I was in a mood to create and I had been feeling like I wanted a fun project for my house beds. I came across a few different reels of people painting stripes on dressers or chairs and I got so inspired to try this on one of my montessori house beds!
I'll be honest, I thought this was going to be such an easy project. Like I for sure thought I would have it done in one day or less. How hard could painting stripes on a piece of furniture actually be? Boy was I wrong!! The amount of time I spent on just cutting the tape to make the stripes, not to mention wrapping the tape around each board and making sure they were equally apart and lined up right on each end. And that there weren't bubbles in the tape or that they weren't crooked (spoiler alert, a lot of them ended up a little crooked.. but only I can tell probably and so it doesn't matter).
Here's a before picture
Was this striped house bed an easy project? I mean... yes. It's pretty straight forward and therefore easy. But it is super tedious. I won't lie! Rather than it taking a day like I first anticipated, this ended up taking about a week and a half with working on it here and there when I could! Even though it was super tedious though, it was so sooo worth it in the end! I am sooo beyond happy with how it turned out! Especially with the color combo of the brown with the green board and batten wall in the background! Okay here's a little bit more of my step by step process to painting a house bed!
This was for sure the hardest part in my opinion- making sure all of the tape laid flat. But eventually, after messing around with enough of them, I got the hang of it and was able to get them to lay mostly flat without being too crooked. haha!
Hours and hours and hours of taping!
Audiobooks I listened to during this project: The Midnight Library and The Wedding People. I really loved both of them and feel like they kinda had some overlapping themes a little bit! Let me know if you've read either of them and how you liked them! This was one of my favorite quotes in the book.
The number one step you don't want to miss when painting a piece of furniture, or really anything that you have tape, is painting your base color first!! Please please please do not skip this step! You can thank me later! It is the trick to nice crispy lines. I've tried all the brands of tape and I've never had luck with paint not leaking under the tape and ruining everything. So this is really worth the extra time and will save you sooo much time later from fixing all the paint that might possibly leak!
Finally the best step! Painting the stripes! EEEKKKK! When I got to this point I could not wait to get this finished! I felt so close and was so ready to see how the finished bed would look with these brown painted stripes!
Brown paint color I used: SW Muted Mahogany
Green wall paint color: SW Cocoon
White bed base color: SW Pure White
I did 2 coats of the brown paint to make sure you couldn't see streaks of the white underneath! And it was tricky making sure I didn't miss any of the spots! I only had limited paint and didn't want to go get more. If I did this again, I'd make sure I had enough paint and would just roll the whole thing!
Okay just kidding. Taking off the tape and seeing those crispy paint lines and the bron stripes was for sure the best part!!! Projects are soo much more work than you ever anticipate. But this!? THIS is the part where it's finally all worth it!!
Here's the white house bed before one more time...
And here's the after !!!
Hopefully this inspired you in some way! I'd love to see if you end up painting stripes on something in your home! You can always send an email or a DM on instagram @rubyryeco !
Happy creating!
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