The Nursery Part I: A Striped Ceiling

I knew back when I first found out I was pregnant that I wanted stripes on the ceiling. It all started with the blue stripes I saw in this nursery.  I was pretty much decided on a horizontal orientation....until I saw this:

 I traced this picture back to a Swedish blog and unfortunately there were no details on this amazing ceiling.  I showed it to Ernesto and he said..."No problem, I can do that!"
I was so excited, we got to work that day!  Ernesto drew up the plan by taking the dimensions of our room (10x12ft)

  He marked the walls in 14-15 inch stripes.  Then he and my mom snapped a chalk line from each mark to the center of the ceiling. 

This went very quickly and then we got to taping.  As you can imagine, this part is the most important step.

We used Frog Tape and the lines came out perfectly. No bleeding whatsoever.

I chose Behr's "vintage orange" paint in a flat finish.  (I actually color matched it to Martha Stewart paint which was on clearance.  $4.90 for a quart!!) 
The color is vibrant and so happy.  The white paint is "Lamb" also by Martha.

It is really amazing how these stripes make the ceiling look vaulted.  The ceiling is 9ft but the room  just feels more open now. 

After finishing the stripes and painting the walls "Sharkey Gray" (also by MS), we didn't think it looked finished.  We first tried painting a black stripe, but though it looked like electrical tape and ended up painting a thicker white stripe at the bottom.

The griege color on the walls is pretty bland, and I considered re-painting, but I have a lot of colorful art to go on the walls and a really bright turquoise armoire, so I think a neutral background will be perfect. 

I am so happy with how Mateo's room is coming together.  As you can see I have added a light fixture.  It's a DIY...and made out of a surprising material.  It could be my best DIY EVER!!!  I saw it on houzz a couple months ago.  It was unbelievably easy! You can see how I made it here.

So, what do you think?  Do you guys have stripes somewhere in your house?

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