buh-bye red {1 of 3}

My painting project is done.  Finally.  It took me 6 days.  But it's done.  And I love it.  It was worth all the time and effort.  Would I do it again?  Uhm, probably not.  But did I mention I LOVE it?

This is what I started with.  A big red wall in the living room. (See more red in the house tour.)

I freshened up the wainscoting with some white paint, and then primed and put up a coat of white paint on the wall itself.  Better already, right?

This is what inspired my labor of love.  But at $50 for a stencil, I said, "Psssht!  I'll just make my own."  So I headed over to Hobby Lobby and picked up two packs of stencil blanks.  Each pack came with three sheets of 12" x 18" stencil paper; of course I needed 4 sheets, hence the two packs.  All I had to do was tape together the 4 sheets to get the size I needed.  Everything stencil related was on sale, so I spent under $6 for my homemade stencil, saving myself $44.  Woo hoo.

I saved the image on the left (below), enlarged it in Lightroom and reprinted it on 9 separate sheets, put it together like a puzzle, taped it, traced it onto my stencil paper, and then X-acto knifed it.  I stepped back to admire my very LARGE stencil.  Time to get a-painting.

I decided to work in layers to allow paint to dry and to make my job a little easier.  (Plus I only have one small foam roller, so I guess that kinda decided it for me, eh?)  I started with the dark tan color first (Valspar's Prarie Dance).

Then added the light tan (Valspar's Belle Grove Buff).

{Up close, you can see that the wall is textured.  It's the only wall in the house that's textured like that.  When looking at the wall as a whole, the new stencil pattern takes away from the texture, which is kind of nice.  I'm not a huge fan of the dated texture technique, and it really stood out when the wall was that ugly red, so the new texture camouflage is very welcomed.}

And then, finally, I added the last of the colors, a blueish/green (Valspar's April Thicket.)

And there you have it.  My stenciled feature wall in the living room.  Not bad for a day's 6 days worth of work, huh?  (I can't wait to get rid of that yellow in the hallway [and entry and dining room] - it totally clashes with the newly painted wall.)

Heck of change, right?  The room is so much brighter and a lot more fun to be in.

If I have to see all of my hubby's tv components on a daily basis, at least I now have a pretty wall behind them.  :)