Don’t y’all just love waking up on a random Sunday morning with the spontaneous notion to paint a room-- Coffee? Bagel? 10” black & white horizontal stripes in the entryway? Easy! Actually, y’all, painting our entryway had been on my master punchlist for our Patrician Court apt. ever since moving in. I’d just been hemming and hawing about it, b/c it couldn’t just be a ‘typical’ paint job, no no. I wanted stripes! BIG BOLD horizontal stripes! Stripes aren’t really the devil’s work, y’all, they just require the right ingredients: a lot of perseverance, a laser level, painters tape and good paint. Oh, and a tireless husband who knows better than to say no!
Check out this Before and After Backslap:
Shut the ?!ck y’all! YES! I’m sooooo thrilled at how these turned out! Major drama, for minor money…in fact, these stripes are taking me there so much, I really don’t even need artwork-- another great reason for tricking out your walls with a bold paint treatment. Whether you want to get horizontal-- oh la la, y’all-- or vertical, the key to getting sexy stripes, is all in the technique.
So, here’s how we did it (don’t let the lengthy text scare y’all-- it’s easy, and a little length goes a long way, oh shiot!):
1. Once you’ve decided on your colors, you’ll need to paint the walls you want to treat with a coat of the base color (the background color that goes all the way up to the top and bottom of the wall). Mine was white.
2. Once that coat is dry, it’s time to tape out your stripes! A laser level is a HUGE help here! Decide on the width of your stripes and divide out the wall. Start at the top or bottom and set the laser level to your first line. With that in place, tape along the laser line. Keep in mind that the stripes you will paint will not have any tape covering them and the background color stripes will have the tape sitting inside their edges, so place the tape on top of or below your laser line accordingly (see the image below for help understanding when to tape above and below your laser line). Work your way up or down the wall one laser line at a time. This is really the most time consuming part, so be patient and accurate here y’all.
3. Whew, with that done it’s time for the secret step to ensure a crisp stripe line! In the sections that you want to paint your stripe color (ours was black), first paint a coat or two of your background color (again, ours was white). I know this sounds backwards, but it will ensure that anything that may bleed under your tape edge will be the same background color.
4. Let that backgound color coat dry and then it’s time for your stripe color at last! Paint your stripes with the stripe color and let it dry. Make sure you don’t have any patchy areas… this may require a second coat.
5. Finally once that’s all dry, it’s time to carefully peel off the painter’s tape (no tearing here, despite your unbridled passion) and get served by a striped wall! Oh, Luscious!
Sit back, relax and let those stripes serve you some drama!