Painting a Chevron Wall

Seeking a way to add some visual interest to our basement family room and office space, we decided the most affordable thing to do would be to paint chevron stripes on a wall!  At first I was unsure if we’d be able to complete the task with precision and accuracy, but Cenita convinced me we could do it!

We completed the project over two weekends.  On the first weekend I painted the entire basement in a fresh coat of semi-gloss white paint.  On the second weekend, the fun began!  

We started at the top of the wall and used a pencil to mark every 12 inches across.  Then we measured 8 inches down and then marked every 12” across.  We continued this until we reached the bottom of the wall.  Challenge: the wall was not perfectly even on the sides which effected our measurements slightly.  We were worried about this but decided to continue and adjust the tape slightly once we began creating the design.

We used a level to get the lines of dots as even and accurate as possible.

We used Frog tape to connect the dots from alternating rows to create the peaks and valleys of the chevron design. We later went back and trimmed the tape to ensure that the portions to be painted had sharp points.  

We painted every other chevron row with two coats of Semi-gloss Behr Dolphin Fin.  Tip:  Cenita suggested we keep warm soapy water and a clean cloth on hand as we began to paint.  Boy was that the best suggestion of the day! We were able to quickly and neatly clean-up any sprays and accidental rolls of gray on the white.

We let the paint dry overnight then removed the Frog Tape.  Challenge: The Frog tape made excellent clean straight lines and had little bleeding.  However...the Frog Tape was pulling up the base white paint when removed!  I was really disturbed by this.  After all that hard work...  I decided I’d just have to paint over the spotty portions with white paint and a small brush.  These spots might not have been visible to others but I knew they were there!  

Despite the minor hick-ups, the end result was pretty awesome!

Supplies:

Frog Tape
gray paint
paint trays
3 inch roller
Painter’s Tape
cut brush
pencils
level 
12 inch ruler


Tip:  I mentioned the paint-sticking-to-tape issue to a paint specialist on my next trip to Home Depot.  He asked what kind of paint was underneath the new coat of white paint.  When I responded semi-gloss he said that was the issue.  Paint needs something to adhere to, especially semi-gloss since it’s slicker and meant to repel liquids/moisture.  He said if you are painting over semi-gloss paint, it is best to scour the wall with some sand paper first.  Nothing too aggressive, just enough to give the new coat of paint some thing to stick to.