Happy New Year! I took a holiday, family-filled hiatus from the blog, but not from the house projects. A few weeks ago I undertook a mini-painting project that I had been wanting to do for, well, years. Stenciling. No, not the gross borders at the top of a room, but a proper, elegant, wallpaper inspired looking stencil. You know, to class up the joint. The master bedroom to be specific.
I had been coveting a richer, more luxurious look for our bedroom (to go with our stunning bathroom) and found a heap of stencils available on etsy. With consultation (read: approval) from Jeff, I finally found THE one. So I got to work. We had only days before we had to move our bed back into the room (we had guests coming for Thanksgiving) so I had no time to waste. Custom mixing (I know, I said I wouldn’t do it again, but this one is ok, you’ll see!) the Frappe Aura paint with a silver metallic glaze I arrived at a muted, silvery-cream color to go atop the rest of the wall color from Benjamin Moore. Now, the instructions on the glaze did not recommend mixing paint into the glaze. But I did it anyway. In the future, I would heed their recommendation and just have the glaze tinted to the color I’m looking for (they had a color that was close, but I had already bought the Frappe wall color, and was determined to make it work). Luckily, the look I was after, and the nature of the stencil made this mini-mistake very forgivable. In fact, you might call it a happy accident.
After two days, minimal cleanup, and the luck of having the perfect sized stencil (the stencil made an even 7 columns of pattern, so I didn’t have to cut it) we had an elegant feature wall to put our bed up against. Of course, though we’ve moved our furniture back into the room, the design isn’t done. I have ideas for changing the bed, for adding curtains in a similar tone to the wall color, painting out some of the furniture, and changing out the ceiling light (the so-called boob light just isn’t doing it for me). For now, though, the painting is done. Well, except for the master closet that we just had added. Still have to do that. Better get back to work.
* Lyrics for today’s post title from Arcade Fire’s Sprawl II from their latest album, The Suburbs.
Some photos of my progress. Enjoy!
