Cutting Edge Stencils Herringbone Brick Pattern

Chic Geek House
by Chic Geek House
I don’t have a fancy laundry room, just a closet really, but even the tiniest spaces can create a huge impact on your overall life when you renovate them properly. Since Sunday, this little laundry nook has been my pet project, and I’m ridiculously thrilled with how it turned out.
Now, normally, I don’t go in for a project when I’ve already got one underway (master bath). It’s a time sink, a money pit, and makes your house a freakin’ wreck. I only broke my cardinal rule this time because of special circumstances. See, back in early May, HomeTalk and Cutting Edge Stencils approached me with a proposal. Cutting Edge Stencils logo“Would I be willing to participate in a Share-a-thon to feature one of CES’s newest stencil designs in a how-to post?” they asked. WOULD I??? I was beyond honored to be asked. This would be the first time any DIY community would ask this of me. It was like getting acknowledged for street cred amongst the most well-known, coolest of gangstas if those gangstas were into legal things that made stuff pretty. I wanted to bang my chest with pride like the first caveman to ever make fire and grunt virile-ly to a hoard of others alphas, “Me make most pretty!”
I had a host of ideas for what to do and which pattern to use, but the one that stood out most to me was the herringbone brick pattern. I resolved that I would finish up my bathroom remodel (which I’d just begun that week) within a month and then settle in to this before the deadline came. Problem is, the bathroom took a lot longer than a month, and the deadline for the Share-a-thon was quickly approaching. Laundry room beforeThere was no time. I halted progress on the bath with a week to go for the Share deadline, and thought to myself, “You know what could really use this stencil?” Yup, you guessed it, my laundry closet.
It was boring, beaten, and dirty as all get out. The walls were a base white and stained from that time when I overloaded the wash, and the detergent vibrated off the shelf to explode all over the walls in true Jackson Pollock painting style… Dirty laundry we don't talk aboutThis happened twice (fun times). Add to that a few years of fine lint dust from the dryer, and a cat who likes to Houdini his toys and various bits of trash he’s fished out of the bathroom bin under the most difficult spaces to try and rescue later… yeah, gritty stuff. I set upon gutting it like the ugly, smelly fish it was (it wasn’t a bad smelly per se – it was just a detergent-based mess).


Eight hours later, Hubs and I’d ripped up linoleum and baseboards, torn the shelf out, removed faceplates, scraped popcorn, sanded walls, patched holes, peeled off casings, scrubbed walls thoroughly, and repainted the ceiling a pleasant shade of periwinkle blue (everyone’s favorite caravan color – doyalikedags?).
The next day I decided on paint colors for everything else. I had a variety of grey, blue, and taupe, so I thought I should reuse at least one of those. The pale lavender grey (Behr’s Manhattan Mist) I had used on the office the year before would make a nice color for the side walls, I thought. For the actual stencil, I wanted to do something less traditional and go with a dark grey-blue base in matte (Behr’s Dark Storm Cloud) with a lighter true grey in high gloss (Behr’s Flint Smoke) for a silvery contrast. As a side note, the guy who gets to name paint colors? Yeah, I want that job. It sounds fun and much less calorific than the guy who taste-tests and names all the Ben and Jerry’s icecreams.
I painted up all the base coats, and then tore into reading all the instructions for my stencil. Cutting Edge had sent over this really cool tool packet with the stencil that had a neat level tool for slipping onto the stencil’s edge to keep it straight. There was also a small roller with a dense, round foam brush, and a stippling paintbrush for those times when you needed to work the paint into a corner. The directions said to let the base coat sit for at least 24 hours before starting the stencil, so I pouted a bit and schooled myself to patience to wait another day.
The next day, I was eager to begin this next crucial step in redesigning my laundry. On Cutting Edge’s suggestion, I used the Blue brand of painter’s tape specifically for freshly painted surfaces and taped up my corner and ceiling edges (stuff works pretty well, I gotta say). The videos I’d watched on using stencils all suggested to start on a long, flat stretch of wall, applying the stencil pattern from top to bottom in one long line from ceiling to floor to establish a base line from which you’d apply the rest of the stenciling. This was to help keep the tight, orderly patterns like my herringbone brick even and level across the wall. I took this suggestion, and it worked out really well. I was able to overlap the stencil just as they’d described to get the pattern just right, then correct any unevenness with the attached level.


