Saturday, August 13, 2011

Chevron - not just a place you get gas!

My friend Amy called me the other day and said she had decided to paint a chevron pattern on one wall of her daughters bedroom, and asked would I help.  I said, sure, sounds like fun!  I arrived at Amy's house at 9 a.m. Friday morning ready to paint!  Coincidentally we had on matching outfits - pink shirts and jean shorts!  I took it as a good sign that we would work in sync all day.  We pretty much did too.  Turns out we are both mathmatically challenged.  Believe it or not, there is a ton of measuring and dividing to do when mapping out a chevron pattern.  We found an article on the internet that made it sound "easy breezy", but these people were clearly rocket scientists! 

After measuring the width and height of the wall and dividing them by three (don't ask me why we picked three, I guess that odd number rule of decorating thing. Whatever, It seemed right at the time.) we started measuring out from the center and placing dots along the wall.  The rocket scientists said all we'd have to do is get our blue painters tape and start connecting the dots to make the zig-zags.  Why what could be easier than that I said!  It should have been easy, but it was not.  Nothing was turning out right.  We ended up ripping off all the tape and starting over. 

The rocket scientists also didn't remind us about the whole taping on the inside of the stripe on one row and on the outside on the other.  Makes perfect sense now, but when you are standing on a cabinet, nose to nose with the wall and looking up at the stripes it was hard to tell.  Finally we made a paper template and basically drew the pattern on the wall and then added the tape. 

We used a magic eraser sponge to get off any pencil marks and then we started painting.  The painting was the easy part. 

We finished the wall at 10 p.m. -  ELEVEN HOURS after we started, but look how cool it turned out! 

It's not perfect.  The paint seeped under the tape in some spots and there is one spot where we taped wrong, but both of those problems are easy fixes.  The important thing is that Amy's teenage daughter loves it.  That is totally worth the crick in my neck I woke up with today!

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4 comments:

  1. Looks very cool. Perfect is never cool in my book...probably because none of my projects are ever perfect. Thanks for sharing.

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  2. What a great job....my 12 year old would love it too. So nice to help a friend out too. Visiting from Debbie's Newbie Party.....have a great week.

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  3. Looks great! What a fun way to accent that wall! Visiting from Savvy Southern Style

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