A Step-By-Step Guide To Painting A DIY Accent Wall In Your Home
I know that during this quarantine phase, everyone has taken on a love for at-home DIY project––including me and my husband. We first started with our patio and now our family room. We got it painted last year and to be honest, I don't know what I was thinking when I had my accent wall painted blue. Well, I take that back, I do know what I was thinking.
I was trying to bring the "beach" to my home by having my accent wall blue (like the sea), the outside walls grey, and my kitchen beige (the sand). But after some time passed, I wasn't fond of the idea. Plus, my husband started working on the floor and never finished. Hey, I give him his props he did start, but the floor hasn't been finished... and it's been a year!
With that in mind, I put on my creative cap and got to work on giving my living room a total makeover.
This was my step-by-step process on elevating my home with a DIY accent wall:
Here's what you'll need:
- 1-gallon white paint
- 2 thick paint brushes
- 2 large paint rollers
- 2 small paint rollers
- 1 steady hand
- 2-3 rolls of frog painters tape (Lowes guy said it works better than the blue tape)
- 3 paint buckets
- A couple of old blankets to cover the floor
- 1 ladder
- 1 measuring device
- 1 pencil
Step One: Planning
Being home, I was able to allow my creative juices to flow thinking of how I wanted to change my family room. I wanted to keep the grey theme and didn't want to do a lot of work, if you know what I mean. So I started looking up different ideas for accent walls. I did toy with the idea of wallpaper but my husband wasn't down with that plan. I also was thinking about painting it just one solid grey color, but that would be too plain for the vibe I was going for.
I took to Pinterest and saw a chevron print and fell in love. Y'all, I looked high and low for a chevron print stencil and I've seen others do their walls with a stencil, but I couldn't find one large enough. The small ones would have taken days maybe even weeks to finish. My husband is an Architect Designer, so I asked him if he thought he would be able to do it with tape and he was like, "Oh yeah, I can do that!"
Step Two: Painting
We first had to paint the wall white. Thank God for my husband because I was going to do it all backwards. I was going to tape it then paint it white, my husband informed me that if we did it that way, we would be painting for days and then it wouldn't have looked right.
Step Three: Taping
Next up is taping. I am going to be honest I didn't know that "math" was going to be involved. I seriously thought that all we had to do was put tape up in zigzags. Again I thank God for my husband who brought me back to reality real quick.
You need to measure your wall from top-to-bottom and side-to-side. It's important for you to have in mind how many patterns you want. I wanted six in total. So my husband measured and taped the wall according to his measurements. Keep in mind that everyone's measurements will be different because it's according to your wall size.
Now here is where the math comes into place again. To get the chevron print, you have to place the tape on the wall in a zigzag shape. My husband measured for each zigzag to be two-feet apart. And you follow this throughout the entire wall following the taped-off sections, moving from top to bottom.
Step Four: Fill In The Blanks
Now, this is where the fun and intense part starts! You need to have your two colors picked out. I chose a light grey and a darker grey. Go over with a pencil in each zigzag and write in the color you want to paint in each zag. Use your roller to paint the color in each section. To make it easier, my husband had one color and I had another, that way we didn't get it mixed up.
Be careful and don't go too fast you can mess up easily if you're not paying attention! After you have done this, let it dry for a little bit. Then, you carefully take the paint off and boom!
The Final Reveal
Can you say WOW? It doesn't even look like the same room. If you ask me, it looks like something out of the Southern Living Magazine! We did that!
This article was originally published on TamronLittle.com.
Featured image by Tamron Little.
Tamron can be best described as a millennial southern lady lving her best life as a cancer survivor! Tamron inspires the everyday woman through faith, lifestyle, and her passion for fashion! Her goal is to encourage women through her testimony while sharing her light and life as a working mom, and wife.
Wife • Mom • Influencer
ItGirl 100 Honors Black Women Who Create Culture & Put On For Their Cities
As they say, create the change you want to see in this world, besties. That’s why xoNecole linked up with Hyundai for the inaugural ItGirl 100 List, a celebration of 100 Genzennial women who aren’t afraid to pull up their own seats to the table. Across regions and industries, these women embody the essence of discovering self-value through purpose, honey! They're fierce, they’re ultra-creative, and we know they make their cities proud.
VIEW THE FULL ITGIRL 100 LIST HERE.
Don’t forget to also check out the ItGirl Directory, featuring 50 Black-woman-owned marketing and branding agencies, photographers and videographers, publicists, and more.
