Dining Room Makeover

All Within the Home
by All Within the Home
3 Materials
$30
5 Hours
Medium

Jazz up a room with an accent wall using blue painters tape and a gallon of your favorite color paint.

Before I got into doing DIY projects at the beginning of this year (2019) I have practiced Interior Design for the past 15 years. A designers house is always the last to get put together...This is my dining room. When we built our house we went "standard" in our finishes knowing that I can paint or add wainscott far cheaper myself than the builder could. I also know that starting plain gives me a blank canvas to do what I feel like I am in the mood for once I have lived in the space for awhile.


The few days before we moved in our furniture, we had already painted all the bedrooms and decorated them how we wanted and the week after we moved in I had my fourth child which left a few rooms in house plain for the past year until I could get into the swing of having three kids under two at the time!

My husband took the three boys camping for the weekend so I was able to get some projects done around the house. I hadn't planned to do this until about 5 minutes before they left. At 5:05pm when they pulled out to leave for their camp spot, I followed them out and ran to Lowe's and purchased a gallon of paint.


I really wanted to do a removable wallpaper on this wall but was concerned about cutting around the window trim and lining up the pattern so I opted for just 1" painters tape and paint. I was mimicking a pattern of wallpaper that I LOVED from Serena and Lily but could not afford.

I wanted 4" stripes so I measured 4" from the top of my baseboard and made a little mark with my pencil and measured again about 2' down and 4" up from the baseboard and made a mark. I used a 3' long leveler to line up the two marks and lightly ran my pencil line down the length of the leveler. Once I had my 3' line, I continued down the wall lining up the line I just made and extending it until I hit the end of the wall. I placed my 1" painters tape on top of the line all the way across the wall. I then repeated the process measuring 4" from the top of the painters tape and made my pencil mark, then measured again about 2' down and up 4" and connected my dots using my 3' leveler and making a light line all across the wall.


This actually goes pretty fast if you have a long leveler and guarantees straight lines. Once I started my lines, it took me about 2 hours to line out and put on the tape (this was also counting having a 1.5 year old hanging by my legs taking away my pencil and tape whenever I put them down. Luckily, I only had to deal with that for an hour until I put her down for the night.

Once all the tape is in place, you paint right over top on the whole wall. I think I ended up using most of my one gallon of paint - Sherwin Williams Analytical Gray SW7051 to cover up the white. It is more of a warm brown undertone of gray.


I let the paint dry a little - maybe 30 minutes after I finished my last coat before I started to remove the tape. Just slowly start peeling the tape away. I have textured walls so some paint did bleed through that I went back through in the morning and touched up with white paint.


I know they make that green Frog tape that is supposed to not have any bleed through and I am curious if anyone has ever used it and found that to be true on textured walls???

Here is the wall with the tape removed. For the most part the blue taped worked well on the texture and I only had a couple spots to touch up.

In the morning I got to hang my curtains I purchased at Pottery Barn and put my little thrift store table out with my thrifted accessories and art!

I got the clock from Lowe's for only $35, art was $2 from a thrift store, and the chest I got from the thrift store for $50 - which was a little on the pricey side for me but I loved the shape and it was the perfect size for this area of my dining room. Shop thrift stores if you don't already, you can save a ton of money!

I have received so many compliments on this dining room wall. Most people touch it thinking it is wallpaper. Mission accomplished! I love how it turned out and I surprised myself I on what I could accomplish in about 4 hours mostly kid free!

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  • Julie Julie on Dec 14, 2019

    I would so do this... But It would take me HOURS to get the tape straight , Any suggestions on a fast way.?

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