New York Renovator

“

I love stripes. It is so Victorian. Stripes are neat and clean and so versatile. I once lived in an apartment that had once been a Victorian hotel (back in the late 1800s when sulfur spring spas were so prevalent in Upstate NY). Very little had been done to the place. It had beautiful oak parlor pocket doors, oak floors, exquisite door hardware, and the loveliest striped wallpaper I’ve ever seen.

I’d written about our striped walls in our Entry Hall and downstairs bathroom. Both those rooms have striped wallpaper. Doing these rooms was my first experience installing wallpaper. After these, I felt I had enough experience to tackle our Dining Room ceiling (yes, I wallpapered the ceiling), and the stairwell and upstairs hallway. The stairwell and hallway were very difficult. We had to balance on ladders on the stairs to reach up to the ceiling, and I ran out of wallpaper toward the end. Also, my cat found the wallpaper to be a nuisance, and promptly shredded it. (I have since banished the cat to the outdoors. What is it with cats shredding wallpaper and curtains?! grrrr). It cost me $450 to paper that area (including the tools). Yow.

Needless to say, I wanted stripes but not wallpaper. I don’t know where I got the idea to paint stripes, if I read about it somewhere or came up with the idea myself. It would take a little more time and effort, but I figured out a way to make the stripes neat and clean. And it would cost me a fraction of what it cost to wallpaper.

I first scrubbed my bathroom walls and wiped them dry. I then applied a mildew-resistant paint made especially for bathrooms (the special paint is for darker, moisture-laden areas). I painted the walls in a cream color because, although I wanted my stripes to stand out, I didn’t want them to assault the occupant. I painted two coats of this paint (including the ceiling).

Now for the tedious part: with a ruler and a pencil, I measured and marked 1.5 inches all around the room. I started in an inconspicuous corner, just in case my final stripe was too thick or too thin (I was to lazy to pre-measure the entire room and divide the measurement by the size stripe I wanted. I was looking to make the bathroom nicer, not perfect). My bathroom had been rewalled with sheetrock by the previous owner, so this made it much easier then drawing on bumpy and uneven plaster. My walls are not straight (remember this is an 1855 house we’re talking about), so obviously my corners are not straight. But this wasn’t a problem. The final stripes in the corner do blend into each other, but it is not noticeable.

After I had drawn my stripes, I took blue painter’s tape and covered every other stripe I’d penciled in. I pressed the edges to make sure the paint wouldn’t seep into the white stripe. This was another tedious and laborious job…. but it was better than wallpapering!

Once I was happy with my taped-on stripes, I walked away for a few hours. I wanted to get away from the project and forget about stripes. Sometimes it is best to leave your project for a while, then come back to it fresh for a fresh perspective. I did this to ensure that I liked my stripes the way they were. I wanted to be sure they weren’t crooked (well, just not too crooked- remember 1855 and all that), weren’t too thick or thin, etc.

Thankfully, I liked everything the way I had done it, so I was ready for the next step.

I got my paint (green– I like dark green) and a sea sponge. I mixed some water with the paint, just enough to make it a little loose, but not too runny. One good way to tell if your paint is too thick is when it makes a suction noise when you blot it on and there are gobs of paint left on the wall. It is too runny when the paint drips after application. It took some work for me to get the paint just right. I didn’t add much water for the paint to become loose the way I liked it.

I took my dampened sea sponge and dabbed it in the paint, then blotted the walls. I didn’t need to be too careful, since I’d taped over the white stripes to protect them from the green. The blotting was quick and easy. I did find a few drips here and there that I had to collect. I found that smaller, lighter applications of paint was more easily controllable than big blots of thick paint. The blotting effect gave the walls a beautiful look of wallpaper without the mess of paper.

After I did my walls, I let the paint dry a little and carefully removed the blue painter’s tape. Then, I painted my trim and baseboard.

Not too shabby, don’t you think? This was a savings of hundreds for us. All it cost me was the price of the paint (and I got it at the discount table at Home Depot!), the painter’s tape, and the sea sponge- total $40. Compare that with the $450 I spent on wallpaper, and I’d say it’s a great deal.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts