Monday, August 29, 2011

Project Nursery: Step 3

Step 3: Paint (a.k.a. Yikes! Stripes!)

Aside from the vintage book theme, the one thing I have been set on since beginning designs for this nursery is to have some sort of striped accent wall. At first the plan was to paint the entire room yellow and have one wall with white stripes. I soon came to my senses, though, and decided that a completely yellow room, especially one as small as BSv2.0's nursery, would probably subject my newborn baby (and all of his visitors) to a lifetime of headaches. All in all, probably something to be avoided. So. New plan. Creamy white walls and one wall with yellow stripes. Sounds great, right? Right.

Next step. Paint the stripes. Ack! The hubster was all "Are you kidding me? Do you know how hard that is going to be?" And I was all "Yes. But we're doing it anyway. You don't like it? I'll do them myself." To which he was all "No, no. I'll do them, because you won't do them right." Me: "Whatever."

(By the way, conversations like this are why we bought a move-in-ready house and not a fixer-upper.)

So it was after weeks agonizing over the painting of the dreaded much-anticipated stripes that we set off on a little adventure in painting. Come with me, will you? (But be prepared for some pretty gnarly, noisy, and not KSP-worthy images. Just warning you.)

Here's what we started with. My beloved Parisian-themed guest room. Bye-bye Paris Room. You will be missed:


Oh and did you catch that the walls were RED? RED!!! Two coats of high-coverage primer is what it took to cover that stuff. But eventually, the red was no longer. In the process we pondered name choices (but didn't get very far):


And let Max get in on the action. (Btw, I'm obsessed with his cute little butt in these boxer briefs):


After applying the base coat in a creamy white (a rather boring step, therefore no pictures), it was time to get striping.

A lot of the work was done late at night and we lacked furniture in the room. Who thinks this little bit of balancing trickery was a good idea? Yeah probably not so much:


Anyhow, finally we (and by "we," I mean "Adam") started the laborious task of measuring and taping all the stripes:


Why is he doing that on a two-step-high monkey stool? Yeah, we asked the same thing about two minutes later. While he did that I performed a little piece of geniusness of my own (thank you, Google). I painted a thin layer of the base coat over the tape edges to seal off the tape and (hopefully) keep the yellow from bleeding through:


Did it work? We'll find out. Finally, we were all taped off, and Adam looked like this:


Sad Adam.

No time to be sad! The next day it was time to paint! Squeeeee!



Officially, the color is Golden Moon, but I like to refer to it as Velveeta Shells and Cheese. Yum!

Two coats of yellow later, it was tape peeling time. We were so skeeeeered! (Get it? That's my skeeeeered face):


And how did the stripes turn out? Wouldn't you like to know.

Drum roll.................
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Are you ready for it?
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Wait for it.
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Wait for it.
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TAH DAH!!!!!!!!!


Do you LOVE them? Well, even if you don't, I DO LOVE THEM!!!!! They are so exactly my vision. I just love the brightness of the yellow and I'm super pleased that I picked this wall so that the stripes extend around the little angle in the doorway. I can't wait to get the furniture in the room and start getting the wall decor organized and ready to go up. But first, it's on to the next step: textiles. Oo la la, right? I know. So exciting!

3 comments:

Dina @ Honey + Fitz said...

OK...I am more than tad obsessed with this image. THIS LOOKS GRRRRRREAT!!!!!! I am a huge fan of yellow in nurseries (retina burning yellow changing table anyone?!) and I think tempered with other calmer colors it is just perfect. I can't wait to get stripe painting! And to watch you finish the rest of the nursery. It's going to be adorable, obviously.

Katie said...

Dina, you totally just made my day! Ms. H&F obsessed with MY stripes? Gasp! Ha ha. Good luck with your own stripe project. Can't wait to see what you come up with!

Your mom said...

I am sad to see my guest room go but really excited to see what un-named baby shores 2's room look will finally be! Weird me I liked having the blue painters tape stipe up there as well! Keep it up my dear! It looks great. Oh and you are very lucky in your choice of husband too!! He is awesome! Love you Adam!