The great white wall

I've had an aversion to painted walls since I can remember. Mainly because a) I grew up in a house where my parents didn't believe in walls painted anything other than "white linen" and b) as a renter it's too much of a hassle to put up a splash of color and then deal with either painting it back or hoping your landlord won't notice when you move out.


But I've seen too many Lowe's and Home Depot commercials to know that this should not be the case for any hip, young couple. Fast forward all the way to the 4 second mark if you will!



In fact, this may be the reason why I feel the need to tackle 3 projects a weekend. I blame it entirely on the media telling my demographic what we should be doing-- much to my husband's dismay, I'm sure. This may also be why he "jokingly" suggested I wear one of his bandanas while we painted last Sunday. For that "cute newly married wife" appeal, whatever that is. But I digress!!!


So anyway, like I was saying, prior to moving I had never painted before. With the one partial gray accent wall already done, I didn't know what to do with the wall directly opposite it. It's huge, it's white, and it's 14 feet high! :)

I had several options:

1) Leave it blank (Mom & Dad would be proud)

2) Buy humongous wall art (anything with the appropriate dimensions was easily over $500, and I'd still have to buy multiple ones, like the one below)

3) Paint my own wall panel design

Option #3 was definitely the way to go. I'm not much of an artist so I threw together a shoddy design one afternoon. That was the hard part for me. With the 10 ft ladder ready, Mike got to taping.

[insert "nice ass" joke here]

This was definitely NOT an easy feat, as I had feared all along. Because of the sheer height, and a somewhat faulty laser leveler, this took up most of our time on Sunday. Because my painted wall panel design called for 4 panels, that was roughly = 4 bottom horizontal lines + 8 vertical lines + 4 top horizontal lines. Each had to be measured exactly 4 feet wide, and 6 feet tall. Suffice it to say, total completion time for taping alone was around 3 hours. We ended up using my dad's old school metal leveler halfway through and that turned out MUCH, MUCH faster than that darn new-fangled laser nonsense.

The result?

Notice, in comparison to the first picture, how it's already dark outside.

So did we get around to painting? Yes we did! (We were pretty famished and as a result also got around to the much over-rated Cluck U Wings in Hoboken, boo. Groupon failed us.)

Can I share the REAL end product? No I can't. Why you ask? Because it's colored but the "stuff" isn't in there yet. What stuff? Why do I sound like a 6 year old with a crayon, macaroni, and a coloring book? I will just leave you with you my final design...

Hopefully *fingers crossed* my goal is to wrap this up this weekend. The hard part is done, I think... that is, until the next project.