PAINTING HORIZONTAL STRIPES ON WALLS (DIY)

I love the look of stripes on walls.  Stripes can be horizontal or vertical, wide or narrow, soft and subtle or bright and bold.  Stripes can add something unexpected to an area making a small area appear larger, for example.  Vertical stripes can make a room look taller and horizontal stripes make a room look wider.  Stripes on walls has been around in the decorating world for some time, but it's a first for me.   Today I thought I'd share how I painted horizontal stripes in my back entry hallway.

I knew I wanted something to dress the hallway up a bit, and, at the same time, continue the flow of the colors from other rooms in our home.  These same colors are in my kitchen curtains.  You may remember them from the Parsonage in Washington.  I used them as my inspiration, focusing on the color and stripes.

I remembered a tutorial "Painting Stripes Made Easy" that I had pinned on Pinterest.  It's a great tutorial written by Kim @ Sand & Sisal.  I followed her directions for the most part, but incorporated a few things myself. She gives great details on what to do.

I thought I took a before photo of the hall, but I can only find this one with the painters tape on the walls.  The walls were painted the same green as the kitchen.

I had the prep work done in the area a few days before - filling dents and nail holes with wall spackling and painting the ceiling.

I started out with a few rolls of painter's tape of different sizes, a level, pencil, paint brush, foam roller and paint.

First - determine how many stripes and what width the stripes will be.

1. I used pieces of tape and a pencil and put them on the wall to get a visual idea of how it would look.

2. Using my level and pencil I drew my top line on the wall.

3. Align the painter's tape on the edge of the pencil marking.  I strongly recommend using painter's tape to prevent bleeding of the paint under the tape.  Because my walls are textured, I ran the edge of a credit card along the edge of the painter's tape making sure the tape was  pressed down securely.

4. Now I was ready to apply the base coat color/white.  I allowed my base color to dry over night, since I would be applying tape onto the newly painted white base and didn't want the paint to pull off the wall.  I removed the tape that had any paint on it before it dried.

5. The next morning I added more painter's tape using a small strip of painter's tape under my first piece of painter's tape for a spacer.  Placing a piece of tape every few inches gave me evenly spaced stripe.  I then applied another piece of painters tape on the bottom - creating my stripe area.  Using the varying  sizes of tape gave varying stripe size.

Note :  make sure you paint over the tape with your base color.  This will seal the tape preventing leaking of the next paint color.  If there's any paint leaking, it will be your base color/same color as the base.

6. Now for the fun part - using a foam roller I started applying my stripe color.  I worked in small sections and removed the tape before the paint had completely dried.  I did this step to prevent my newly painted paint underneath coming off when I removed my tape.  I learned this from a bad painting experience years ago and my newly painted wall paint came off in strips :(  The total process took three days, but well worth not having your work turn into a disaster.

Here are the paint colors I used in eggshell finish.

 

Putty In My Hands / Dutch Boy

Seascape / Valspar

Off the shelf white / Dutch Boy 

The brown = Toffee Bar / Dutch Boy

My next project will be to spray paint the door, since it now looks gray next to the white, but I think I'll wait with that project will have to wait until our son's wedding is over and our guest have gone home.

This project was quite time consuming with all the measuring, taping, masking and painting, but I love the end result.  It not only makes this area brighter but by using the same paint colors from other parts of our home, it brings a continuity of paint colors throughout the house.  My husband was a little doubtful when I told him I wanted to paint stripes on the wall.  He said "go ahead and try it, you can always paint over it".  But after they were up and completed, he gave them an A+ and his approval.

Here's the before and after .

For this project I used all left over paint.  The only cost was a roll of blue painter's tape and my time.  What do you think of the makeover?

                                                               Joy

SMALL BUDGET BUT BIG IMPACT {STAIRS MAKEOVER}

I've had so many projects going on in the house since we moved here in February.  I've been working hard at new projects every week, but the problem is that I don't want to share them with you until they're at least somewhat complete. I have been working so hard to meet the dead line I've set for myself.  You see, all our children and grandchildren along with other relatives are coming here in a few short weeks for our son's wedding.  I really want the house to look somewhat finished when they arrive.  Now you can understand why I haven't been posting a lot lately.  However, I have a finished project to share! Yah!!!

I really wanted to make over the stairway to our basement.  All the guest bedrooms are in the basement, so this area will be seen by everyone coming to stay at our home.   When we lived in this house previously, the entire stairway and basement was carpeted, but sometime between then and now the carpet has been removed leaving the stairway to look like this.

Not my favorite choice of style with speckled paint on the stairs (it looked like paint splashed all over the stairs and basement floor).

Brown paneling with children's stickers graced the walls.

The first thing I did was to clean all the dirt and debris from between the paneling and the stair treads. I think some of it was remnants  from the old carpet.

