Orange slice.

Hello people! Sorry for the absence. Things have been nuts around here. Seriously. I have a lot to share, including a wonderful visit from the sweetest niece and nephew a guy and gal could ask for, but right now I'll stick with my impromptu home improvement project. Am I the only one who chooses the absolutely worst possible moments to start new projects??

The timing was bad, but I've actually been wanting to do something to spruce up the kitchen for a while. It is a beautifully bright space (yellow walls with a bright blue paint on the wall above the sink) but I thought it desperately needed a backsplash. In our last place our landlord beautifully restored the apartment and was very serious about what we did to the walls (3M Command Strips are AMAZING). Although this house is nice, it's nothing like the cleanly restored look of our old place and the property management company left us with "do whatever you want as long as we can't tell when you move out." Great...don't mind if we do!

I decided it the kitchen needed just a little pop and started combing the internet. My favorite bold walls were created with paint as a way cheaper alternative to wallpaper. I love geometric patterns decided to hop on the chevron bandwagon - I love the clean lines...like stripes on crack! I picked some inspiration walls:

Via

Via

Then I went to Home Depot. I'm not sure what I was thinking because I've never really taken on a project like this before, but the people there are so nice. The lady at the paint counter helped me find everything I needed. I picked an orange (surprise surprise, right?!) based on the beautiful blue/orange combo in the curtains my grandma made me for the old house (that happen to work nicely in the new one) - plus with our funky blue diner booth and our orange teapot, it all seemed to work together nicely. 

The paint is Glidden semi-gloss - Orange Slice. How delightful. :)

Then came the most tedious part....taping. And measuring. And more taping. And more measuring. I had the fabulous (albeit completely sexist) Don Draper to keep me company (I'm gearing up for the season premier, March 25th!). I am totally weird and crazy about things being even and nicely done. When I read some tutorials for how to paint this pattern, all the good ones involved measuring so I went ahead and put the extra time in at the beginning so they'd turn out nicely. After the grids were taped, I used a super sharp knife (Exacto would work best...I used a sharp kitchen knife) to cut the tape ends to form my chevron pattern. And voilà! 

Once I had my pattern, on came the paint. The nice Home Depot lady warned me I'd need at least two layers for such a bright color. I ended up doing three. Then off came the tape! It actually turned out better than I was anticipating. The lines weren't exactly as crisp as possible, but for the size of the chevrons you really can't notice unless you look super close.

Layer uno.

Layer dos or tres. I don't remember. 

I put all the counter stuff back and finished up with some retro sign letters I bought at an antique store last weekend. I stared at it for so long while doing it that by the time I was finished I really didn't know if I liked it! Christian assured me that it was awesome and I've really grown to love it. I think it adds an extra pop of color that brightens up the kitchen nicely (please ignore my sink of dirty dishes).

Next post: all about the wonderful babies!!!! (And their parents!) Being an aunt/uncle is the very best. I don't think we've ever had more fun in our lives. :)