T.E. Dious

For the past three weeks I’ve been working on the most time-consuming, am-i-insane project ever…but it’s done now and was “wall” worth it.  Let’s backtrack though before we get to the good stuff.

As you might recall, we’ve been transforming our master bathroom into light and bright over the dark and outdated it was.  So far, we’ve ripped up the laminate tile, laid down new, ceramic tile, painted the cabinets, and painted the laminate countertops.  Most recently though, I took to painting the walls and adding some accent wall flair with a stencil.  I’ve always loved the idea of having a tiled accent wall, using either some gorgeous glass subway tile or round penny tile in a bathroom but, on a budget, those dreams remain just what they are…dreams.  :)  But the next best thing is a free stencil, right? 

So, using the same stencil (downloaded from Jones Design Company) I used to spice up these pillows last spring, I first penciled the stencil, then grabbed a small paint brush and leftover cabinet paint (Promenade by Valspar) and played Picasso.

Here’s the wall before I started:

   Of course, this is after I painted the entire room – Smoked Oyster by Valspar.  It’s a sort of dark grayish beige, or greige if you’re into mixing words like that.

This is in process…when I was questioning why I did this and also came to the realization that my hand wasn’t as steady as I had previously thought…:

 And this is done:

The whole process took me almost three weeks to finish, me working on it about 4 hours a week…yeah, for one wall, that’s crazy!  Tell me about it!  One of the reasons it took me so long though is because I used an el cheapo paint brush we had lying around.  It was not very short of a kids watercolor brush.  But, once I started with it, I had to continue because if I had gotten a nicer, stiffer brush it wouldn’t have looked quite as hand-painted…which I wasn’t necessarily going for but actually looks really good on the completely finished wall. 

Any imperfections are unnoticeable because when you look at the finished wall, your eye doesn’t know where to land so they just blend in…even though after I was done I did take some of the greige paint to fix a couple of “oops” spots.

I’m really happy with the end result even though I’m not sure if I’ll ever take on this stencil again…it made the $40 - $50 wall stencils look cheap and maybe worth it in the future.  But, when the day comes where I forget how long this took me but remember how cheap it was to do, I’ll probably stick my foot in my mouth and do it again.  :)

Just to jog your memories, here’s where we started:

And here’s where we are so far:

We have yet to add some floating shelves to the wall in between the two mirrors, make a roman shade to adorn the window, and add some other decor in the way of pictures and such before we can officially call it a done deal but the big projects are d-o-n-e.  Thank goodness, because the loveseat’s a-waitin’.  Look for a post on her next week…yes, we’ve made progress!  Until then, have a great weekend!