What I'm Loving: High Gloss Walls

For the ultimate in glamorous interiors you can't do much better than high gloss walls. Super shiny and lustrous almost to the point of blinding, high gloss walls are definitely a scene stealer in any room.  Unfortunately, if you're like me and your walls are textured, high gloss walls just aren't for you.  By nature, high gloss paint will accentuate every single bump and imperfection making textured walls a big, shiny mess. Not pretty.

The pros of shiny, high gloss paint is that it's incredibly durable and scrubable. Yes Spell Check, "scrubable" is a word, so spare me the red squiggly underline, mmkay?   So, if you've got kids and/or pets running amok with crayons, jelly-covered tiny fingers or this situation:

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you'll enjoy the scrubability of high gloss walls. If you decide to add some serious drama with high gloss paint, I'd like to highly recommend you hire a professional painter.  Sure you could do it yourself but if you're like me and you want perfection but lack the patience to fill, smooth and sand every single imperfection to a super-smooth finish......seriously, just hire a painter this once.

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If you can't commit to lacquering an entire room, how about just the ceiling? 

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Or kitchen cabinets:

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P.S. Anyone out there watching "It's a Brad, Brad World"?  I am officially hooked on Brad.  This show came along just in the nick of time.  Without any new episodes of "Flipping Out" to satisfy my reality show needs, I was thisclose to "accidentally" watching an episode of RHOBH or the Bachelor.  Shameful.

Stencil Fail and Lesson Learned



I wholeheartedly advocate finding cost cutting ways to decorate a home.  I absolutely believe that anyone can get great style and tons of impact without spending a lot of money.   Great style on any budget -  yadda, yadda, big fat yadda.  A while back, I got a bug in my ear about dressing up my boring guest bedroom.  I’d LOOOOVE to do some really gorgeous wallpaper on the headboard wall and glam the place up big time but alas, wallpaper is not in the budget and it’s a little outside my comfort zone to try to install on my own.    




Photos from osborneandlittle.com

 

 Well, imagine the thrill, the absolute THRILL when I stumbled upon inspiring posts like this one over on Fresh Crush  (I will remain eternally amazed and insanely jealous of her perfect-looking application!).  Inspired to the gills and raring to get my stencil on I headed out to pick up my supplies.   Back home with my loot and a wide open weekend stretched out ahead of me I began.

 After cutting out my stencil, getting my paint and brushes ready, finding the center of my wall, cranking some “I’m in the mood to paint and rock!” tunes, I rolled on my first bit of to-die-for-cerulean paint.  A few rolls of my sponge later I gingerly peeled back the stencil, excitement barely contained and right away I thought to myself, “This, is gonna look like shit”.    But I kept at it because clearly I have masochistic tendencies. 

Here began the desperate process of deluding myself. 

“I’ll just do a couple of rows and see what I think then”,   I said. 

“It’ll get easier the more you do it”, I said. 

“You can always go back over the edges after it’s finished”, I said. 

“No one’s gonna see all the imperfections once the room is put together”, I said.