Stencil A Wall, step by step

Dude, stencils are no joke. But I did it! I bit the bullet and ordered the stencil that John and I have been pining after for the past month (mentioned here a few weeks back). We enjoyed the idea of adding some subtle tone on tone detailing above the chair rail in our office (we did not want anything with too much contrast since it’ll compete with the dark teal built-ins and the lively curtains in the nearby dining room). So we settled on a softer gray tone with a compact pop of color (leftover grellow paint from the adjoining kitchen). At 54 honking dollars it was hardly a drop in the bucket, but let me tell you, this stencil is hardcore. First of all, it is made of especially durable plastic, so I do not have to worry that it will rip or crease while I am taping it, untaping it, and bending it manhandling it to get into the corner crevices (I am fairly sure I would have trashed a thinner stencil after one wall, simply because it is kind of a more rigorous application process than I expected). And let us simply talk about how big it is. It is over two feet tall and nearly two feet wide, so it helps to make things go faster since you do not have to reposition it every three seconds like you would with something smaller.

And yes, this is quite an evil face I am making. No idea why. I remember saying something like “make sure I do not look naked” when John snapped this, but had no idea I was giving off such an I am-the-female-Hannibal-Lecter vibe.

Another way that I am rationalizing my purchase is that we only spent $6.30 on cabinets for the built-ins and $27 to build a 13 foot counter, so perhaps it is time we splurged in the office. Haha. I also figure any type of wallpaper (even the low-cost stuff at Lowe’s and Home Depot) would be way more than $54 for the whole room above the chair rail, so there ya go.

I have in fact never done a giant repeating stencil like this on a wall (we did stencil the floor of our first house’s sunroom) so here is where I will get to the keeping it real part: stenciling is haaard. I am not gonna lie, my arms were cramping after about an hour and it took four and a half solid hours (from 8pm to twelve thirty in the morning) simply to nearly finish one wall (out of the four that I want to do). But in the spirit of sharing things real-time as we go, I could not wait to share the in-progress madness. Here is a close up:

And here is one side of the wall that I nearly completed (I still have to do those last 6″ above the chair rail). Oh but ignore the weird dark and light vertical shadows on the wall (could not wait for the lighting to be better – too impatient and excited to share, haha).

As for my method, here is a little breakdown of what seemed to work for me:

1. I prepped the room by clearing it and tossing a drop cloth over the desk so we would not get paint splatters on it.

2. I used Martha Stewart Craft Stencil Adhesive Spray from Michael’s (purchased with a 40% coupon of course) to spray the back of the stencil before taping it up on the wall with painters tape. This helped the middle parts of the stencil stay close to the wall and not bend out for a pleasant crisp line. I likely repositioned the stencil two or three times before re-spraying it (when I noticed it holding less firmly to the wall I simply took it down and sprayed it and taped it back up for the next application). Oh and you will want to use a large piece of cardboard or drop cloth to spray the back of your stencil so you do not get stick stuff all over the floor).

3. As for where to start, John held the stencil up in the top middle of the wall so we could center the pattern and work out from there in all directions.

4. I also used delicate surface frog tape for holding the stencil up at the top, bottom, and sides (we already had it on hand and I did not want to tear off fresh paint as I moved it around the room so it seemed to do the trick).

5. I used small foam craft brushes (also from Michael’s). They were in short dowels with flat foam pointers.

6. As for how I loaded my little foam brushes, I simply dipped them in the paint (more details on the paint colors later) and dabbed the brush around the lip of the plate to remove excess before tapping it against the wall to apply the stencil.

7. I consistently tapped the wall at a right angle with a not-to-gloppy foam brush for a pleasant clean edge (so the paint would not slip or drip behind the stencil and smear around).

8. If I feared that a little bit of paint somehow got behind the stencil, before repositioning it on the wall for the next application I would lay it on my drop cloth on the floor (face down) and wipe the back with a dry folded paper towel to remove the excess paint. Then I would respray my stencil adhesive and stick it back on the wall for the next application.

