A Peek at Life as a Natic

Dont forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures Preston’s Nursery Painted at pictures.neilnatic.com or here.

So this nursery has turned out to be a TON harder than I ever imagined… no … not the wood work – the paint!  Really?!?  Is painting really that hard?  Apparently so

So after the lines were all taped off I went ahead and through the high gloss paint on there to get the different sheens which will create the appearance of 2 different colors.  In reality they are the exact same color with two sheens.  Most people use a flat for the entire wall, tape off the stripes, and then paint the semi gloss paint in the taped of stripes.  Well, since it will be in a nursery, we decided to go with a satin paint and then use a high gloss to create the sheen contrast.  – yeah- terrible idea.  So after spending HOURS taping off the high gloss stripes and then painting them, we pulled some of the tape down only to find out that we could not see the difference in the sheens very well at all.  We then tried to put a high gloss polyurethane over the high gloss stripes to add additional sheen – no go!

Flash makes it look better... look at right wall

After debating on whether to give up on this project or move the tape over to the satin stripes (which is another 3 hours of work alone) I decided to do it right.  I took all of the tape down, moved it all over to the satin and bought another gallon of the paint – this time in flat like it should have been the whole time.  I painted the stripes as well as the rest of the walls (other than the high gloss stripes) so that it would all match.  I was through the roof livid to find out that we still could not see the stripes.  Talk about mad -  I was piiiiiissed!  I was so frustrated.  I wasted so many hours in this nursery and still dont have the look that we want and it is the paint that is giving us such a hard time!  Really?!?!

So after much debate I decided to bring the flat paint back up to Lowes and have them add an additional 25% of the color back into the paint.  Came back home and painted just the stripes in this new very slightly darker color.  Removed the tape and ….. PRESTO!  it worked!!!

Stripes Painted

I have no clue why the normal method for this type of look was such a failure for us… I just dont get it, but I do know that this worked for us:  Flat paint with +25% color next to a high gloss of the same exact color (other than the +25%).

It looks great and we are so excited about having this done.  I just need to retape a bunch of the stripes and fix where the paint decided to pull the paint off of the wall.  Unfortunately, this whole process took too long and the tape really started to adhere to the walls too much.

Check out the gallery for pics of the nursery in its current state!