The Stenciling is DONE!!!

Well...I'm happy to say...IT'S FINISHED!!!

Those of you who have been reading the BPPackages Facebook page (a BIG thanks to all of you who have "liked" it!!) know exactly what I mean!!

That mammoth project called stenciling.

Errr...is it still called stenciling if you didn't actually use real stenciling techniques?

As those of you who have been reading since the beginning already know, hubby and I have been working away at changing up our cave-like bedroom. Here is ONE of the TWO pictures I was actually smart enough to take before we started painting.

*banging forehead*

Get used to looking at this pic. I'm going to have to use it lots in future posts about our room.

Anyhow, it was painted a really dark brown with golden oak trim, doors and flooring, not to mention very dim lighting from a ginormous ceiling fan that felt like it was only about three feet higher than the bed. It was virtually impossible to see anything in the closet. Blech. It didn't take long for me to make a trip to the paint store...you can read about that process here.

That was five months ago.

But now I'm happy to announce that we're...wait for it...about halfway to completion!!

Yeehaw!

Here's a half-way-done picture from roughly the same angle.

We painted the walls Light French Grey by Behr and then I hand painted/stenciled/whatever it's called...the "headboard wall" with Deep Silver by Benjamin Moore.

You can see a little peek of the new white closet doors...but that's a post for another day.

Our bedroom is the only room we've really touched so far, so that's why you can still see the oak trim on the outside frame of the bedroom door. It all takes time!

After we painted the room grey-blue, it started feeling a wee bit "icy" to me, so I thought that adding a now wildly popular trellis pattern to the headboard wall might soften things up a bit. I really waffled between white and black, but then I thought that might be a bit too harsh and wondered if a cozy, warm charcoal

might be just the ticket. Turns out it was. I love it.

Here's how we made it happen...

I browsed around a lot on the Internet to find a pattern that I liked. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that it was Jones Design Company who had the winning pattern! Have I ever mentioned how much I love that blog?! Patience is not my greatest virtue so I liked the fact that I could download the pattern right now and better yet, the fact that it was free appealed to my cheap frugal nature! If you are impatient and cheap frugal too, you can find the download here.

The size of the pattern changed a bit as a result of my printer running out of ink half way through. Yup.

So I had to fiddle around with it a bit when cutting out the pattern. As a result, I totally botched it up and had to resort to asking hubby for help with getting it right...which resulted in a larger pattern (fine by me...less painting!). As a result of that, my lines do not combine into one like Emily's do. But I'm still really happy with the overall result. After getting the pattern all sorted out, I traced it onto some white poster board and then experimented with several different brushes to see what I liked best. I highly recommend this!!

As you can see, it gave me something to practice painting on...which clearly I really needed!

I tried about four different brushes...you can see the different widths in this pic.

In the end, I decided a rounded brush worked best, since I didn't have to contort my body while I painted, which I did have to do with the flat tipped brushes.

(Did you notice? I painted my nails too...just for you!)

We made two stencils...one full pattern and one half pattern. I started in the farthest right hand corner above the bedroom door with the full pattern alternated with the half pattern and went along the ceiling. It may not have been the best point to start, but I wanted a less conspicuous place to get going since I knew most of it would be covered up by moulding anyhow.

You can see the process in this picture. Trace the pattern, then move it down about a half inch or so and trace again. Just keep going until you think you are going to lose your marbles.

Then take a little break and go at it again.

 I found it worked best if I moved the pattern down the wall, rather than working across the wall.

I don't know if using a level really helped anything other than to somewhat convince myself that I wasn't royally messing everything up. At any rate, I used this little level and lined up the stencil pattern with the traced out pattern above.

Then moved the level down to make sure the stencil was straight.

At some points, I just had to fudge a little to make it work.

Okay, in some places I had to fudge a LOT...put my pencil down and walk out of the room, deep breathe and once again ask myself what I ever did to feel I needed to punish myself this way.

Just sayin.

I alternated tracing and painting to keep myself sane from getting bored.

You can see here what I mean by a round tipped brush. It really does make the process much easier.

Just keep painting...just keep painting...painting, painting, painting...what do we do...we paint, paint, paint...oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhhhhh!!!

(Can you hear Dory singing? Kay...so maybe Nemo is played a little too often around here..)

Keep painting on the inside of your traced lines.

Aaaannnndddd...the finished result!

I mentioned in a previous post that hubby wasn't at all convinced that he liked it. In fact, his first words were..."You said it was going to be subtle, Evie!" Errr....I thought grey was subtle. Compared to black.

Well, now he loves it. I knew he would.

 During the painting process, I wasn't so sure if I would love it though...I'm a big chicken and usually steer away from patterns. This was a big and very bold step for me...I sweated buckets over the decision to go ahead and do it or not..but I'm happy to say that I love it too. And really it's kinda like childbirth...the pain of the process is forgotten and now I just think about how much I like it and how it's going to be years before I ever repaint our room.

I couldn't get a straight on picture of the wall because I was trying my hardest not to get all the tools and furniture laying around into the picture. Our room is really rather small, so there weren't many places to stand without tripping on something.

Oh...see those sweet mouldings? Hubby's first attempt at crown moulding! I think he did a FAB job.

Thanks Honey...mwah! And a big, big thanks to my daddy-o for coaching and helping! I big, fat heart the chunky crown and baseboard. Yum.

And while I'm handing out thank-you's...

Thank you to my mom for watching the kiddies for countless hours while I painted...

thank you to Hubby for also watching kiddies during the hours Mom wasn't here...

and thank you to my kids for taking naps occasionally when neither my mom nor hubby were around...

and thank you to my producer...

and thank you to my fans...

without you, none of this would be possible...

*holding up my trophy and dabbing at tears*

*sniff*

I kid! I kid!

Now...onto the headboard and closet doors!! Stay tuned!!

If I'm very, very lucky they might be finished by the end of the week...

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