Our first little bundle of joy is scheduled to arrive September 23. We have been working since conception on some projects that we wanted to have complete before he got here. Of course, the nursery was one at the top of the list! Before we even decided that we “were ready” for kids, we knew that if it was a boy, there would be an argyle wall and if it was a girl, there would be a paisley wall.
We found out May 4th that baby was very much a little boy and we excitedly went out and bought paint for the argyle wall. The nursery was formerly my husband’s video game room. He had painted three walls dark grey to reduce light in the room, and the wall with the TV was light grey. We decided to keep these greys, and paint the argyle over the existing accent wall keeping light grey as one of the colors.
Here were some of our Pinspirations:
We decided not to go with perfect squares….so we began looking at diamonds.
This was ultimately the wall we loved (maybe because it already incorporated blue and grey). Her blog referenced back to an Argyle Diamond calculator on this blog, Silver Spoon Murals. We used the calculator, but then we both argued over how to interpret the results. So, instead we just measured our space and did math.
Don’t be jealous of my Microsoft Paint skills! Anyway, we had 60″ across and we knew we wanted 5 columns of diamonds. So 60/5 = 12″ across. The calculator told us that the diamonds should be twice as high as they were wide, so 24″ tall, which gave us 3.5 diamonds down the wall. With these measurements, we cut out a template in tagboard and held it up. I had to visually see what that size on the wall was before I could commit.
Then my hubs did the tedious job of taping. We taped so that one color could be fully painted:
Then my lovely helpers, mom and grandma, joined us to help paint!
Grandma did all the green paint while mom worked on sanding down, wood filling, and painting the door and frame to give it a fresh new look. Happy helpers!
They did two coats of the green and we removed the tape about 45 minutes after the final coat so it wouldn’t get permastuck and rip up painted parts. Tip: You want to be sure and paint from the tape in. That way, you don’t risk pushing paint up under the tape.
After it dried for two days, MIL came to assist on the blue. Another happy helper!
They had to leave earlier than planned, so hubs finished up the job. Blue and green done!
Then we had to decide what color to make the dotted line accents. I wanted white thinking that would pop more, hubs wanted black thinking that would pop more. We argued discussed this for a while, then I had the idea “what if we get some electrical tape in black and white and do a test!”
After getting it on the wall I initially like the black better, but in more of a “real room” sence. For the baby, I liked the white better because it was more subtle. There’s going to be a lot going on in that room and I think black overwhelmed it. Thankfully hubby agreed!
We were going to make a stencil for the hash marks, but neither of us could really figure out the best way to do that. Then I decided to just tape it all up (this is like the third roll of blue tape this wall has consumed)
I painted in the spaces with white. If I could go back and do this again, I would do it with a small art brush, rather than a big wall painting brush. There was a lot of bleed under the tape, which I think just came from the big brush shoving paint under the tape.
After it was all done with two coats, I pulled off the tape. Since the brush was already in the white paint, I finished up the shelf as well. Here’s how it looks!
Happy Pinning! Happy Painting!!
