A tale of 2 walls

Now that the basement is well under way, we decided to start paying some attention to my soon-to-be home office/art studio. The biggest decision on my plate was what color to paint it, rrrrrrrr, what col-ors to paint it. I can't have a studio where I need to be creative, painted in just one color... oh no! I needed a game plan.

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you Exhibit A and Exhibit B.

Not much to look at now but what these walls didn't know was that I had big plans for them.

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Anyone that knows me knows that I like a nice Chevron. A zig zag, a herringbone, a squiggly-do. So I decided I'd do just that. The idea was born and I was going to paint a chevron pattern up wall B. Not just any chevron but a multicolored, multi zagging chevron.

I checked the local big box stores and paint stores for different thicknesses of painters tape. I might be crazy to try to do this wall but I wasn't crazy enough to try to paint straight lines by hand! Well no one seemed to have what I wanted so crazy me I started to research online and found a "tape candy store" and ordered pretty much every thickness from an 1/8" to 3/4" in varying tackinesses, tackinesses? Ok, its a word...

Now I have the tape so now what? I did what I always do, I mocked up an idea on my Mac. 

I came up with the design and started playing with the colors. Once I figured that out, then it was time to actually find the paint colors. 

In between all this chevron planning I decided to paint other walls of my office a soft pale teal aqua color and from there I decided wall A would be a glossy chocolate brown (we'll get back to that wall in a second) so I figured I would start the base of wall B also in the chocolate brown and then just pick colors I liked individually. These were the winners.

Now, I know what you are thinking. You have painted in the past and no matter what you do your paint always bleeds off and goes underneath the painters tape. Well I have a tip for you that may blow your mind and you will never have bleed-thru again!

Ok, after that coat dries, now its time for the fun part... Painting in the lines.

Then I took left over dark teal and painted the angled wall next to the Chevron. This wall will be part of a bigger project down the road. 

Tada! Done with wall B. Now back to wall A!

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Ok, wall A, remember how I told you above I painted it a glossy dark brown? It was all because I found a 1960's electric wall-mounted fireplace at a resale shop and it was a bronzy brown color and I wanted it to kind of blend into the wall. I painted the wall and hung it up but it was missing something and I needed an excuse to use more of my painters tape.

I decided it might be cool to do a retro brick pattern on the wall in the same brown paint only in a matte finish so when the light hits the wall, you can see the contrast. 

Using 1/2" tape this time I started to make 4x9 vertical bricks on the wall.

tada! Wall A is done too!

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Then I painted the ceiling white leaving the beams exposed to add more height to the studio and then my husband and I sanded and painted the rusty I-Beam and pole a clean crisp white.

Next up was the 2ft span of wall behind my office door. It was wasted space until I came across a unique and inexpensive bookcase online that fit right in. From there we mounted some additional floating shelves and I added some retro looking cork board squares. Still need to add some trim and fix the baseboards but then this side will be ready to decorate!

Now back to wall A