Friday, May 17, 2013

Painting Stripes

My Son Jackson's room has had blank white walls for a year now and it was time to change that!  I was inspired by this picture I found on Houzz.com


The first step is taping, then taping, then finish by taping some more!  I put small pieces of tape in the areas that needed to stay white so that I would remember not to paint them.  I took my time with the tape and just did a little each day while listening to a good book.  As you can see some of the tape is green "frog tape" and some of the tape is Blue Painters tape with "paint-block" technology.  I figured they were the same thing.........


NOT THE SAME!!!! 
You can see below right where the green tape was used (no bleeding) and where the blue tape was used (lots of bleeding - grrrrrrr!).  I am really disappointed in this blue tape because it is expensive and tells you it has "special technology" that makes you feel safe and then you have a huge letdown when you remove the stuff and realize you were ripped off because it is the exact same thing as regular blue tape!!!!

 The frog tape wasn't "perfect" but it was a ton better than the blue tape.  For best results I would recommend frog tape and then going over your tape with your base color paint to seal the lines.

From far away it looks ok - but I have a lot of touching up to do, ugh!


To get my lines straight I used the Black and Decker "sure grip" laser level from Home Depot.  It was A LOT easier than trying to hold a level in place and trace lines with a pencil.  The only bad thing was that the suction didn't work well on parts of the wall where tape was.  It kept falling off the wall and eventually the laser line was no longer "level".  Kind of annoying - thankfully I was almost done so I only had to use my hand held level for a small portion of the room.   



Overall I'm really happy with the look.  I'll be back at some point when I get pictures hung and pull the room all together, it's going to have a skateboarding theme!




6 comments:

  1. It looks fantastic! You totally nailed it! You mentioned you were disappointed but it's totally cool! I wonder how long it took you to finish everything. I can't wait for you to hang all the pictures.

    - FrenzInteriors.com

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    1. Thanks Emma! Time wise it was probably around 6 hours to tape and about 6 hours to paint. Like I said I spaced the taping over a few days but painting all has to be done in one day and tape removed as soon as your done!

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  2. I am loving the horizontal stripes! Interestingly, I recently painted (vertical) stripes in my daughter's room and had really good results with blue painter's tape. However, having been on the receiving end of a not-so-great stripe painting experience in the past, I OBSESSED over bleeding this time. I went over the edge the painter's tape about a million times with my fingernail to make sure it was down as tight as it could be and then I also painted over the tape with the base color to seal the lines. The result = no bleeding at all and one happy painter of stripes. I feel your pain...!

    Cheers,
    Hilary (www.lifeisbutadrink.com)

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  3. What is the navy color called and who makes it?

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  4. The trick is to put your tape down and paint over the edge of the tape with your base color, not the stripe color. Let it dry and then paint the stripe color. When you remove the tape you will have a very clean line edge.

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