Monday, October 24, 2011

Argyle accomplished!

It's done! The argyle wall is done!

Honestly, I'm still in a state of shock that I was able to finish it as quickly as I did. I started painting that wall white 3 weeks ago, and from there just worked on the wall off and on. Totally worth it:


Sorry, for the darkish photo. I finished all the touch-ups late last night – so this room was kind of on the dark side. I plan on taking new photos, once phase 2 of the wall is complete (but more on that later).

Here's how we made argyle happen.

1. Paint your wall your base color – this would be the color used the most. For the sack of your sanity, also have this color be the lightest color you're using.

2. Figure out how many diamonds you want (I wanted mine big, so I picked 5x8) and then make a grid. This goes super fast if you have one of those long levels. Brent measured/drew everything out in 5 minutes.

3. Now it's time to make some diamonds! Brent measured the size of one of the rectangles, and then divided the width and height in half. With those measurements he made a "mini rectangle template" on a sheet of computer paper, which was the fourth of the size of the ones on the wall. With that template, he was able to mark the halfway point in each rectangle (aka: where the diamond points go).

4. Start taping for color #2 (color #1 is your base color).

5. Paint color #2.

6. Peel tape and start taping for color #3.

7. Paint color #3.

8. Now it's time for some dashed line "fun." This was the part of the project I was dreading, but Brent and I found a way to cheat the system and make this task go by fast. Brent and I had some 6-foot edging for our closet project that was .75" in width. So, using the pencil intersections in the white diamonds as our guides – Brent held the piece of wood to the wall, while I taped everything off. For the length or each dashed line, I actually just used the length of a paint chip, that way I wouldn't have to measure anything.

9. Do touch-ups and then you're done!

I'm so happy with how it turned out. I'm especially happy that it's done, and I can move on to other projects like the nursery closet and turning the "door" on the argyle wall into a feature instead of an eyesore.

8 comments:

  1. Very nice design. And it provides me new ideas for decorating my new house.

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  2. I'm not particularly an argyle fan, but I love this!

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  3. It looks great! Still sounds like a ton of work, but it definitely looks like it paid off.

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  4. Ooooh, I love it. Baby Audrey is going to have a fantastic nursery!

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  5. You can use some heart shapes. That would look even more interesting

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