I decided it was time to change Grant's room from his baby nursery to an updated boys room. His room was actually the first room we painted in our house. We painted it the first week we lived here. Plus I wanted to liven it up a bit. All I knew was that I wanted it to coordinate with his new quilt and roman shades.
I had been looking at wall papers for several months and actually found a couple of really cute ones. Unfortunately Grant does not really have a tendency to favor any particular subjects (like cars or trains) right now so I needed something generic but with good colors. Every time I felt like I had finally settled on something the next week I felt it was either to young for him or to old. This led me to create my own stripe design that I custom matched the colors to his quilt and bed.
Here are Grant and James in his new bed with the quilt I wanted to coordinate too.
So I finally decided to take the plunge and paint Grant's room.
For everyone out there who has done any painting trying to do a straight line, such as in between the wall color and ceiling color, is a tedious and often imperfect job. So after a few hours of sifting through the internet I found a possible solution for painting a perfect line. It is called Clear Acrylic Gel Medium. When you use this magically stuff along with regular paint tape you get AMAZING results. We did have a bit of trouble finding this stuff though. I dragged Amber to all the paint shops in town and they had no idea what I was asking about. Finally I went into our little art store and there it was. It was only 8 bucks for the bottle which was more than enough to do our whole job and still have some leftover.
Here is an example of with and without using the acrylic medium. The top line is what you normally get when you paint along a taped edge. The bottom line is where we painted a thin layer of acrylic gel medium layer along the edge of the tape. It effectively fills up any air pockets so when you go over it with your paint color WHALA a nice crisp line!
We could not believe how well it worked! So after many many different iterations of taping and painting and retaping as shown below...
the red stripe
Taking a break while waiting for the paint to dry...
Navy stripes
...the final product a happy little boys room.
I had been looking at wall papers for several months and actually found a couple of really cute ones. Unfortunately Grant does not really have a tendency to favor any particular subjects (like cars or trains) right now so I needed something generic but with good colors. Every time I felt like I had finally settled on something the next week I felt it was either to young for him or to old. This led me to create my own stripe design that I custom matched the colors to his quilt and bed.
Here are Grant and James in his new bed with the quilt I wanted to coordinate too.
So I finally decided to take the plunge and paint Grant's room.For everyone out there who has done any painting trying to do a straight line, such as in between the wall color and ceiling color, is a tedious and often imperfect job. So after a few hours of sifting through the internet I found a possible solution for painting a perfect line. It is called Clear Acrylic Gel Medium. When you use this magically stuff along with regular paint tape you get AMAZING results. We did have a bit of trouble finding this stuff though. I dragged Amber to all the paint shops in town and they had no idea what I was asking about. Finally I went into our little art store and there it was. It was only 8 bucks for the bottle which was more than enough to do our whole job and still have some leftover.
Here is an example of with and without using the acrylic medium. The top line is what you normally get when you paint along a taped edge. The bottom line is where we painted a thin layer of acrylic gel medium layer along the edge of the tape. It effectively fills up any air pockets so when you go over it with your paint color WHALA a nice crisp line!
We could not believe how well it worked! So after many many different iterations of taping and painting and retaping as shown below...
the red stripe
Taking a break while waiting for the paint to dry...
Navy stripes
...the final product a happy little boys room.
Posts
That looks great Holley! Now if only this had been posted BEFORE I painted my house. :)
ReplyDeletebeautiful Holley! I just did stripes in Ethan's room too...this post could have saved me a couple hours!!
ReplyDeleteSo exciting and in just over a week Grant will be able to show me his newly painted room. Yeah!
ReplyDeleteYou did a fantastic job. I love the stripes! Thanks for the "tip". With all our moving and painting it will come in handy for sure! Can't wait to see it in person this spring.
ReplyDeleteGreat job Holley! I loved the colors and the stripes! You should be very proud of yourself. Did you have any offers to help from Grant? Big difference using the gel.
ReplyDeleteAmazing, it looks like an ad for a Pottery Barn Kids Room! Awesome job! Aunt Lauren
ReplyDeleteThat really looks great. I was thinking the same thing about it being a Pottery Barn room. Maybe you should send them a picture and they could use it in their catalog...
ReplyDelete