Stripes!

I caught a serious painting bug. Sean says it seems to coincide with the sudden energy I have since recuperating from my gall bladder surgery. I want to paint everything!
I recently did stripes in our family room. I received some tips from a friend who had done stripes herself, and I thought I would share.

First step: Choose colors. Paint your wall the base color and let dry.
Second step: Measure your wall from floor to ceiling. Mine was 96 inches from floor to ceiling.
               Decide how many stripes you want. I wanted 6.
               Divide the total inches of the wall by the number of stripes that you want. I got 16 inches.
          *It is much easier to measure out even numbers, so play around with it a little and try to get as close as possible to an inch mark.

Third Step: Measure and cut a cardboard box or cereal box to the number of inches that you decided on. I taped the folds on the box so it would be sturdy.
                    

Fourth step: Start at the floor and use your box as your guide. Do not start at the stop of your baseboard, start at the floor for your first stripe. Use a pencil to trace the top of the box. Move along the wall until you have your entire line. Occasionally I would get out my tape measure and measure my lines to make sure everything was staying even.
For your second line, line the bottom of your box guide up with the line you created and start again. Make sure to take your time and line everything up.
Continue moving up the wall until it is all done.

Fifth step: Tape! You will want to tape the edge of the adjacent walls to make sure that your stripes do not bleed on to them.
                Tape around windows, fire places, etc. If your stripe next to the ceiling will be painted, tape off the edge of the ceiling as well.
                The stripe closest to the floor will be your base coat color. Take your "lock tape" and line the tape up JUST UNDERNEATH the first pencil line from the floor all the way across the wall. Take your time to line it up and make sure you can see the entire pencil line.
For the next line, place the tape directly ABOVE the entire pencil line.
Your third line the tape will be just UNDERNEATH the pencil line again. Continue that pattern up the wall.

Sixth Step: Take a paint brush or sponge brush and paint a line of your base coat color over your tape. This will cover your pencil markings and seal your tape so it WILL NOT BLEED. Don't skip this step. It gives you nice, crisp lines.

Seventh Step: Paint your stripes! Remember that you start with your color on the second stripe up from the ground. Doing these three stripes took me less than a half gallon of paint.

Final Step: When you are done painting your stripes, remove your tape while the paint is still wet. If you don't, the paint will dry on to the tape and pull it up when you take the tape off.

It really was not hard, and I love the results!

(Sorry about the quality of the pictures. I have to paint at night while my kids are in bed. :) )