Ikat Stencilled Wall

So I had just stencilled our foyer wall a few months ago. I made a homemade trellis stencil and used my Folk Art craft paint in the color champagne. It gave the wall a nice shimmer, making it look silver in some lights and gold in others. The background paint is Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter. I loved the way my stencilled wall turned out, but it needed more punch!

Then I saw this stencilled wall on this blog http://www.ourfifthhouse.com/p/house-tour.html:

I needed to have it, too!!!! She had bought her stencil, but I resolved to go the cheap route! Yay for cheap! I wanted to just make a homemade one. This was ALSO so I could get started right away! Yay for instant gratification!!

So I found this blog http://bread-n-chocolate.blogspot.com/2011/07/ikat-and-so-can-you.html, and she showed how she made her homemade ikat stencil. Woo-hoo! Here's her stencil:

So I determined to do the same thing: get a piece of 8 1/2" x 11" paper and fold in half and try to freehand copy her design as best as I could:

I used my trusty Fiskars sharp scissors to cut this. The sharp points were ideal for cutting out the hard-to-reach places. Then I traced my cut-out onto a piece of cardboard:

I then cut out the cardboard. This is sturdier to use for a stencil than a flimsy piece of paper.

Then I proceeded to paint the top of the wall (I was going to do chair rail and moulding on the bottom like the inspiration pic). I used ACE Royal paint in High Hiding White (eggshell finish). I didn't prime before. It took me three coats to cover the old paint. (I left a command hook in the middle and didn't paint under it since I'm just going to hang my painting back over it anyway.)

Then I positioned my stencil at the top middle of the wall (this is important so the wall will look symmetrical) and filled in with my round sponge brush and Liquitex Mars Black paint. This is just what I had on hand. Then I proceeded to finish the first row. Then I did row two (scattering the spacing so they weren't directly under each other), and so on and so forth.

Hubby's reaction? "It looks like a transformer autobot." He's kind of right:

Progress is made on the wall:

The bottom half of the wall painted with primer (Kilz):

Then we installed a chair rail and painted one coat of semi-gloss paint on the bottom part of the wall:

Then I did another coat of semi-gloss paint (ACE Royal High Hiding White):

Then we installed picture frame moulding. I spaced 3" from each edge. I still have to caulk and paint one more coat of semi-gloss on the bottom.

Here it is all done:

Then I added back in the deco foyer table:

Hubby doesn't like that the moulding is covered up now. Maybe this table will see a little move in its future?

Staircase Moulding Project

When we moved in our house, our stairway looked like this:

Boring, very boring. I wanted to fill up this space. So I decided on moulding! Moulding,  the answer to all problems. It also has a very high ceiling. It needed some interest to break it up. Here is an idea of how high it is:

Now I, foolish me, decided to paint this whole stairway myself awhile ago. I did not use any type of ladder, and pulled this off by attaching trim pads to extension poles, etc. It was a stressful day, to say the least. Here is a pic of what I had to contend with:

Yeah, my family was afraid I was going to kill myself in the process. One of them suggested I use a pogo stick! Haha!! But here it was when I was done painting:

It turned out pretty well. The paint is Pismo Dunes by Benjamin Moore. It has a definite pink undertone, but it is a neutral brown color. This worked out for me since I love the color pink. After I painted this, I wanted picture frame moulding and a chair rail, and I wanted to do the outside of the picture frames in a contrasting paint color. We did this before I had a blog, so my husband masterminded this whole thing and had to calculate the angles since it's not a typical 45 degree miter cut since it's on a stairway. We determined we wanted 6 picture frame boxes at 2" apart (2" from bottom, from top, and in between). I painted the boxes out beforehand so my husband knew what size I wanted. The paint color that's contrasting is Manchester Tan by Benjamin Moore. Here is the progress on the faux wainscoting:

Looks great, right? Hubby also installed a little granite shelf at the bottom of the stairs. This used to just angle up to the wall, but he built it out and made a shelf.

I have a disease, people, and that is changing things up. So after living with that for over a year, I decided to paint everything below the chair rail in a semi-gloss white. I think the white adds nice contrast to the brown paint. Here's the paint I used (Sherwin Williams Extra White Semi-Gloss) with my trusty 2" angled paint brush from ACE Hardware and a pic of how hard it was to cover that old paint. No, I did not use a primer first, which is probably not wise. It took me 4 coats on the lighter color and 5 coats on the darker to cover the old paint.

Here it is all pretty and done!

(Ignore the family-friendly gate.) I bought some cheap frames from Walmart and printed some photos in black and white and hung those. I know it looked nice before with the contrasting paint, but I like this look, too. I think the stairway has nice visual interest now.

So next up: tear out the carpet on the stairs and install treads and risers. That will be a job, my friends!!