Ghost Stripe Walls

As you saw yesterday, I am redoing Hotrod's room.  It is long overdue, that is for sure.  When he left for his trip, I was shocked at the work we had to do in his room.  Since I had asked him to clean it, which he did do a few days before; however while, he was packing for his trip, it was right back to where it began before he cleaned it.  

I'll let the pictures do the talking.

 

I had a long road ahead, that's for sure, and only 4 days to get it done!!  Typical teen boy room...or so I'm told...I just think my teen happens to be highly allergic to a garbage can.

I knew that I wanted a paint that had a primer built into it.  Also, Hotrod and I had previously discussed colors for his room should I ever redo it.  Which was grey.  So I went to my local Home Depot, at 7 o'clock on a Monday night of course (perfect time to start a major project, right?), and bought the Behr Premium Plus Ultra and had it color matched to the Dutch Boy Route 66.  I have to say, this rolled on quite nicely and covered a lot in just the first coat.  I did do two coats.

Now, because of a few things...

1) I'm impatient
2) I'm lazy
3) I didn't have any space to move the furniture out into

....don't be shocked at the pictures you are about to see.

I didn't completely empty his room as I probably should have.   Moving around things and cleaning as I go...totally my gig.  But not necessarily recommended for all.
I had help from my cousin, Rachel, who was so sweet in painting with me till the wee hours of the morning.   We spackled holes (from previous shelves) and put our first coat of gray paint on the walls.

 

 

 

I let the paint dry for a full day and a half.  In fact, I did nothing but clean on Tuesday.  On Wednesday, I added the second coat of paint.
After two coats of paint I was able to start the striping on one of the walls.  The Mister and I were trying to decided which wall to do.  I wanted to change the layout of his room slightly.  He has an odd shaped room and unfortunately it doesn't leave much for furniture arrangement.  So, I chose to stripe the wall that his bed was going to be on.

I actually used a paint stir stick as my measuring tool.  I find it much easier to use a solid piece of scrap wood, paint stick, whatever you have handy that is going to be consistent every time.

The trick is to remember that one row, as you tape off, is going to be in the negative.  Meaning, that part of your painted lines will be UNDER your tape.  So you will actually need to measure from the far OUTSIDE line of your tape.  Then the next stripe will be the inside of the tape....I sure hope I am making sense.

So if my ruler was 12 inches. 
My tape was 1 inch thick for each side.
Then I would have one row be 12 inches, exposed and the next row would be 10 inches exposed. 
Not gonna lie, it hurt my brain to do this math...and I work with math and numbers all day long at work.
There was untaping and remeasuring and retaping and a lot of frustration...but it was WORTH IT!! 

 

 

I also put a strip of tape in the sections that I WAS NOT going to paint.  Last thing I needed was to get confused on my A-B pattern and paint the wrong section.

Okay, so when you step back and look at the wall, it WILL appear that one section is wider than the other.  That's because it is, because of the tape and what you are not painting vs what you are painting.

I used the exact same color of paint, Behr Premium Plus paint, only it was the Hi-Gloss finish.  I was able to get away with just a quart of paint since I was only covering the one wall.

Also, I prefer to use Frog Tape, but that is just my personal preference.  Hotrod's walls were really textured, so the tape stuck really well to the walls and gave me crisp, clean lines.

 

It is so subtle, but yet dramatic enough for a teen boy.  I really love the look.  And he does too!  That's like winning 100 mom points and the lottery!

Stay tuned....the furniture will be moving in soon.

Have you done any fun wall treatments lately?  What were they?