Chevron wall —- learn from our mistakes!!

 
 
We have working ferociously on several new faux finishes for a house which will be on the Spring Parade of Homes in Kansas City. New finishes are always fun….but there is always a learning curve for sure!!!! EVERYTHING works on a sample board….the challenge is getting it to work on a wall!!!
 
The designer and I wanted to do a tone on tone patterned wall….and we decide on chevron.

 
 
Since I had taped out this chevron pattern on a dresser last year (and it sold in like 37 seconds for me)….I thought, how hard can it be?
 
(Insert throwing back of head and evil laugh here……).
 
In doing my research, I found about 4,857,235 You Tube videos on how to tape off a chevron wall….totally overwhelming!  But, then I thought I would take the “easy way out” and use a stencil.  This way there would be no chalk lines to worry about. No taping. No measuring….Oh…..silly me……
 
 

At first attempt, the stencil from Melanie Royals seemed like it was a winner winner chicken dinner!!!

The walls were base painted in a flat sheen and we were using a Water Based Polyacylic for the chevron (and there was our mistake).

 
The corner was easy enough……not a lot of light on it….not a lot of moving the stencil yet…..

But then near the center of the room,  things started getting a little wonky. If you get the pattern off just a little, then you have to shift and fudge and adjust accordingly.  Jeri, thank goodness, is a master at this….so no one will ever tell where it may have gotten off.

Our biggest problem was here:

Because we were using a high gloss poly for the chevron….Jeri would paint in the little triangles and then when we would shift the stencil over, she would have to paint that triangle even bigger. Well, because the poly was high gloss….you could see every stop and start line in her application.  You could see the “touch ups”.  You could see the overlapping of clear coat.

Grrrrrrrrrr……….

As you can see from this pic, the windows are putting a HUGE glare on one section of the wall and that’s the only section that the clear coat was really giving us fits.

In retrospect, we would base paint the walls in a HIGH GLOSS BASE COLOR first. Then we would still use the chevron stencil with flat paint in the same color. Skip the clear coat. Trust me on this.

Poor Jeri had to re-poly a bunch of the chevron by hand.

But now it is PERFECT!!!!

And the other rooms in the house look amazing as well!

And we can’t wait the house to be on the parade.

And we couldn’t wait to be done with this project so we could go home and make these:

 
We had a blast in Snowmaggedon Part II in KC.  It was perfect snowman making snow!!!!  I put a 2 pieced hot pink bikini on my snowgirl….which my mom told me was inappropriate.  So….then in some picture editing software that I barely knew how to open,  I feebly and half-heartedly tried to white out the fabric on the picture.  So now my beach ready snowgirl has an awkward dirty white tube top thing on top and a boomerang for bottoms.  LOL.  I should have left the bikini in the pic! Too funny not to share!
 
Blessings to you my friends!!!
 
Linking up to Beth’s Stories of A to Z. Check it out here!
Linking also to Funday Monday!


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4 comments

  1. I know you hated this process but I’m so glad you posted it because I’m doing a chevron wall for my daughter next week. Was going to you tube and even thought about stencils too. So THANK YOU!

  2. Again, love this wall. Again, the bathing suit was hot. LOL xo

  3. you have inspired me to do this to our spare bedroom! I love anything chevron! Can you tell me the color of grey you used here? Also, you said to paint the base wall in the high gloss and then do the stencil in the flat paint, correct??
    Thank You!!

  4. Pingback: Our Top 10 Painting Projects of 2013 - The Magic Brush Inc

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