Living room stripes

We aren't taupe. Well, I'm sure my husband would love to be, but he also loves when I take him out of his comfort zone. We got married on the beach in front of 10 people. We bought an older home with character instead of an '80s style pre-fab. Ipso facto, we aren't taupe.

Living room stripes
Originally uploaded by Lang_Ston

So our taupe needed a little...pizazz. Tone-on-tone stripes. My mother-in-law was pushing me pretty hard to do a faux finish somewhere in the house [she's a studied proficient at wall fauxs]. However, I still didn't know exactly how our decorating would look and our tastes can run pretty divergent. But tone-on-tone stripes I really -- REALLY -- dig.

Sure, it's a lot of work for a subtle effect, but every time I look at them I have a smug satisfaction that what we accomplished was pretty great.

It took an entire evening and the next morning to get that sucker taped off. We only striped two walls, a compromise between what my husband wanted [one] and what I wanted [all four], but it ended up being the perfect amount. Using our laser level, we taped off the horizontal stripes: two 3", two 12", and one 6" in the middle. The exterior back wall was so cold, though, that the painters tape wouldn't stay up.

Stripes are drying
Originally uploaded by Lang_Ston

That morning, we took our high-gloss rollers to the flat eggshell paint. In hindsight [after watching loads of HGTV], we should have sealed the tape by painting the eggshell over the seams before we started the high-gloss, but we managed without. Paint. Start to pull the tape so the new paint doesn't get stuck and dry underneath. He followed behind me with a spackle trowel covered in a damp cloth, making sure the vertical drips were wiped up in a timely fashion, maintaining the integrity of our horizontal lines.

Back wall of the living room
Originally uploaded by Lang_Ston

Once it dried, we could barely see the difference when looking at it head-on. But at an angle, with the light shining in the right direction, our stripes look marvelous. The tape wasn't perfectly straight down the lines. The drips caused a bit of trouble on the back end of the project. But now that it's dry, you can't notice the problems that plagued us during the process.

This picture is the back wall stripes. They continue on the inside wall. That's my parents' old couch [more on that soon], and one of our first big purchases: Sloane leaning bookshelves from Crate + Barrel.

The Process: Living Room

Primer.

That was the big question for the living room, whether to use primer. What about paint with primer in it? Or just painting two coats might achieve the same final product?



We chose to prime. It was necessary to cover that blasted PenDOT orange.

Wall color selection for the living room was difficult, not because we are indecisive [we are], but because we didn't have the furnishings for the room decided. Our couch was a hand-me-down from my parents' house and had seen a decade and a half of tough love: tweeners jumping all over it, teenagers abusing it, snags, cuts, cigarette burns. It wasn't even my parents' dream couch to begin with. We wanted to start afresh.

Living room in process
Originally uploaded by Lang_Ston

But, financially, it was impossible -- and would have been downright irresponsible -- to replace the couch when we moved. So we needed to paint the living room a color that would transition from old couch to new couch, would complement but not overpower either of those choices. We went beige. Literally, taupe. The color name was "comfortable," and I'm sure it was named by a man since usually beige is all the color men are comfortable with.