How I Accidentally Made My Custom Shades Even More Custom

When we moved into our new small home, we quickly discovered a treat left behind by the previous owner -

Lots of not very attractive window treatments.

Like these:

And these:

 I am not debating the value, efficiency or attractiveness of valences, vertical blinds and mini blinds. 

But the treasures we ended up with were not of any value. And they were not efficient. And they were certainly not attractive. 

They had see their day and it was time to toss them out the window.

This particular window in the kitchen had a few flaws - Mainly they were stained wood while every other window in our house was white vinyl. It really stuck out like a sore thumb.

Again - There are lots of virtues to stained wood windows. It just was not working out for us.

So we did this:

And we totally love it!

And then I did this:

After we ditched the mini blinds, I ended up painting our brand new custom shades. Not on purpose.

Really.

After all the work we have been doing in the kitchen (see here, here, here and here), and with the pressure of having out of town guests, we worked on several little projects that needed to just be wrapped up. 

The shades made the list. 

They were about to get even more custom.

I got out my supplies and went to work. After measuring where I wanted the stripes to go (meaning the best way to camouflage the unintentional paint stripe) , I taped off the area with painting tape. Since it was already painted, I figured paint would be the best way to go.

The thing that makes working with painting tape successful is to really get that edge to be painted smooshed down good. The best way to do that is to use a credit card (or in my case my Pampered Chef pan scraper) and run it along the edge a few times.

Ready to paint! 

I have to say that I am not a fan of the prep work. I know it is super important and I do it, but when I want to paint, I want to paint. Not measure and tape. 

Ok - complaining over.

First coat done. I used a brush instead of a roller since I already had some brush strokes. It made for a nice texture. I think if I were just wanted to jazz up these shades for fun I would use a mini-roller though.

But they're both good.

One of the most rewarding parts - Removing the tape. Love those crisp lines! I must have smooshed those edges just right - no bleeding under the tape. Horray!

Can you see the textured line in the photo above? That spot was painted a year ago is just determined to make itself shown. But I am going to ignore that. At this point, this project is going to be done NOW.

Plus, I'm pretty sure they are going to look just fine once the light shines through, which is what I am most concerned about.

Oh yeah.

That is what I am talking about. It totally worked!

Can you tell what I didn't do? 

I did not measure to make these stripes exactly the same as each other. I measured to correct the existing accidental paint stripes. I could have done them all the same, but that doesn't bother me. I like a little variety.

But Hero is such a trooper, because he would have undeniably made them all exactly the same.

And that would have been good, too.

Crossing this off the list.