Bye Bye Red!

if you live with me then you better be ok with change! and my poor husband actually despises change (i like to think we balance each other out nicely!) so he was not exactly on board when i said i wanted to paint over the red stripes in our family room above the fireplace. but i needed something calmer (i feel like the red was secretly stressing me out) and something more modern. the red was feeling dated - already - it wasn't even up two years! so i went from this...

to this...

i started off with a roll of painters tape and got to work. this is where i'm very happy i had the red stripes professionally done because i just taped right above the red and automatically had very straight lines.

i decided to keep the white stripe the same color which is benjamin moore linen white. after taping, the first step is to paint over the tape seams with the white color to "seal" it so that the new color won't leak through. this is a little bit of extra effort but it works like a charm!

the new color is pale oak from benjamin moore and i looove it. i want to cover my whole house with this color. it's the perfect gray/taupe neutral. to save time i rolled on the new color with a small roller and used a small angled brush to get in the corners and on edges where the roller didn't cover. i ended up just needing two coats - i used the regal select line of paint and it was so thick, the coverage was incredible. i messed up once and started painting the white stripe instead of the red. duh!! but this was such a quick job - about 4 hours in total. and for those who are worried that i neglected my children for four hours, i started at nap time and then finished when i had a mommy's helper (girl from the neighborhood) come play with the boys.

only bad part is that the painters tape actually pulled up some of the paint on the white stripes when i took it off. not sure how to prevent that?

and meanwhile to my right while i was snapping these pics...two wild little boys!!

have a great weekend!