Anyone who knows me well, knows I am crazy over stripes. Any time a client is at a loss for what to do, I always throw 'stripe it' out there. It's quick, it's classy, it's my "go to" way to bring a room together.
This week I made a little discovery about getting perfectly perfect stripes. I was doing a horizontal stripe project in a 3 year old boy's room. I had several rolls of Frog Tape for delicate surfaces (the yellow NOT the green), and 1 roll of 3M Delicate Surfaces Painter's Tape (blue, with an orange middle).
Let me back up and tell you first about the base coat. Lately I have been using a lot of Sherwin Williams' Durations paint, in the Matte finish, and this project was no different. The Matte finish dries relatively quickly, and I feel like roller marks and brush strokes are kept to a minimum.
With my basecoat only hours old, I was able to tape right on it and my tape stuck. Both tapes we sticking just fine with minimal burnishing.
Since I was applying 4 different colors, in 4 different sizes, I taped all of the largest sized stripe. I lightly brushed over the edges of the tape, with whatever color would be adjacent to this stripe.
Why would I do that? So that anything that did bleed under the tape, would be the color of the stripe adjacent to it...making any bleed unders invisible. I hope that makes sense.
Once my 'seal down' coat was dry, I rolled on the paint with a 6 or 3" whizz roller. I continued this process with each of the 4 colors. (Typically 1 of your colors will be your bascoat color)
When I pulled my tape down the next day, I was so happy to find that I had no visible bleed unders. I also didn't have any areas where my basecoat pulled up. I have never had that experience with any other paint besides Durations Matte. I have to say I prefer the Frog Tape, only because it gave me completely crisp and perfect lines in the corners of the room and at the ceiling line. So high five Frog Tape! I did not have to eat into my profits at all with any kind of touch ups whatsoever.
