And Then We Stenciled

The last major thing we had to do in the house was the stenciling on the walls. Jen liked the way it sort of looked like wallpaper except that it wasn't wallpaper. As with some of the stuff in the house, I quietly acquiesced.

I'd been postponing doing it because I figured it would be harder than it looked. I almost didn't want to do it until I saw that each stencil cost between $30 and $40, so it would have been a waste not to use them.

I (wisely!) did the first stencil in the bedroom. I needed to give it time to dry, so I did it before we went away one weekend. When Jen met me at the bus or train station (can't remember which) she asked how it went.

"OK," I said before adding "I think."

"You think?"

"We'll see how it looks."

Jen didn't like the sound of it.

I didn't have time to really look it over before I rushed to shower and get to the bus or train station (can't remember which). I just didn't think the lines were crisp. The instructions said to use a brush and dab at the stencil, but it was taking too long and it was too streaky so I used a roller instead. Then the stencil got wet with paint on the back and kept falling off. Then I realized that in the lower half of the wall toward the middle I screwed up the stencil, so the pattern was off.

Which is to say that I honestly wasn't sure how it was going to look.

But when we returned Sunday night Jen was pleased with how it looked — even the mistake in the lower part of the wall. What I realized was that it looked pretty OK if you thought of it as a sort of silk screen look, and you embraced the imperfections. Bedroom, before and after:

The dining room was the most intricate stencil and this time I didn't skimp on the tape. Word of advice: Use painter's tape (the blue stuff) and not regular masking tape (the green stuff); it makes a big difference in terms of stick-to-it-tiveness (I used several rolls of packing tape the DirecTV guy left for some of the molding in the living room, so I mistakenly assumed I could get away with it). Anyway, it went a lot more smoothly — and looked pretty good, if I do say so myself!

And, with the exception of a few scattered things that probably don't really merit a mention, but which I reserve the right to mention (including, for example, an ill-advised foray retiling the basement shower over the hurricane weekend — every single inch-by-inch tile — but it does look a lot better), that was the end of the work we had to do at Kawama — inside at least.

Posted: February 13th, 2012 | Author: Scott | Filed under: The Cult Of Domesticity | Tags: Kawama, Stenciling Walls, The New Frugalism

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