Does anyone actually know the lyrics to that song?
I'm not blue at all, but there's now a blue room in my house, featuring a special paint treatment! I grew up in a room with pale, pastel-y, powdery light blue walls, so in my adult life, I've tended to avoid the lighter blues, preferring richer, darker and more velvet-y blues. For our home office, Oliver and I chose a rich, but much lighter "Labrador Blue" from Benjamin Moore. It's a lovely color.
But, I couldn't just leave it at that, could I? No siree, I needed to make it more complicated. I wanted to paint clear coat stripes over the blue to create a monochromatic pattern. All this sounds like a great idea until you have to get to it. As you know, we've painted stripes before (ifyou haven't already, read about it here and here), and once it's all done and it looks great, you forget how annoying it was to get there. The same is true for this round of stripes, but I'm glad we're done with taping and painting stripes!
We bought 3M Edge Lock (delicate painter's tape) in bulk this time, because that stuff is not cheap, but it's the best. Buying it in bulk makes it a little more affordable, and we actually used it all.
Because we were painting clear lines this time, we couldn't use pencil markings to guide us, so we had to come up with another solution. Oliver found the niftiest Air Grip Compact Laser Level that sticks to the wall.
It makes a buzzing sound because it's suctioned to the wall by a vacuum, but it's totally worth the noise. Find a flat wall surface – the suction doesn't work if the wall is too bumpy. And if you have to rest the little gadget half on tape and half on wall, like we did at times, someone should hold it in place, as it struggles to suction to two materials at once. We slapped it on the wall, then taped our lines as it buzzed away:
Here she is, all taped off:
For the stripes, we used Minwax Polycryclic in clear gloss, which needed two hours to dry between coats. During breaks, we sat outside on the deck (!!!), where it was sunny and bright, and where we caught some lovely sunsets:
But don't think we were unproductive the whole time! On breaks, we also managed to hang my grandmother's beautiful mirror in the dining area:
Like the bare bulb? This is a work in progress, friends
We installed our chrome and glass shelving doo-hickey to a wall in the living room, unpacked some milk glass and unfurled a rug:
We still have the garbage bag roman shades...one thing at a time...
And we hung our headboard:
We have a lot of wall space to fill up, huh? Not to worry, we have a lot of art.
The directions on the polycrylic container recommend painting a coat, letting it dry for at least two hours, then sanding it lightly with 220 grit sand paper. But we learned the hard way that omitting the sanding part is appropriate here. I'm sure it's right to sand between coats when refinishing furniture or doing other projects, but in our case, the sand paper took off some blue paint, so we had to retouch one area before going over it with clear coat. Luckily, the area we messed up was behind the door, so it's less visible. I always try to test new products in inconspicuous places, both in our DIY projects, and when I'm working with contractors for professional projects. Anyway, we decided to just paint clear coat layers over un-sanded layers. Not having to sand certainly made the job go quicker, but it was still pretty tedious. Howevah, it looks FABULOUS (if I do say so myself)!
Now, we just need some cute desks (we left the one we built attached to the wall in our last apartment) and a pull out sofa to accommodate overnight guests!
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