9. The way that the stencil is applied means that there are repeats. So you position it right over the last 3″ that you previously stenciled and work your way across the wall that way. I did not wait for the paint to dry before moving the stencil (that would have likely taken five million hours), so I simply took my time applying the paint so nothing got behind the stencil and then matched up the stencil carefully for the repeat and continued on. Since there was no wet paint on the back of the stencil, it was fine to be pressed against the 3″ of wall that was already done, and it did not look any distinct than the non-overlapped part. I wonder if the application of paint was so thin that it was drying truly swiftly so it did not make a difference…

10. The corners were the hardest part. To get the stencil to lay flat against the wall in the corner so you can cram your brush into the small little stencil openings was sort of impossible to get ideal. But I did learn that this stencil is extreeeeemely forgiving (likely because it is a more organic pattern than a regularly spaced geometric one, which would likely make any inconsistencies a lot more obvious). So when I did not quite get deep into all the corners, once it dried it was somehow not obvious at all (a stenciling miracle?). Of course I am not exactly a corner expert because I have only attempted one of them, so as I go around the rest of the room perhaps I will have more pointers.

After about three hours I was here on the first wall:

And after 4.5 hours I had one wall nearly all done (sorry for the terrible picture, I was sort of losing it at this point).

So although I was not fully done with that wall, I chose that 12:31 am meant it was time to put the foam brush down and throw in the towel for the night. And do some finger stretching (I seriously had cramped up hand-claws).

Oh and as for the colors, here you go:

• Walls: Moonshine by Benjamin Moore (color matched to Olympic No-VOC paint in a satin finish)
• Main stencil color: I simply asked the paint folks to give me a half-tint of the wall color (also color matched to Olympic no-VOC paint in a satin finish). This means they simply add half as much tint to the white base as the original formula calls for, so you end up with a half-as-intense tone-on-tone effect.
• Grellow stencil flower accent color: Leftover wall paint from the kitchen, which is Sesame by Benjamin Moore (color matched to Olympic no-VOC paint in semi-gloss). You in fact cannot tell the difference in finish unless the light hits it simply right from the side and the grellow sort of looks iridescent, which is in fact excellent. Yay for glad accidents.

I also made a video to hopefully assist demonstrate the foam brush prepping and actual stenciling part of the process (including a swift demo on corner stenciling):

So that is where I am with the stencil. One wall-above-the-chair-rail nearly done, three more to go. I am planning to tackle another 4+ hours tonight and hopefully can fit in one more session this week (my goal is to be done by Thursday or Friday, soreness permitting). It is certainly one of those projects that you simply need to force yourself to complete as fast as possible – because as soon as you start all you want is to get to the point where you can let out a large sigh and say “so glad that is over!”

But so far I have to admit that it is totally worth the trouble. We are loving the effect (it is sort of like subtle modern wallpaper, not too in your face but not too tame and unnoticeable either). It is sort of the ideal amount of “ooh, look at that” without being too competey and chaotic with the adjoined dining room. And John and I both have said the following sentence about ten times so far: “the pop of color totally makes the whole thing.” So might I recommend a splash of grellow (or any color you enjoy in fact) to take something that is gray on gray to the next (still-kinda-subtle) level?

Ok, now I have to hear from you folks. Have you ever stenciled something, be it an accent wall, piece of furniture, or whole room? Do you have any secrets you’d like to share? How long did it take? Is four and a half hours for the top half of one 13 foot wall (with a big ol’ window in the middle) about right? I might simply be moving at a turtle-like pace. Haha. Simply too nervous about getting paint all down the back of my stencil if I go any faster. Anyway, hopefully I will be back with wrapped up pictures (and perhaps a bulging right bicept from dabbing away) by Thursday or Friday. Until then, picture me standing on a chair at 11pm wearing my inside out painting clothes and listening to shows on Hulu (I tried radio, but somehow hearing Community and Parks & Rec play in the background kept my spirits up a little more).

Psst- I am over on BabyCenter chatting about my go-to kids clothing store and how I save money when it comes to shopping for Clara’s clothes & shoes. Did I mention that I snagged 47 cent shoes on my latest mission? Excited does not even begin to describe it. Check it out here.