Painted Stairwell Landing Feature Wall

Posted by The Kim Six Fix on 12:28 AM in Flashback Friday Painting
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This post brought to you by FrogTape. All opinions are 100% mine. They provided me supplies and payment in exchange for this post. I was not told what to say and the results I had with this product are accurate and unbiased.  (If this tape didn’t work, I would never tell you it did.)  

So what do you think of my new stair landing?  I'm so excited about it I could jump up and down and spit nickels!

It was a TON of work, I'm not going to lie, but it was totally worth it.  And really, it wasn't difficult especially since I didn't have any paint touch up.  NONE!

So how did I do it?
I'm glad you asked! But first, let me take you down memory lane (it is Flashback Friday..)


When we moved into house, the stairwell was awash with white walls and featured both brass fixtures and golden oak handrails.  Very 80s!

I first updated it by painting the landing wall a contrasting color (Martha Stewart's Buckwheat Flour) and replacing the light fixture with one I had leftover from my kitchen lighting upgrade (this was during my ‘Living on $20 per week challenge" so I had to update it with a budget of $0.)
I lived with that for a while, until I decided to update the handrails by staining them dark:

And that is how I have been living with them.  Until FrogTape® asked me if I wanted to try out their new product specifically for textured walls: Textured Surface by FrogTape

Ummm. YEAH.
I mean HELL YEAH!

I have knockdown/orange peel texture on all my walls, and it is horrible to paint.  Even just changing the color of a room is a pain since paint doesn't wnat to go into the nooks and crannies, and forget trying to paint any sort of taped off line.  This has been my results in the past (even using the trick of painting the background color first to ’seal’ the tape:


But now FrogTape® has a taping system that uses not only their standard PaintBlock® technology (in which a polymer on the tape gels with the water in latex paint to form a micro barrier) but it also has a Surface Sharp Paint Line Solution Kit (which forms an additional seal over the tape line to completely stop paint bleed on rough and textured surfaces):

When they told me that, I was ALL IN!  I always wanted a fun pattern on that huge wall, and it was time:

GO BIG OR GO HOME

TIME TO TAPE!

I took the measurements of my wall and then sketched out my design in Photoshop: 
Yeah. I was crazy.

Originally I was going to get that pattern by taping it off, painting over the tape and removing it to reveal the pattern, but after a quick color test, I decided against it.

I liked the lighter lines against the current background color and didn’t want to go an additional shade darker.  To get that look I would have had to paint the wall BACK to white (multiple coats), then tape off, then paint it again with Buckwheat Flour.  Since Martha Stewart's line of paint has been discontinued, I didn’t have enough paint for that (nor did I want to deal with that many coats.)

So instead I decided I would just figure out how to outline the pattern itself.  To do that I needed to figure out where the tape lines had to be on the outside of the pattern:

Then I figured out exactly how far apart they actually were in order for the repeat to work correctly:


I told you this was NO JOKE.  That is a lot of tapelines!

But I was prepared:


So I started to tape:

And measure.  And tape..

And measure.. and tape.. and measure.. and tape:

Until eventually (nearly 5 hours later) I ended up with this:

Here are a few tricks for doing a major tape project like this where there are lots of sharp corners.
Use a putty knife and razor blade to get nice sharp lines:




Seriously.. at this point ANGELS WERE SINGING because the taping was finished!!

TIME TO PAINT!

Onto the painting itself!!
Before actually adding the paint, you first you need to seal the tape lines.  Make sure you have pressed the tape down well.  (I ran my putty knife over it.) Then run a damp cloth over the tape to ‘activate’ the PaintBlock® technology.

Finally you seal the edges with Surface Sharp Paint Line Solution (it comes with an applicator so it was super easy):
After letting it dry, you go straight to painting:


And yes, there was a lot of painting. To cover the taupe I needed two coats:
Now it was time to remove the tape.  To put it in perspective, it took me OVER AN HOUR just to remove the tape. That is how many tape lines there were.. and of course, I was holding my breath the whole time.

Did it bleed?

I hoped not! Oh please.. please.. please...

SEE THE FINISHED PROJECT

To my DELIGHT after taking off the tape, the paint lines were PERFECT.  I did not  have a single area that required paint touch up. NOT ONE.  The textured surface tape delivered 100% on it’s promise:
Which is great because otherwise it would have been a nightmare.
The finished result:





When I look at how far I've have come, and for virtually no money, I am super happy!

When you commit to a huge project like this one, you need to rely on the supplies you are using. And I have been thrilled with all of the FrogTape® products I've used.  Some other projects include:

Wave ShapeTape™ on curtains:

And on these Fourth of July Decorations:

Or Scallop ShapeTape™as a wall border:

And for even more inspiration you can follow the FrogTape Textured Surface board on Pinterest. Now that you don't have to worry about paint seeping on textured walls, the possibilities are endless!

Do you have textured walls and ever wanted to do something fun?  What could you use Textured Surface™ for?  

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