, do not wait for hours or until the next morning to take off the tape.

When you do peel off the tape, do it like this, pulling at an acute angle, and go at a moderate pace.

I've got a little touching up to do on the white but I really like how it turned out.

5 comments:

  1. Sawwweet. Nice. Awesome. Wait, you knew that. Way to rock the wall. Please come and repeat at my house.

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  2. This looks really great. Way to keep a cohesive palate (right spelling?) and add some interest too. I'm SO glad you told me about not pulling off the tape when the paint has already dried. That will be very helpful in the rest of the house-- I just wish I'd know this when we painted the downstairs. Very good tip!

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  3. I love that you used the phrase "acute angle." It only makes me love you even more, if that would even be possible.

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