Yearly Resolutions: Learning to Paint

I don't like New Year's resolutions.  I know, me and millions of other people.  But I am always craving to learn something new.  So each year, I try to learn how to do something that I had minimal knowledge of before.  They don't always start at the beginning of the year, so there is some overlap on projects.  And of course I'm still using some of my new talents today!  I've only been doing it for a few years, essentially since I left college.  I don't know if I had anything in mind in 2010... moving to a new state maybe?

2011- Painting (furniture and walls)

My big projects for painting included painting all of our mismatch bedroom furniture and painting a striped accent wall in the apartment.  

All of our bedroom furniture had been hand-me-downs and none of the pieces were from the same set.  Even our nightstand tables didn't match... one isn't even an nightstand.  I sanded, painted, and poly'ed all four pieces so they'd look similar.  They looked pretty good for a few years, though I have been slowly swapping them out for better pieces.

Our old apartment had a gigantic wall that was pretty bare since it was a rental.  Luckily, I got the ok from the landlord to paint one of the walls, as long as I painted it back when we moved out.  (Surprisingly not as hard as I thought it would be.)   

I painted the wall with a flat paint in burgundy.  After it dried, I taped stripes on the wall in a varying pattern.  I didn't like it when all of the stripes on accent walls were the same distance from one another.  I wanted something more interesting!  So I did large and small stripes.   

Once I was taped, I painted the same burgundy color in a semi-gloss paint on the wall.  After a few coats on both layers, I took off the tape and had a beautiful striped wall.  Since the paint was so dark, I thought we'd have trouble painting over it, but it only took one layer of base and one layer of paint to completely cover!

Next up: My 2012 resolution is to learn cake decorating!