So Lunchbox got a new room a while ago… I couldn’t leave Turbo out! He’s a little older, so his room needed to be a bit more…mature. After all, he’s eight for frick’s sake!
He’s been on this city-theme kick for a little while, and I’m a skyline-loving girl myself (probably my soul missing NYC as it drowns here in the boonies. But at least we have grass. And trees. And huge bugs… but I digress.) So we decided to do a city theme for Turbo. He had already picked out some great prints from our last trip to IKEA. (If you are sensing a trend here, I’ll go ahead and confirm — yeah, we go to IKEA a lot). So all that was needed was some paint!
Again, this room featured PRIMER wall, a favorite color of the previous homeowners, I guess… and Turbo’s room is DARK with only one window on the north side of the house. Poor Turbo. That’s why he needed a kickass room! Here’s a photo of the awesome (not) before color… 
Not too awesome, is it?
Turbo’s favorite color is red… but I wasn’t game for red walls. So STRIPES! 
But first I had to put down something over this hideous icy blue primer color…
So I painted it out with a nice creamy Navajo White — the same one I used in Lunchbox’s room. Neutral, calm, warm…
And then I got out a level, a pencil and a measuring tape…
Good times, I tell ya! Notice how some of the stripes look skinnier? I figured this one out the hard way… you draw the lines evenly (assuming you want evenly spaced stripes) and then tape OUTSIDE one stripe (the one that will be colored) and INSIDE the next. So the wide stripes in the photo above will be the ones I paint. As seen below…
The stripes are only going on two walls, because I have BIG PLANS for the third and fourth… Bear with me, I love this part!
Using thin painter’s tape, I made buildings! I decided to paint a few of them in the same red I used for the stripes — Benjamin Moore’s Million Dollar Red in flat. But I also chose four other shades of dark grays for the buildings, and alternated size, shape, and color as I went along. 
This part was pretty fun, but it definitely took a long time… And I had to wait for the paint to dry in one building before I could tape and paint the one next to it. And they each took at least two coats. But I persevered, and I think the final result was worth it! 🙂
There you have it! What do you think?
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