Living Room Paint and a little "How To"

Some of you may have seen the pictures on my instagram account of the new stripey walls Kirk and I finished last week. It was a fun project to do together, and for us it was a huge win in making what was "my" house feel more like "ours". If you were to ask either of us, the house has been kind of an emotional hot button, a physical representative for us of how difficult it has been to learn to share and compromise when we've each had so many years of independence. But we're gaining ground people! Little by little we're figuring this stuff out!

Kirk is really good at visualizing a space and putting it together. He's very artistic, and he loves to host, in fact, had just bought a house when we started dating and he did a great job making it a warm and inviting space where everyone wanted to be. It's now rented out by some great friends, and we're sharing the tiny little 2 bedroom one bath house I lived in and experimented on for the last 5 years.

We had incredibly different houses, but there were a couple of elements that ended up the pretty similar. We both had deep black accent walls, and loved gray and white. The crazy thing is, his house read very masculine, and mine was full of blue, red and green accents that made it feel pretty vinage and cottage-y. We're learning to land on a happy little mix of "us" where ecclectic-pretty-petite meets masculine-graphic-comfortable. Let's call it unique. But we're loving it! Here are some before and afters, with many more evolutions to come, I'm sure.

Old Living Room

• White walls with black accent

• Funky weird and ever changing wall art

• Giant Black table that took up the living room

(Pre Kirk moving in when I was seriously thinking about painting the living room pink)

The art on these walls changes a million times, but was always cozy to come home to. 

New Living Room

• We painted a deep, "Hale Navy" from Benjamin Moore on 3 of the walls that contrasts well with the off white trim. Thankfully, there's a lot of natural light from the big fat picture window, the view looks beautiful framed in with the dark walls, and I'm currently working on putting up more artwork that will break up all of the navy. 

• We also ended up mounting the giant TV above the fireplace and love it. It blends in well with the almost black walls. Then we put a big brown leather used chair from a friend, for Kirk, in the corner where the TV and hutch used to be. Pics to come soon.

• We painted gray and white stripes on the accent wall which used to be black, the main wall you see when you enter the house and down the hall. The continuous lines has helped to make the accent wall blend in, and the horizontal lines elongate that walls, making the whole space feel much more open. 

A little "how to" on the technique for the stripes. Kirk had researched this a fair bit and he did all of the smart artsy stuff, I just threw a bunch of paint up and did some cutting in. Here's the process we used.

1. We color matched the original trim paint at the hardware store so and then prepped, filled holes and gave the walls a clean coat. I generally love Benjamin Moore paint, so we went with their Aura line because there were less fumes and the coverage was good. Neither of us are big on taping, so we just did our best to give it a good coat and cut in well. This goes for the navy as well, we were just careful.
2. Kirk measured out 12 inch stripes starting from the top, marking every 3 or so feet around the room. My guess is this took him 2 hours. We planned on the bottom stripe being a fair bit thicker, which gives it a little more of a finished feel on the bottom with the trim. Or maybe I'm just saying that because we were lazy and wanted easy math. Either way, it worked. We debated stripe thickness, and the 12 inch size allowed us an odd number of stripes which we wanted so both the top and bottom were in gray, and just enough stripes that it felt wall paper-ish, without being too busy.
3. Kirk then took green Frog tape and started placing it on the wall using a level. This took some time, and we did it a couple of days before we had time to actually paint the stripes, so every now and again he'd see an area where it was a little off and would fix the tape. He did an awesome job. 
4. He taped under and on top of the lines that edged the white stripes. So when it was taped, it looked as though the stripes were uneven. We then took credit cards as ran them along the tape to make sure it had a good seal to the wall.
5. When it came time to paint, we first brushed the white back on where the gray stripes would go, making sure to cover the tape, that way if any paint were to bleed under the tape, it would be white. 
6. A few hours after that we went over with the gray. This took two coats and we finished at 2 am, and I had to do a little spot treating in the morn when we had day light. 
7. We let the paint dry overnight, and then took the tape off. Note that when pulling that off, you want to pull away from the gray stripe, either upwards or downwards, depending on which side of the side of the stripe you're working on. This ensures that if you a little too much paint on, it won't peel at the edge, but will come off cleanly.
8. Because he did such a good job taping, we really didn't have to clean the stripes up. They were crisp and clean! 
9. As you can see from the photo below, I now just need to go back and cut in with navy at the edges. Don't screw this up Willms!

There you have it! It's a great, clean, cozy and fun punch to the room. I'll continue to mess with the art and furniture (much to Kirk's dismay) over the coming days I'm sure, so look for more pics soon!

Hope you're enjoying dreaming of some fun updates in your home as well!

-Ashley