apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I think this is great. There's something nice about the shade of blue chosen for painter's tape. As a matter of fact, there is an installation artist named Chris Hiebert that creates work by doing just that: cutting blue painter's tape and placing it on a white wall.

Jill, despite the fact that I work with you, seeing these pictures convinces me that you really may be totally nuts. Where do you get the patience to cut and stick on all that tape? And now you're going to paint the whole thing green before you peel away the paint!! Boy, am I glad that my walls scarcely go over my head.

Two words: Wall. Paper. :)

Curtis may have met his wall-taping soulmate!

This is what I love about this site - when people post insane projects like this and let us into their worlds that they think are quite normal. You can never imagine when you pass someone on the street that they may going home to boxcut painters' tape and painstakingly tape it to giant walls.

I like how it looks with the tape. It's creating its own pattern in the pix. How long is this taking? Can't wait to see the final outcome.

Jill, have you done this before, or seen it done?

If you want the hell scared out of you, maybe I should put the progress shots of the tiny little vintage wallpaper pattern that I adapteda and copied in my kitchen. Much of it teeny, tiny stripelets. Oy.

I'm a little confused, though, did you, then, paint over the tape and remove it? Or just use the tape as the stripes?

Great post Pixie. Will make me look differently now at the people I pass on the steet.

wow, this is fantastic!

and I for one would love to see Curtis' progress pictures

I love it. I think it would be so neat to put in a few circles. They could be solid colors...mmmm-what is the adjective to go with the wall?

Curtis, yes, progress shots. I see a future AT contest brewing here.

Well, OK, you've twisted my arm. Guido & Pixie, you are both freakishly strong! My little flickr thing here will show you the pattern in the kitchen, but I haven't been able to face putting up progress shots yet.

Let's just put it this way -- it was kind of like doing off-set printing of actual walllpaper, except doing it AFTER installing the paper. In other words, I did one color at a time, and usually one motif-let at a time, etc.

Only because my physical address is not on here do I not fear that one of you will call the couturiers to fit me with those lovely white coats with the arms in the back.

jill, in what burrough did you find a loft like that?

I hope the paint's adhesion to the wall is greater than the tensile strength of the paint it self, otherwise much of the paint could come off when you pull off the tape.

Sorry, I'm an engineer, we're trained to seek out failure.

Jill: Awesome. I really want to see the finished result.

Curtis: AMAZING.

Curtis--I can't believe you've done all that. Has AT every featured your work? I think it should.

xxx- Thanxxx.

Pixie- Thanx, and I entered that bathroom in the "My Bathroom Rocks" contest, but I couldn't find it on here the other day when I was looking for it. Am happy as a clam (AND nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs) to be currently entered in the current contest.

Thanks everyone for the encouragement and or confirmation of my OCD tendencies. I live in Manhattan in response to the borough question. As for the next steps. I have to finish the taping and then I am going to paint the entire wall green. I will peel the blue tape off at that point and hopefully be left with green where the white is currently and white where the blue is currently. While some have expressed concern about the paint strength, others have worried about whether the tape will come off that easily after being up longer than the recommended 30 days (as written on the roll). We shall see.

Jill,

I like your moxy although I worry about your state of mind if the tape removal also removes the green paint. If that proves to be the case, I'd leave the tape up. You'll still have a gorgeously dimensional green wall.

Reef

Jill, perhaps you are going to peel that blue off pretty soon after you apply the paint? I think you'll be fine. I'm totally jazzed to see it.

CURTIS
the kitchen made me lose my breath
and the description of offset printing wallpaper once it's on the wall . . . you funny! Fan fan fan FANTASTIC

Jill, no wonder my mother worried about you when she saw the beginning of Phase One. Now it is even more clear to me why you thought nothing of sawing up the back of my multi-purpose closet - by contrast, it is nothing.

I personally love the notion that the person next to me in a grocery checkout line may go home and spend hours of private glee sticking tape strips to their walls. Your alpha waves must be awesome. What music do you listen to while you do it, Steve Reich?

Pollyanna thought for the day: if some of the green paint comes off with the tape, it might even be more interesting than you expected.

For goodness sake, hurry up and finish it and send us a picture of the results!

Au

PS

Is the moire effect seen in the pictures actual, or just a result of the photography? I hope the former!

Au

Just paint some windows on it and you will have a wall mural!.Why don't you get down off your ladder, get an easel and start oil paintings!

Check out the UK 2005 Turner Prize finalists - one of them is an installation artist who's work is very similar - maybe we should be viewing her work in an art gallery instead of at home!

ALison
PS I'm the PR for Europe by Net...

I am trying to track down Alison Johnson from Gouverneur, NY. if this is her, please e-mail me at harrisshafer@yahoo.com

so were is the end result???

For anyone else who happens by, do a search using the words Jill's Stage. Select thumbnails and look for an apple green wall. Thta is the end result.
I personally think it would have been less trouble to draw chalk lines on the wall and hand paint green stripes following the lines.
I was interested to see how it turned out because I was considering it for my bedroom. Too fiddly for the result IMHO

Jill, you're the bomb!
I am amazed at this. I love the result. Was it meditative to do this? It must have been such a rush to start peeling after all that time taping.

Be careful, or others will pay you to do this and then you'll be putting up teeny, squiggly tape forever.

Jill, I lurve the wall...and you. The finished product is gorgeous but the process was even more gorgeous: inspiring through and through.

Jill - when you came to take pictures for my house tour you told me about a color website that suggests colors for different light exposures...can you give me the web address for that? I also think it should be featured on the site, since many would be interested. Surprise, surprise...I am thinking of painting various rooms again ;-).

the stripes are gorgeous! and curtis, I love the stencils. Really, I think investing the time into the paint is a whole lot easier than wallpaper--especially when you consider how damn long it takes to strip wallpaper when you get tired of it.

I stenciled the top half of my dining room to look like damask wallpaper, and I don't regret a minute of my own ocd obssessions and execution.

this is cool. great job

I saw an episode of Nancy Travis' show where they used a squeegee and notched it. They painted the wall and then used the squeegee to make stripes, it looked awesome. They actually went a step further by also doing vertical stripes as well