The plastic sheet the stencil was cut into reminds me of those sheets of transparency paper you used to use on projectors in grade school. It was thin, clear, and felt a little flimsy. I’d kept the stencil boxed for so long that I had to roll it out for a day beforehand to get it to relax into a flat sheet. The benefits of this thinness were that it flexed pretty well when it came to doing the wall up to the corners. The bad part was that it also led to abnormalities in my precision when I was trying to work paint with the stipple brush into those same corners (I ended up freehanding a lot of my edges because it was driving me nuts). To do an edge, you just take the stencil, overlap it with the pattern on the flat of the wall and then press the plastic into the crease of the wall’s edge so you can work a stipple brush around to really pack paint into the inlay of the stencil. You’re not bending the stencil to create a creased fold in it, just pressing it firmly up into the wall’s edge to paint, then releasing it out again.
I will say I think I chose a poor stencil for my first time ever doing something like this. The pattern is so orderly and close together, and I’m such a perfectionist that I found myself getting very frustrated when trying to work with the stencil on any surface but a perfectly uninhibited flat surface. I had to go slowly no matter where I was applying it. The videos and instructions had been very specific about how to pack the paint on your roller, then siphon it off for application (I rolled mine over paper towels to get off all visible signs of heavy paint before putting it to a wall). You had to maintain a delicate hand the entire time with your pressure too, or else the paint would bleed onto the wall behind the stencil, and then the stencil itself would need to be dried off or you’d risk getting paint all over your next wall segment. It took me a couple of tries before I got it down.
They’d included a separate stencil meant for doing the edge of the wall where it meets the ceiling which I thought was extremely clever and thoughtful. However, it was not all that useful for me because at the width it was, Nearly the whole wall is stenciledit didn’t bend very well against the seam for painting as I’d found I had been slightly off in my level-ness while painting the rest of the wall, causing a little bit of a slope.


Time was also something I did a poor estimation of when applying this stencil. I had to go so slowly that it took me nearly an hour to cover the bulk of this six-foot stretch of wall. The corners I did after that, and it took me nearly four hours to finish those. I was immensely frustrated because of the expectations I had for it going much faster than that.


I feel very strongly that had I chosen a stencil pattern with less uniformity and close patterning, I would have had a much easier time of it. The end result though… that was real magic. I was highly impressed with the look of the wall after the stencil had been applied. It was definitely worth it for this feature piece.
Another thing I will commend these stencils on is their ease of cleaning. Mine gummed up with too much paint about two panels away from being done. I could tell because little gummy flakes of paint were pulling off the plastic and sticking to my roller as it passed over the wall. I placed mine in my tub with a few inches of warm water, and within about 15 seconds, I was able to peel the latex paint off the stencil like a rubberized sticker, leaving it perfectly clean. Super easy!
Despite the difficulty of applying the pattern all over, I really feel the stencil made a huge difference on the appearance of this project. The snazzy factor is through the roof, and I’m very glad, and again, very honored to have been asked to participate in this Share-a-thon.


Thanks for reading!


Chic Geek House
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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 3 comments
  • Miriam Illions Miriam Illions on Jul 11, 2015
    That pattern looks really good in your laundry room!
  • Candy Walsh Candy Walsh on Dec 26, 2016
    That looks great! And something I would've never thought of doing, but having a very small walkthru laundry room, I would love to do this in mine. Cutting Edge Stencils has some gorgeous designs, I've drooled over all of them, lol, but they're a little pricey for me, so I'll have to find a large stencil that I like somewhere else. This will go on my "after the holidays to do list ". I hope I can find the right stencil and mine comes out even half as good as yours and I'll be happy!! And I LOVE the blue ceiling!
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