The paint fest in the spare room is complete (well, you know, mostly). Still a few finishing touches and touch-ups left to go — but the room has shed it’s former pepto-bismol hue in favor of a new set of purple stripes!

Before:

Too bad these photos don’t give you a better view of the groovy light fixture that always reminds me of a spirograph drawing. But do take a moment to marvel at the amount of pinkness packed into this small space: walls, ceiling, mini-blinds… formerly there were also pink wooden valances over the windows, and you can’t see it, but the inside of the closet is pink, as well. (Frighteningly, the peeling white paint in our bathroom seems to indicate that it once sported the same rosy glow also.)

After:

A tad 80’s perhaps… but at least it’s moved forward in time a few decades from where it used to be! The colors were inspired by this quilt that I showed you a while ago.

The whole striping experience was a lot of fun, and overall a huge sucess in my mind. But I did learn a couple of valuable lessons that I’ll share with you, just in case you’re itching to put some stripe action on your walls sometime:

1. As a general painting rule, but especially when you’re attempting something really fussy like this — and *especially* if you’re dealing with particularly glossy existing paint on the walls — DON’T skip the primer coat. That’s my only real regret, and I totally should have known better. The darkest purple color and the the black paint didn’t adhere that well to the slippery pink paint — so when it came time to pull up the tape, the paint had a tendency to cling more to the tape than the wall. Argh.

2. Here’s a great tip to help you get sharp edges on your stripes: After you put down your tape marking out where the contrasting stripe will go, but BEFORE you begin painting with the contrasting color, paint over the edge of the tape in the main color first. In other words, paint over the tape using whatever color that’s beneath it. Then, after it dries, go ahead and paint your stripe color.

This is crucial because it ensures that any paint that bleeds underneath the tape (gasp!) will be the old color, which will help keep the contrast color only in the area where you want it. I was a little skeptical of this strategy at first, but trust me, it really works!

3. Do try to empty out the room you’re working on of as many obstacles as possible. Dancing around the furniture gets particularly annoying when you have to keep circling the room with every color.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2004 at 8:11 pm and is filed under House Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.