I then took a safety razor, putty knife and some Goo-Gone, and removed the stickers from the paneling. I also removed the broken trim and nailed down the paneling that was loose on several places.

Now everything was ready for my small budget makeover - PAINT! 

Here are the tools I used - painters tape, paint brush and roller and a very important knee pad.  The gardeners knee pad made this job a lot more comfortable since you're on your knees a lot  for this project.

Out came my primer, and I gave everything a good coat including the paneling.  I primed half a step at a time leaving a dry half for traffic up and down the stairs.

It was then time to move on to priming and painting the paneling.  Since this makeover was on a small budget, I decided to use left over paint from other rooms in the house.  I decided to paint the paneling and cinder block wall descending into the basement with the same grey paint as our living room - Valspar Portland.

Here's the before and after of the paneling.

Quite an improvement I must say.

I originally was told to buy floor paint for the stairs, but a friend told me she just used left over wall paint on her stairs, and they have held up well.  I thought I'd give it a try, and not spend more money on buying paint.

The stair treads I painted a dark brown - Toffee Bar by Dutch Boy, (also used in another area of our house) and the risers an off the shelf Dutch Boy bright white (same paint that was used on the doors and trim in the guest bedroom).  I painted every other step allowing us access to the basement using the non painted steps.  I applied two coats of brown paint to the treads and three coats of white paint to the risers.  I allowed these stairs to dry over the weekend making sure they were very dry before we had to walk on them.  I then painted the other steps the same way.

The handrail was looking a bit tattered also, so I decided to paint it as well. ( You may notice the paper cups on every other step.  These were placed as a reminder which steps were dry and could be stepped on.)

Here's the finished project - what a big improvement for such a small amount of money using left over paint!

 View from the top of the stairs.  

I washed the upper walls giving them a new fresh glow.  I also hung a drop cloth curtain above the stairs to cover up closet storage items (since there is no door for the space).  At the bottom of the stairway I used a remnant of carpet left over from the living room to cover up the chipped and pealing floor.  I also hung the seascape art that I had in our living room in the Lynden Parsonage. 

On the paneled wall, I hung a piece of Ikea artwork purchased some time ago at a thrift store.  If I remember correctly is was only $5 for and brand new still in the original packaging.

A side by side photos of the before and after.

I'm very happy with the improvement to the stairway

 for only a few dollars using what I had on hand - leftover paint.

Have a great day!

Linking to

NEW WINDOWS

Life has been very busy at the Parsonage. Even though you haven't heard from me in a week, I've gotten a lot of things accomplished.  I finished my nursing continue ed course, attended a lot of graduations, done more painting and varnishing.

The best project to have completed is the windows.  Back at the end of February and first of April the construction began on the Parsonage.  The siding and windows were removed and replaced with new.  Since then this is how our windows have looked, no casing or trim.

Every evening we hung table clothes, sheets and drop cloths over the windows for privacy.

The carpenter finished making the casing and trim for the windows and dropped them off at the house.  Now the work was up to me to keep this project moving.  The first job was to stain all the wood to match the rest of the woodwork and trim in the house.  Followed by two layers of varnish with a light sanding after each coat.

As soon as I had it all finished I called the carpenter to let him know it was ready for installation.  It only took a few days for him to come and hang everything.

This is how they look all finished.

 

It's such an improvement over the old windows.

Now comes the fun part - picking out new window treatments.  My plans are to buy some blinds but also make a few coverings as well. 

I've been getting inspirations on Pinterest. 

I love the stenciled curtains made by Rita @ Harbour Breeze Home

Source: harbourbreezehome.com via Joy on Pinterest

Source: remodelaholic.com via Joy on Pinterest

These damask stenciled curtains are lovely too from Gardener 2 Bergers.

I also love these Roman Blinds that Simply Mrs. Edwards made.

I know it may seem like not much is getting done at The Parsonage, since you have not seen many finished projects.  I'm hoping to be able to show you some of the rooms in The Parsonage soon, now that the windows are in and finished.  I can move on to finishing rooms!

Have a great day!

                                       Joy

DO YOU USE GOOGLE READER?

The announcement came back in March that Google Reader will retire as of  July 1, 2013.

 I personally am sad to see it going away. It seems like when you've learned how to use something in blogshere, they take it away or change it.  I've been doing a little research since the announcement and found this article about some options to use in place of  Google Reader.

I have decided I'll be following my favorite blogs using Bloglovin, since I've followed a few fellow bloggers there already, and I'm already a little familiar with the site.  I just went to this page and did an import from my Google Reader account to Bloglovin.

If you currently follow Thrifty Parsonage Living 

via Google reader.

I hope you'll still follow along via Bloglovin or

 you can also follow me using Linky or another feed source. 

You can find my buttons over on the right side of this page, 

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 Have you found another way to follow along?  I'd love to hear from you. 

Have a great day!

                           Joy