Stencil For The Win

The new house is coming right along!

I've completed one super fun (and painfully time consuming) project and wanted to share!  I absolutely love how it turned out!!

The layout for the main level of this house is very open; living room, eat-in kitchen, and family room all open to each other, two rooms with vaulted ceilings.  When we moved in, these three spaces were painted with FIVE different colors.  It was ridiculous.  Not only were the colors of great multitude, but they were also daaarrrrrk and dated.  And not our style.  And have I mentioned the sponge paint??

{If by some incredibly small chance the previous owners of this house ever stumble across this post.  Please know that you were very, very sweet, and the house was in great condition, and it's nothing personal.  But painting that dark green sponge paint was my priority numero uno!} 

Before, dark green sponge paint burned my retinas ~ After, nice and neutral; my retinas can rest

My first step was to cover all five different colors in the three rooms with a warm neutral tan.  It's called Faded Burlap by Valspar.  We used Valspar Signature (which is a paint/primer in one) in an eggshell finish.  I was prepared to use three coats to cover all of these dark tones.  But two good coats totally did the trick!  I was quite impressed with this paint!

All in all, I personally spent about 24 hours across four or so days painting.  Plus, on the first day, my sister, brother-in-law, and dear friend Jess came over in their painting clothes and logged hours on ladders and on their hands and knees helping out.

  You can see one of the other colors in the after picture above, it was a purple/grey/mauve type of color.  Yowza.  

My next step in making this space more personal, and in bringing some life into my tan walls, was a stencil.  Stencils have a bad reputation of looking dated, or sloppy.  But I was determined to do something that had personality, kept the space neutral, and wasn't as permanent as wallpaper.

I read great reviews about Cutting Edge Stencils and loved their Charlotte Allover pattern.  I liked how it looked like lace and was delicate, but not overly feminine.

Image from www.cuttingedgestencils.com
I did use a similar color palette, but the above would be a white wall with tan paint for the stencil, which is the opposite of my wall. 

I woke up early on a Saturday, and got started.  I told Kain that I would be finished in a few hours.  The wall I was covering is not very big and the stencil covers about 2x2 feet!  I grossly miscalculated how much time this would take.  I started at 9:00 am, stopped for about a 30 minute lunch,  stopped at 3ish to get ready for dinner out, restarted at 9:00 pm, and didn't finish until almost 1!!! I think it looks great, but I'll know next time to plan for an entire day.

The Cutting Edge website has great tutorials, and they're what I used so I will spare you step-by-step instructions and will instead just give you some pointers I picked up.  I started in the center of the wall and would move from the left of my original to the right, back and forth, back and forth, filling in on either side.  I found that this allowed the previous stencil to dry enough that the paint wasn't smudging or pulling off when I placed the stencil over it.  Also, you can't hear this enough -- use a small foam roller and way way way less paint then you think you should.  It's the key to a crisp line.  Most of the stencils required three or four coats of paint.  It would have been faster to use a heavy coat of paint, but then it would drip under the stencil and make a total mess.

I only speak with such certainty about that because I learned the hard way.  My first stencil was a disaster.  I ended up repainting it the base color and stenciling again. Fortunately, because the Charlotte is a repeating pattern, that worked out just fine.

Here's an in progress pic.  I wish I had taken more.

You can see that I held the stencil up with some painters tape - I also taped off the baseboard, trim at the top of the wall, and the corners.  I didn't use tape when I painted the Faded Burlap, but when you are using the stencil on the edges, you end up smooshing (technical term) a little brush into the corners and it gets a little messy. 

The stencil color is Falling Snow by Behr.  I had planned on using Crisp Linen by Valspar because it's the recommended trim color on the back of the Faded Burlap paint chip, but I found myself at Home Depot and just picked out a complimentary color instead.  I wanted white, not a color, to keep the wall neutral. And seriously, until you start picking out white paint you have no idea how many shades of white exist in the paint world!!

Here she is all finished!

It's so fun in person!! The truth is, it's not perfect and I love that!  There are some messy spots, and some areas where I should have used another coat of paint, but it adds to the "hand-painted charm" which is what I was hoping for!

How about you? Any projects taking up your entire Saturday??