Project 21: Nursery Accent wall

A nursery with three grey walls may seem a little dreary...but not when the fourth wall is super cheerful! Yes, I've finished the accent wall in the nursery. And I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out:

What do you think? I think it has taken this room from a plain old bedroom to something a lot more like the dream nursery I've had in mind.

So, how did I do this? Not going to lie, it was time intensive; but I think the outcome was SO worth it.

Let's start with the 'before'. The room started out with three grey walls and one white wall:

Step 1: Gathering Supplies

To create the stripes I headed over to Lowes for paint and tape. They sell little jars of 'sample' paint for $3 each. The have some suggested colors on display, but if you ask they can mix you any color you want. So, I picked out 7 paint swatches and had them made. I tried to pick bright but not neon colors. I wanted the 7 to all be of similar values, so that the colors would look like they belonged together. Here's what I ended up with:

I also got some Frog Tape. What is Frog Tape? It's like painters' tape but more expensive... heh-heh. What I mean to say is that it's like painters' tape, only it sticks to the wall better and does a better job of creating a nice crisp line. You don't need it for simpler jobs like taping off the baseboards to paint a room, but if you're doing a design on a wall, this is the stuff to use.

Step 2: Taping off the stripes
This was tricky. I'm painting a bright white wall, which means any errors are going to be VERY visible. If I was working on a darker surface I probably would have used a pencil to draw on the lines, and then ran the tape down the pencil line. However, on a white wall the pencil is very visible and even if I just painted over it, it would probably show through on the lighter colors. So, instead I grabbed my mini me's help (aka told my sister she was being drafted) and together we came up with a solution. I made one tiny pencil mark where the strip should be and then lined up a level on that mark, making sure it was perfectly perpendicular to the floor. Then I had my sister hold the level while I ran the tap down the side of the level. When I got to the end, she held the tape and I re-positioned the level. Then she took the level again and I ran the tape two more feet. Can you see why I called this time intensive? It took FOREVER. Here are some pictures to help you understand what I described:

After I was done my wonderful husband mentioned that his dad has a laser level we could have borrowed and it would have been much easier... so if you want to put stripes on your wall borrow a laser level. (And if your wife is spending hours doing it the hard way mention the laser level). ;)

My stripes are 1" wide each and 7" apart. How did I come up with these measurements?  I knew I wanted the stripes only an inch wide so they would look like pin stripes (instead of fatter, circus-like stripes). I was going to place them 6" apart but when I started measuring my wall, 7" just seemed right. Not really a lot of science behind it, only aesthetic. Anyway, this is what the wall looked like when half the stripes were taped:

Step 3: Paint the stripes
This step is pretty simple, you paint between the lines. But I will give you some tips. Even though you probably did a great job of taping everything, right before you paint a stripe run your fingers down the edges of the tape that the paint will touch. This is to ensure that you're eliminating little gaps that paint could seep through. No matter what, it won't be perfect, but this will help.

Then you apply the paint, brushing in the direction of the tape. Again, we're trying to avoid paint being pushed under the tape. Here's LJ helping out:

It took 3 coats of each color before the stripes were completely solid (so no white parts were peeking through). Also, I didn't fully finish step 2 before starting step 3. I kind of taped a few stripes and then got excited and painted them, then taped a few more and so on. Here's a 'during' picture:

Step 4: Remove the tape
As tempting as it is to remove the tape as soon as you finish your last coat, you should really wait until the paint is completely dried and has some time to cure. You don't want the paint to bond to the edge of the tape and then the paint come off the wall when you try to take the tape off. No fun. So after the paint has had a night to dry, remove the tape by pulling parallel to the stripe.

Step 5: Touch up
Unless you are God's gift to accent walls, you're bound to have a couple of places where the paint bleeds through the tape and instead of a nice crisp line you end up with a jagged blob like this:

Like I said before, the frog tape will help, but it's not perfect. Anyway, to cover these bleed-throughs you have to use a small paint brush (like one used for painting artwork, not walls) and run a bead of your original wall color (in this case, white) over them. This is another part of the project that takes FOREVER. But the good news is that it makes the final product look SO GOOD.

I spent over an hour touching up the walls the first time around. I went back a few days later to do a second coat and discovered most places didn't need it. Only the areas that had had a lot of paint bleed through needed a second coat.

Step 6: Sit back and look at your handy work.
I have to be honest, I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. I've had some friends over and almost all of them are shocked by how straight/clean the lines are. Everyone walks up to the wall and looks at them really close. So here's a close up for you:

So let's see that before and after again, shall we?

I'm not only aesthetically pleased with how this turned out, but I'm also excited about our future child using the stripes to learn their colors. I can just see us pointing to a stripe and asking "what color is this one?" :)


Oh! And I almost forgot to share my great idea! While painting the stripes on the wall, I also took an old jewelry box (the ones cheap jewelry comes in) and painted stripes on the inside of the lid. This is so I can take samples of the colors I used everywhere I go. That way if I see something that I might want to buy for the nursery I can just pull out the jewelry box and see if the colors match. Also, when I eventually pick out fabric for the curtains I'll be able to keep a swatch of fabric in the box as well. It will my my little portable nursery sample set. 

Cost: 7 paint samples at $3 each = $21 plus 2 packages of frog tape that were $8 each so all together it was $37 (not including all the painting supplies and level I already owned)

Time: Total it was about 2 weekends of work. But this was mostly because I had to wait for coats to dry. 

Difficulty: Moderate. I would say that it's easier than it looks, but not for a novice. If you've never painted a wall before you may want to get a friends help before tackling a project like this. That said, its pretty cheap and you can always paint over mistakes!