A Beautiful Transition, Part 1

I think Transition Borders are one of my favorite type of stencils to do. They always pack such a "wow" factor. I’ll start off by showing you the "before" and "after" pics, so you can see exactly what I mean. Then I’ll walk you through the journey of this foyer transformation.

So, what may you ask, is a Transitional Border? Well, it’s just that… a border that offers an eye pleasing transition to another finish, or another room. In this case, once the wallpaper was removed, all walls were painted an off-white color in this large foyer. To bring in some interest, the client wanted a border to go up the wall on both of the the staircases. There are two, mirror image staircases in this foyer. Instead of ending the bottom finish with a straight line and doing a straight lined border, this Transition Border incorporates the off-white paint into the body of the bottom finish, and also brings the glazed Lusterstone finish into the off-white top portion of the walls. You will see this up close, in more detail, in a little bit.

The foyer was dark and dreary with the previous brown wallpaper you see in the first photo. My clients, having lived in Hawaii, wanted to bring in a bit of a tropical feel. The wallpaper was done by the previous homeowners. Another issue was the gray tiled floor with a big black diamond in the center, which no one liked.

After much discussion, I found this fabulous rug which would bring in some color and cover the black diamond tiles.

Working closely with Sherry Ward, owner of Off the Wall Custom Stencil Designs, Sherry was able to find a beautiful hibiscus border and turn it into a Transition Border. Everyone was very excited about this!

Enthusiastically, I measured and taped off both stair walls.

Here is where my worse nightmare began. I got a little off my line with the low tack blue tape I was using, so had to reposition. When I did so, much to my horror, the off-white base paint peeled right off the wall, with my tape! Of course, at first I thought it must be just one little area that was missed with primer when the walls were painted. Surely the paint had cured, since they were done 4 weeks ago.

I decided to do some testing with more blue tape and a section of the vinyl stencil border I would need to apply.