Week beginning the 9th of May

On Monday we finished wallpapering the rooms and decided on designs for the finished wallpaper. Rhyan found an altered a design for the study, and I found a very intricate Baroque-style design for the drawing room, and simplified it. Rhyan began to cut her design out of polyprop. However she found it very difficult, and when we tested it the paint bled. We therefore decided to make the stencils from acetate which, when tested, did not allow the paint to bleed and could be held flat against the wall more easily.

On Tuesday Rhyan drove us around various DIY stores to pick up the paint for the walls. Eventually we had to settle for buying the slightly more expensive colour mixed paint as we wanted very specific colours. Once we came back we began to paint the study dark green. Rhyan painted the corners and edges with a brush while Vicky and I used rollers to paint the walls.

At this point we decided that, as I was working with both Rhyan and Vicky on our respective elements, and Rhyan was working with Vicky on a love seat, we would work as a three to get each item done without one person being left with nothing to do.

During the rest of the week we painted the drawing room pink, going around the edges and corners with brushes and doing the main parts with rollers. We took our designs for the stencils and laid the acetate on top of them, and drew the design on with permanent markers. We then used scalpels to cut the design out. Later on in the process a second full stencil and a half stencil had to be cut out for the drawing room. The half stencil was to help make the corners easier to negotiate, and the full stencil was made when the first one had broken too much to be repaired. The stencils did occasionally break, but were easily repaired with sellotape. They also had to be regularly cleaned, as when too much paint built up on them they allowed paint to bleed through underneath.

Rhyan measured on the wall where each stencil should be placed and the stencil was fixed to the wall with masking tape. The paint for the pattern was lightly dabbed onto the stencil with a sponge. The sponge had to be quite dry in order for the paint not to bleed under the stencil. A light layer of the wall-colour paint was stippled over the top with another sponge to give a more textured effect. This was repeated over all of the walls, and took several days to complete.

The corners of the room we difficult to negotiate with the stencil, so we left those until the very and and then cut the stencil to fit.

Any mistakes or paint bleeding was corrected using a small brush.