Herringbone wall

Yay! I'm so excited about this post! I saw some cool home blogs on Pinterest over my very long blizzard break that detailed the steps of taping off a patterned wall. Since I had loads of time, I immediately thought "Yup, I can do this," and I started my planning process. There are a number of cool patterns you can do, but the herringbone one fits our house the best.

Besides your 2 paint colors and rollers, you need:

• a good measuring tape
• a level
• a pencil
• painter's tape with edge lock. I went with the narrower tape (~1" thick) because I thought it would look better

As for paint color choices, I've seen this done with a flat and a high gloss of the same color, and it looks awesome too!
The project space began as a nasty beige wall in our ho-hum loft. I can't tell you how much I hate beige! This space was really just a carpeted storage unit, as we had no plan for it and didn't really like its layout. A great accent wall would definitely help!

The best "before" that I have. It's the wall to the right, behind all the junk!

I started by clearing away all that junk, and then I painted the wall a crisp white. One coat of paint is enough, because you are ultimately painting over it.

A beautiful white wall. NO MORE BEIGE!

Since I'm a teacher and all my teacher friends had cabin fever after a week off, I invited over a close friend who needed to get out! She helped me through the stress of measuring, calculating, and deciding how I wanted to do all of this.

I thought it looks best if you work with a 3:4-ish ratio, about 12" h x 16" w. We first measured the wall from side to side, and then we divided it by 16". It wasn't exact, but with some wiggle room (I think it ended up at 15.75"), we wound up with 5 columns of the full V pattern, or 10 half-Vs. We marked the measurements at the top and bottom of the wall. We then added vertical tape lines at every mark and checked straightness with the level.

Next, we measured the vertical length and aimed for dividing it by a foot. It worked out to about 13" to get an even number, making 6 Vs top to bottom. I measured and marked on the tape where each V should start and finish. I then took the level and went all the way across the wall, ensuring that all Vs would start and end at the same height across the whole room.

Finally, as you can see above, we started connecting our vertical marks with tape. Instead of on the horizontal level, we went diagonally from top to bottom, using our vertical lines as a midpoint. Things got a little interesting towards the side, since the wall didn't meet the ceiling at 90 degrees, but I just eyeballed the inner angles at the base of the Vs and made them even.

Once we were done, we ran over everything with a credit card to make sure everything was seriously stuck down.

Don't mind all the junk, we ran out of storage space.

Then came the brave part: the paint. This was scary because I knew there was no turning back! I hesitated for a few days... even though the worst thing that could've happened was that I ripped all the tape off and painted it solid. But that would've been so much work wasted! I finally worked up the guts and gave the whole thing 2 coats of our gray paint.

I let it dry for only about 30 minutes and then started to rip it off. It's easier if the paint is still a bit tacky when you start to pull so it won't rip off any of the dried paint. After that dreaded first tape pull, everything was pretty easy and awesome. Just be careful when pulling off: if your paint is still a bit wet on the tape, you don't want to make a mess.

Pull everything off slowly and admire your work!

Now that it's all done, I looove this room! The bookshelf from my last post is on the opposite wall too, so it's a really cool spot. I am still struggling with decorating, so I will happily take any design and decor tips that you'd like to offer. This will be my sewing/craft room for now, so a desk must be against this wall. Leave me a comment with your decor suggestions!