Baby is coming soon and the nesting urge is strong. I'm going to be spending a lot of time in baby's room, so I want it to be a happy, comfortable place. I also don't want to redecorate in two years, so I want something bright and colorful that will last baby for at least 5-6 years. We don't know if we're having a boy or girl, so we opted for a gender neutral woodland animal theme. Most of the rooms in our house feature a bright accent wall, and baby's room will be no exception. I found adorable birch tree vinyl clings on Etsy, but holy cow are they spendy! I wasn't going to pay $90 for a tree or two, so I Googled DIY birch tree mural and found this great tutorial from Better Homes and Gardens and somehow convinced Carl and myself that this would be "easy." Ha ha.
Step 1: Tape and Spackle
Ok, this was clearly an obvious step I didn't need to include, but it gave me an excuse to post an adorable picture of Barley "helping." It also gives me an opportunity to vent about the crazy track marks that were all over my walls. Seriously, what could have caused these marks about 4 feet off the floor?
Step 2: Pick the paint colors
After going to four different paint stores to pick up paint samples and spending far too many hours reading about allegedly-pregnancy-safe Low and Zero-VOC paints, we eventually decided on Sherwin Williams SW 6425 Relentless Olive. I'd read good things about their Harmony paint, and the color matched the green in our crib sheets almost perfectly, so it was a great match. Only problem - I was convinced we'd only need a quart of such a "high quality" paint to do the single wall, and the Harmony didn't come in quarts, only gallons. Rather than trust Carl and just get the gallon, I was silly and we opted for a quart in the same color of another Sherwin Williams low VOC paint, Duration. I regret this decision. The Duration paint covered really poorly. One quart barely covered a single coat of the wall, and then dried with sickly yellow streaks. My last painting project, Indigo's room, used Behr Marquee in a super-saturated purple color. That paint is a dream to work with and costs less than the Duration, so I was really, really disappointed with the Sherwin Williams paint performance. We weren't sure what color we wanted the rest of the walls when we picked up the olive paint, but we did pick up two samples. I painted test swatches of those and decided I didn't like either of them. I swear there are two different test swatches painted on this wall. One was just so close to the original light tan that it's almost indistinguishable.
So, needing more paint and to make a decision, we trudged back up to the Sherwin Williams store and went back to the wall of color swatches. It was at this point we realized that there were recommended coordinating colors on the back of each of them, and found the SW 9165 Gossamer Veil we ultimately went with. We probably should have gotten a sample, but I really didn't want to make another trip to the paint store, so we just went for the gallon right away.
Step 3: Painting the room
The second coat of the Duration went on better than the first, but there were still some light spots. I wish I'd just gone for the gallon the second time around as well, because I have barely enough left to do some touch ups, even after making sure the trees covered the lightest spots.
I also hadn't done the math on the Gossamer Veil when we picked that up, so, of course, we needed two gallons and had to go back, again. The Harmony paint covered a lot better than the Duration, but the second coat definitely helped even out the coverage. I still wouldn't buy it again.
Step 4: Taping the trees
Next step was to mask off the outline of the trees. This took a little trial and error to get it right. The good news: Trees aren't perfect, so your lines don't have to be either. We got some of the really expensive painters tape for this so it wouldn't bleed as much, but even in the places it did, it kind of adds to the character of the trees, so I wouldn't worry too much about getting your tape lines perfect. That said, as you can see in the pictures above, sometimes you'll decide the first outlines you taped aren't quite what you wanted. I can't count the number of times I stepped back, looked at the wall, sent pictures to Carl, then repositioned my tape a bit until I was happy with it. This iterative process resulted in a look I'm really happy with, but it was slow and tedious and made feel feel like I was spending too much time as a pregnant lady in a paint fume-filled room (Rest assured my doctor said latex paint was ok and we had a ton of fans going for circulation.) If I ever did this again, I'd probably sketch out what I wanted the trees to look like first, then try to transfer that approximate design to the wall instead of using the wall as my experimental canvas.
I didn't want just any trees on the wall - I wanted birch tress, and birch trees have those characteristic little birch marks. To do those, I tore my painters tape in half or sometimes even in thirds lengthwise to get narrow strips. I then randomly positioned them going up the tree. To make little tree knots, I took a wider piece of tape and placed it parallel to the tree trunk, then made smaller outlines with thinner pieces of tape. The intersections between trunks and branches were harder. This required tearing the tape precisely so it lined up nicely. Some of these didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, and will be touched up with a small paint brush later.
Step 5: Painting the trees
Next came painting. I used a 3" roller and the same Gossamer Veil paint as we used on the walls. I used two coats to get a nice bright white tree, even though I also liked the suggestion of using a single coat for more muted trees. With the darkness of our background, I felt like we needed the brighter trees to help brighten up the room. Once the paint was dry, I slowly and carefully removed all the painters tape. This was easier said than done. The tiny pieces of tape shredded as I tore them off, especially pieces that had been the middle third of the original tape pieces. I unfortunately never did come up with an efficient system for effectively getting all the tape bits off the wall, and I can pretty much guarantee there's still some in my trees.
Once the tape is removed from the trees, you're done! Time to clean up and admire your work, and then *maybe* build a birdhouse night light to live in one of the trees. We'll see if we have time for that one.
What's that half yellow stick next to the door? Oh, only the dye sample for my next nursery DIY: RIT Dyed IKEA Sniglar Crib
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