THE ITGIRL MEMO
I. An ItGirl puts on for her city and masters her self-worth through purpose.
II. An ItGirl celebrates all the things that make her unique.
III. An ItGirl empowers others to become the best versions of themselves.
IV. An ItGirl leads by example, inspiring others through her actions and integrity.
V. An ItGirl paves the way for authenticity and diversity in all aspects of life.
VI. An ItGirl uses the power of her voice to advocate for positive change in the world.
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Wellness And Spiritual Coach Koya Webb On Taking Up Space As A Black Woman In Yoga
There are some misconceptions about yoga and people who practice it, such as it's only for people who are flexible, thin, and/ or considered elite. However, none of those things are true, and Koya Webb is the perfect example. Koya is an international holistic health and wellness coach and yoga instructor who represents much of what yoga can do for others by allowing it to manifest in herself. The former track athlete began practicing yoga after a sports injury that affected her not only physically but mentally. As she was trying to push through the pain with yoga, she was facing another obstacle: isolation. There weren't many others who looked like her in her classes, so she felt alone.
She reflects on that tough moment in an exclusive interview with xoNecole. "When I started, it wasn't that many of us in there, and it was painful, to be honest. I couldn't touch my toes. No one looked like me. I was mentally hurt. I felt like I was gonna get my scholarship taken away. I felt hopeless," she tells us. I felt like I didn't belong there. This is not for me, and I could barely breathe, and I just wanted to cry."
However, her yoga instructor was very encouraging and helped her through her practice. "And the teacher came to me and she was just like, just breathe with me. And she just took this deep inhale, exhale, and I felt the Holy Spirit like in my body— that I identify as spirit which is full body chills. And that's how I knew I was in the right place."
"And the teacher came to me and she was just like, just breathe with me. And she just took this deep inhale, exhale, and I felt the Holy Spirit like in my body— that I identify as spirit which is full body chills. And that's how I knew I was in the right place."
She continues, "So, even throughout the pain and throughout the stiffness in my body, and even though I felt like I didn't fit in, I didn't belong. I just did it anyway, and I cried through the pain. I breathed through the pain, and after a year, I completely healed my body, strengthen my mind, and I came back to win the conference championship in the heptathlon and was ranked 13th in the nation."
But like many of us have done, Koya fell back into old habits, such as not taking care of herself and stopping yoga altogether, which resulted in another injury. This time, however, when she returned to yoga, she stuck with it and got certified as a yoga teacher. From there, she created her own online certification to encourage more Black people to teach holistic health and yoga. As a Black woman in the wellness space, Koya was in the minority and had to do some soul-searching to effectively make a change.
"It was really hard because I experienced a lot of microaggressions that I had just normalized. And I had to normalize it just to be safe, and I didn't realize I was doing it at that time. I really realized a lot during the pandemic. When I started reading like Caste, and I started going deeper into my own journey of, like, life and what does it mean to be a Black woman? You know, and what does it mean to be a leader? You know, because I would just say yes to people who would reached out to me," she says.
"I got very far in my career and then I realized it's time for me to reach out to people that are afraid to reach out. Until I start focusing on other Black women and reaching out and saying, 'Hey, let's do this.' You know, and I think that was a really pivotal point because I feel like a lot of times because we've experienced so much trauma, we're just afraid. We've been hurt so much. We're just afraid and not just the the people that don't look like us but even each other."
It was really hard because I experienced a lot of microaggressions that I had just normalized. And I had to normalize it just to be safe, and I didn't realize I was doing it at that time. I really realized a lot during the pandemic. When I started reading like Caste, and I started going deeper into my own journey of like, life and what does it mean to be a Black woman? You know, and what does it mean to be a leader?
Through her many efforts, Koya has become well known throughout the wellness community with her yoga classes, coaching, podcast, The Lifestyle Design podcast, and events like the Mind, Body + Sol Retreat. She also has a new book coming out focusing on lifestyle design, which she describes as intentionally incorporating wellness in every aspect of your life. Koya also uses her social media to motivate others to live a life of joy, love, and wellness. While she promotes positivity through her work, she also wants others to know that they, too, can start on their holistic journey by adding these simple yoga principles.
"I feel like just waking up and breathing, just mindful breath. You know, of course we're breathing all the time, but like, deep inhale, deep exhale like 10 deep inhalations and exhalations when they wake up and then just some gentle stretches in bed," she says.
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Feature image courtesy