Corporate Circus

On Friday afternoon, I decided it was time for an office makeover. I have been thinking about it for a while, but just never taken the time to do something. Lots of ideas came to mind, but they were all expensive or involved pictures. I wanted something different.

So what started as painting one wall a solid color, evolved in to two walls, then two walls with stripes, then finally, I came to the conclusion that it needed to be harlequin diamonds.

I quickly determined that the room should be purple. As if there were any other choice. I am very committed to purple. There is a purple for everyone.

So just for reference, this is what I started with. Oh look, there is Harry making an appearance!

Ugh, so dull.

At least the walls were white and did not need much priming or cleaning off!

Mom and I set out for Lowe's on Saturday morning and as much as you think that colors like "Sonic Plum" or "Rollick" would be a good idea, you may want to listen to your mother and go with the less intense, "Grapolicious".

So I ended up with "Imperial Lilac" and "Grapolicious". I seriously considered "Sassy Lilac", but then I decided I should stop picking colors because of their names. These are all Valspar colors by the way. I bought a gallon of each, not really sure how much of both I would use.


And so it begins! I painted the lighter of the purple all over the walls. I would also like to take a moment and talk about Tape. I love me some Scotch, but really, the blue painters tape is kind of worthless. It is terrible and it bleeds unless you go over it with a seam roller. Like most people I do not have a tiny steam roller, so I opted to try the new FrogTape. This stuff is amazing! While not completely perfect, it was pretty close. Well worth the money when doing projects that require really sharp, clean edges. Just don't let your mom's dog chew on it... It kind of ruins the "paint block" technology...

Once the base coat was on, I began drawing off the diamonds. A good rule when doing these, is to make the diamond twice as high as it is wide. Mine are two feet tall and one foot wide. I highly recommend making a paper pattern as well because you will need this to get into the corners and around doors. You will also need a level, pencil, and a yard stick or two foot ruler.

WARNING: This is very time consuming and requires lots of patience. Which apparently I had in truckloads this weekend. As I drew them off, I marked the ones I would be painting with a "P" because it is kind of trippy if you don't.

After I drew off the entire wall I taped every other diamond off with my FrogTape.

Then I gave each diamond two coats of paint.

I then let them dry and to conserve tape, reused the other side of the tape to make the most of it for the other unpainted diamonds.

I had some motherly assistance with this just because I wanted to finish this wall so I could work on Monday.

Finally we pulled the tape off, touched up the edges where they needed it, and Voila! Harlequin wall!

I am absolutely thrilled with the result!


Next up: Circus Decor!