Tag: ivory

Home Improvement, Paint

Chevron Accent Wall

Jessica Smith

Last night I was beyond hyper and spontaneously decided to tackle my faux backsplash/accent wall in my laundry room. I think my spontaneity was key in the project, otherwise I would have over thought everything from the design to the colors.

I have seen so many designs online lately for accent walls: quatrefoil, shell, stripes, chevron… you name it, it’s been done. In my cracked out state, I went with a segmented chevron pattern and I LOVE IT. Also, it was way easy. Way.

I was too into groovin’ to my sweet tunes last night to take a ton of photos (imagine a quality mix of Bohemian rhapsody, Baby got back and Beloved)  but here’s the gist of what I did: I wanted the wall color to show through my pattern so it tied the accent wall into the rest of the space, so using 1″ tape I taped vertical stripes on my wall with no intention of filling them in. I spaced my lines out using a small level as my measurement. Honestly, I did this to avoid doing math. It’s about 9″ wide and was a perfect spacer. It also doubled as a level — go figure. I made sure my lines were pretty darn straight. They weren’t perfect, but they were mostly straight.

Then, I started to create my chevron pattern. I grabbed a pen and started marking my tape where other pieces of tape needed to intersect. Again, I used my level as a spacer. I placed it at the top of my cabinet and marked at the bottom, continuing until it wouldn’t fit anymore. I did this for all of the tape, then connected the dots.

Here’s a fun tip — if and when you run out of your painter’s tape, and if you just so happen to have masking tape or washi tape in the same width, you can use it as a substitute for painter’s tape. Yes, this happened. I was sad to paint over my mint tape, but didn’t want to lost my awesome energy and stamina with the project so I made the sacrifice.

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall taped up

With my pattern taped and ready to paint, I started to apply my paint colors: metallic gold (Thanks, Martha!) and ivory/manilla. I originally was going to do something with bolder pops of color, but went for the metallic paint as my bold choice. I also was going to add a third color, but my pattern only took up so much room and the third color probably wouldn’t have added anything to it.

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall taped up and painted

I painted two coats of each color onto the stripes before removing all of the tape.

*Drumroll*

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall

Love love love love love love love. Love. Had I thought this project out more, I probably would have gone with a mint or teal chevron stripe, but I am so glad I didn’t. I think the gold tones play off the countertop wonderfully, and make the gray cabinets pop even more.

I started this project after dinner at 5:30(ish) and was cleaning up at 7:30 p.m. — not to bad for the fabulous result!

BEFORE:

{A Smith of All Trades} Laundry Room

AFTER:{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall again

Craft Projects, Thrift Store Finds

Twice-redone bird candelabra

Jessica Smith

Two or so years ago I found the neatest candelabra at a thrift store and I just had to have it. The problem was, it was black and red — so not my colors. Either way, I picked it up and brought it home. It stayed black with red birds for at least a year, probably because we had a lot of red decor from both being Maryland grads.

Forgive the photo — I didn’t have a craft blog two years ago — but if you look in the top right of the photo you can see my candelabra in its original state on top of the cabinets in our rental home.

When I finally got around to painting it, I chose an ivory paint for the branches and a navy paint for the birds. It was definitely an improvement, and stayed this way for at least a year.

But let’s keep it real, I’m an aqua girl through and through, so my little candelabra needed another update to fit into our home. I pulled out some paint to take this candelabra to the next level: A lighter blue for the birds, a bluish-green for the leaves, and black accents along the branches.

I really like the more rustic look of the candelabra now, and I think it will fit into our home and decor much better now.

Moral of this post: Just because you’ve refinished something once, doesn’t mean you can’t do it again!