A while back I announced my undying love for stripes. I just couldn’t get them out of my head! I had to have my own!

This past weekend I set out to do just that! One way or another we were going to have stripes…

Only one problem though: I’m not the best paint taper ever… no matter what I do or how hard I try, the paint bleeds underneath the tape leaving horrid blotches everywhere. And yes, I use the good painters tape.

Needless to say, I was worried that we would go to all that work and have a blotchy wall that would need a ton of touching up or repainted. So, I begged my very busy farming husband to tape the walls for me. He agreed, somewhat grudgingly. 🙂 But they turned out perfect!

Here’s what we did:

– First, I measured the wall to determine the stripe width. For example: Our wall is 104 inches tall. I originally planned on doing 10 inch stripes, but after I measured I found that I would have a much larger stripe on the bottom. I knew that it would drive me crazy, as well as Anthony, so I kept calculating until I found an even number.

We ended up with 8 inch stripes, since it went into 104 inches evenly. 104″ / 8= 13.

– Next, I began marking the walls. With a tape measure and pencil I started at the ceiling and measured down 8 inches all the way around our entry way. After the entire wall was marked with the first 8 inches down, I measured down  from my new mark another 8 inches. I did the same thing until I reached the bottom of the wall. Make sense?

-After marking the wall, it was time to level and tape. Rather than using a pencil and connecting all my marks, we used the level to make sure my marks were level. From there we taped over our marks, checking to make sure it was level as we went along. This step is a little long, but completely important!

-While my hubby was busy taping lines, I took my Ikea rewards card (it was the first card I grabbed from my wallet) and went to town on the tape. My goal was to prevent any paint bleeding. With the card, I went over every single tape line, making sure the tape was stuck to the wall and inside the texture grooves as well.

-After all the walls were taped off and I was finished running the card over everything, I took the main color of our wall and went over the tape in all of the striped areas. I wanted to be sure and extra sure that the paint wouldn’t bleed under the tape. By painting over the tape in the areas that we wanted to have stripes, I knew that the main wall color would get into any nooks and crevices and that it would also seal the tape. After I was done, I waited for the base color to dry.

-Once the base coat was dry, I started painted the stripes. It took three coats to get the right coverage. I was hustlin’! The key is to pull the tape off when the last coat is still wet! Right after I finished with the last coat, we were pulling the tape off.

I can’t even describe my moment of pure glee when we pulled the tape back to revel perfectly crisp lines!

-Finally, step back and ENJOY your results!

I am completely IN LOVE with our stripes. They have COMPLETELY changed the look and feel of our entryway. For real. It’s a defined space now, rather than an extension of our living room.

Here’s our before and after:

Major love!

As is true with many home projects, this has caused a ripple effect and I have a ton of ideas and projects for our entry way. There’s certainly more to come!

Painting these stripes has easily become one of my favorite DIY projects to date! Love that!

Big smiles! And happy Friday to you!