Fun with Photoshop...and Non-Fun with Stencils

In my last post, I gave you a peek at the inside of the master bathroom. In this one, I'm telling you the torrid tale of its outside—i.e. the bathroom door.

I should start by telling you that Mr. W and I are wicked mad wimps when it comes to morning sunlight streaming into our bedroom. We have dark curtains to block the light from the French doors and windows, but the pocket door we bought for the bathroom has a frosted glass panel in the middle of it and, in spite of the blinds we installed inside the bathroom, the sun was shining right in through that door every morning. Our sleepy work-from-home-all-day-in-our-pjs eyes just couldn't handle it.

We discussed possible light-blocking options: some sort of wood or veneer, straight paint, tin tiles or a sheet of cool metal. Paint was the obvious easy choice but I felt like it needed texture beyond a straight color, particularly because of the big block of color on the gallery wall. Gotta have variety. Except when it comes to bedfellows. And morning soda-coffee. #DrPepper

Anyway, I found a few different stencils I liked online but didn't want to buy anything without having an idea of how it would look on the actual door. And thus began the Photoshop fun...

Which one did you like best?

I preferred the L-shaped hooky, linky option, so I ordered it online, bought a couple variations of the grey paint we have on the walls, and grabbed a flat sponge brush aaaallll excited to take on my first stenciling project.

Anyone out there ever done a large-scale vertical stenciling project? Let me tell you, it ain't no picnic.

Per the instructions, I had to spray the stencil with adhesive to get it to stay in place on the glass. And every time I moved it, I had to spray it again, which was particularly superfun at the very end when I had one tiny piece that I had to keep repositioning to get the edge right. Punch me in the face until I'm unconscious. 

The other difficult thing was that when the paint would bleed out beyond the parameters of the stencil, it was really hard to get off the frosted glass. If it had been regular glass I could have just scraped it off with a razor blade. But in order to not scratch the frosting, I had to use q-tips and nail polish remover. Not nearly as exact a science as I would have liked.

The good news was, I had a great audio book to listen to while I worked on it all, and when I painted the secondary color, all my fuzzy inexact edges became much less noticeable. I'm actually really pleased with how it all turned out (minus the reflection in the picture below...I was too impatient to wait and take a better pic with different lighting).

The best part is that not an ounce of morning sunlight sneaks in past this paint job (Mr. W and I can continue our life of slovenly living and nice, dark mornings). It also blocks the tools, tile, and various other renovation heaps still hiding inside the bathroom...