Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Seeing Chevron

Way back in April, when I first posted about our dining room, I had mentioned wanting to add a touch of chevron in the form of either curtain panels or a large dining room suitable rug.  For now, I decided to go the chevron curtain route since we already owned a set of plain white Ritva panels from IKEA that would make the perfect blank canvas for a little chevron painting fun.

Here are our supplies:

I color matched a beautiful rich, deep chocolate brown paint color (I have since misplaced the paint chip so I'm not sure of the exact color...sorry!) to a flat 'One by Olympic' gallon of paint that we picked up on sale at Lowe's.  We also used textile medium in our paint (1:2 ratio of medium to paint) to make the paint more flexible when dry.  The curtain would be washable if I heat set the paint/textile medium combo with an iron, although I'm not sure I'd trust it in my washing machine:).  

In the future, I'd love to do a mini test to see how much impact the textile medium has on fabric flexibility and prevention of cracking, although the medium was not that expensive.  I used about 1 1/2 bottles of textile medium, and I stuck closely to the 1:2 ratio (medium to paint) recommended by the manufacturer.  Full price the bottles are $7.99 each at Joann's (located by the acrylic paints), but I used coupons on both bottles making the total for 2 bottles around $9.

When I first added the textile medium to the paint, I was worried that it would affect the color of my paint because the medium is a thick, white product, but my dark, brown paint color was not changed with the addition of textile medium.  I mixed the paint and medium together in a blue plastic cup:

We save our Red Solo cups for other things:).

And then I poured the paint into a paint tray within a cardboard box (to be safe since I was painting on the floor in our great room):



As for decisions on the size of the chevron stripes we wanted to make, I looked to this tutorial from the blog A Drop in the Bucket:


Shalynn used this spacing to create her bold chevron stripes (painted on a huge $20 drop cloth...brilliant!)


For our purposes, I decided that the 6 inch stripes would be a bit too thick for our space, so we decided on 4 inch stripes but kept the 12 inch spacing between peaks in place.  (In retrospect, I wish I would have drawn out our proposed spacing on a big piece of poster board so I could get the feeling of the stripe size.  I think I would have landed on an even smaller stripe size...like 3 inches or maybe even 2 inches.  Next time:).)

My amazing husband marked and taped out the curtain panels for me:

We just used the tape we had on hand, although it was much easier to paint when 2 pieces of 2" tape were placed side by side to create the four inch 'white' sections of the chevron pattern because there were no gaps, thus no opportunites for a roller to sneak over a tape line into the wrong section.

After taping, Bill needed a break so he laid down for a minute in Charm's room.  The kids created a colorful Daddy mountain while he rested his back and knees:

That's Bill under the pile of rugs, blankets, pillows and stuffed animals.


.,
His left hand is under this carefully placed pile of feathers.


The Daddy emerges...and a 30 minute feather pickup ensues.


And now back to the curtains.  Here is the second panel that was taped using 2 inch painter's tape:  



Painting it was super easy, since I didn't have to think about what parts needed to stay white versus being painted.  Any exposed part of the curtain got painted.



Here is the same curtain panel after I applied a second coat of paint:
I painted 3 or 4 stripes at a time and then removed the tape around those stripes to give me the best chance of having clean lines.  It worked well!!  Here are some more pictures:





And for a little fun, here's our dining room last year:


Add a basket wall, a chalkboard menu, wall art, a homemade curtain rod, a new dining bench (and table), new to us dining room chairs, a settee and now chevron curtains.  Then takeaway 2 booster seats, and here is our dining room now:














It's amazing what a difference a year makes!  Is anyone else chevron happy?  

Don't forget to enter my Christmas Starbucks Giftcard Giveaway if you haven't done so already...your odds are really good for this one:)!

Linking up to The Shabby Nest.

Home Stories A2Z

Linking up to Passionately Perfect.
Linking up to Thrifty Decor Chick.

14 comments:

  1. The difference in your dining room from last year is huge! looks wonderful!

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  2. Wow! Those curtains add so much! They look like they took a lot of time, especially the taping. Good work b & b!

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  3. Oh wow, this is amazing! It turned out more than great. Compliments!

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  4. WoW! Your curtains came out so good! I would love if you would come link up over at Passionatelyperfect.com!

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  5. Thank you for all the nice comments!! They are making me smile whenever I see them:).

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  6. wow beth! it's so awesome to see a finished project that was inspired by one of my own. they turned out amazing and i love your dining room all together! thanks for posting on my blog so i could see your work. and i might need to steal that settee!! genius for dining seating!

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  7. Love your dining room especially those drapes!! They are awesome!! New follower to your blog from the Show Us Your House link-up. Hope you check mine out.

    www.ginnybrumback.blogspot.com

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    1. Thanks Ginny! Off to check out your blog now:)!

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  8. Those look amazing! I've been wanting to do this to make a custom curtain to cover our wardrobe. They look fantastic with that light fixture too.

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  9. Absolutely amazing transformation! Your husband gets the gold star for all of that marking and taping. Love the settee, basket wall, pops of blue and green, the drum light...it all looks great!

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  10. Thanks Jennifer! Yeah, big gold star for Bill...except now I've got to convince him to help me with a couple more panels for the 2nd set of windows in that room. Wish me luck:)!

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