Wall Striping, Slow and Subtle Wins the Race

First off, I gotta make a confession. I always have to spell check because I am the worst at spelling and using words in the wrong context! Yes, this post first read, "Wall STRIPPING, Slow and Steady Wins the Race," Yikes! That kind of intro is for another type of blog so I'll stick to my specialty on this one and tell you about striping only! I am sure you are relieved...

I have been MIA for the last few weeks and Erin has been blowing it up on the blog with some great posts! I've been holed up in a baby nursery... I know, it sounds dangerous and mentally exhausting but I have enjoyed decorating in this quiet serene nursery and am ready to turn it over to the parents in time for all the commotion:)! If you follow us on Facebook and Instagram, which I hope you do, I will be teasing you with a few sneak peeks early next week! Baby T will enter the world tomorrow and then I won't feel like I have to tip toe around with this secret all bottled up! 

In the meantime, I am sharing with you another project in the same household since that is where I have been spending my quality time. The big bother of this little baby X, also has a cool room! I had no part in decorating this cute little vintage airplane room but she asked me to come up with wall color and a fun painted wall treatment as well as a color to paint the turquoise dresser that used to be in the nursery. So I will show it off then tell you why I am in love with the subtle combination of neutral colors and mixing unexpected neutrals like brown and gray in a striped look!

The vintage airplane inspired bedding and decor has lots of fun vibrant boy colors! Oftentimes when it comes to making decor and paint color work together you need to let one win! However that doesn't mean that just because you let the colors in your decor stand out and pick more subtle colors for your walls that they can't be presented in a fun way! In this instance I knew I wanted to use gray to bring out the background color of the airplane shams and coverlet. The room has lots of rustic brown wood tones so I picked brown as the other neutral in a soft shade as to not overpower the gray. The third color is off white. White is always a color in my book but it also helps to define the other two colors and let them stand on their own without getting muddy in tone. Does this make sense?! I didn't think so... let's look at more pictures:) 

The dresser was a tealish color and was great for a nursery but it was time to grow up. But lets face it, that doesn't mean we don't need color! I love this shade of green (Courtyard, Benjamin Moore) picked for her dresser! It's not emerald green and it's not lime green but its somewhere magically in between! It turned out awesome, would you agree? I love the color with the wall stripes and I think its perfectly "boy". 

Now for the technical side of things! There are many ways to stripe a wall... horizontal, vertical, all the same width or varying widths etc. For her room I chose vertical stripes because her ceilings are not that high and the room is on the smaller side. I think the busier you get with your variation you want to make sure your stripes are not making the ceilings seem even lower. They started out painting the room the gray color (Agreeable Gray, Sherwin Williams) all over. We wanted the gray portion to end up around 12 inches in width, the brown to be 6 inches and the white to be 3 inches wide. The brown (Huntington Beige made 50% lighter, Benjamin Moore) was the next stripe to be made followed by the white (Alabaster White, Sherwin Williams). The striping process can be done by taping off the stripe area to keep your lines even or if you have a steady hand the lines can be drawn in with a laser level and straight edge to pencil in your lines. Either way expect to have to touch up and wait several hours between striping if you use tape as it is best to keep the tape in place until the paint is fully dry. I love the look of the varied widths of the striping as it really turns out to look more like wallpaper at much less cost if you do it yourself or have a reasonable painter with a steady hand:) 

So now that you have kid's rooms on the brain, I can't wait to reveal to you the little secret room sitting right next to this room! It's just waiting over there for a baby to come home to it on Monday! And of course the parents who will get two surprises in one great weekend! 

Congrats to Team T and good luck to them as they switch up the game from man-to-man defense to full court press! May you be strong although outnumbered forever more, forever more:)! 

And most important we get our old friends back to throw back some wine with! 

Cheers! 
{Laura}