My son and I had been talking about redoing his room for years. We already knew what we were going to do...a brick wall spray painted with graffiti. All he had to do was keep his room clean (or at least manageable). Needless to say, he never did.
If truth be known, I think I was wanting to do this to his room just as much, IF NOT MORE, than he did. I needed a creative outlet and his eyesore-of-a-room was it!!
Once he left for military school, I found the perfect opportunity to get in there and get to work. First thing was first.....I had to clear a path just to get in there to clean it out. It took me a few days of non-stop working to clear the school papers, books, guitar miscellaneous and junk food boxes/wrappers. (Honestly, I couldn't even begin to tell you how much junk food I found. It was unbelievable.) After I had thrown away three LARGE trash bags full, I was ready to get down to business.
I started on a Friday, after my daughter had gone to school. I worked all day on it. I predicted that this would take the whole weekend. I predicted wrong. It took me a full week. You're probably thinking that I must be one of the slowest painters in the world but you need to keep in mind that the stencil I was working with was a four-brick stencil (two full bricks on top with one full brick on bottom with a half brick on each side). The following diagram is an example of my stencil.
First order of business was to repair the walls with joint compound where he had put nails and his fist through it (don't ask). After that, I started by painting three of the walls a gray color of Valspar in the satin finish. The other wall, the MAIN wall, I painted in the same color but in the flat finish. Next thing I did was get the stencil that I had made and tack it to the wall. Then I got the brick paint--this was Valspar Granite (Granite, as in it had bits of granite mixed in the paint to give it a texture--not the color of granite) and painted using a brush and the stencil as a guide. If I were ever to do this again (which I am not), I would use a sponge instead. ( Heck, if I were crazy enough to do this again I would just tape off the wall.....stencils are NOT the way to go.) The following picture is what I had accomplished by the first (exhausting) day.
This is the view from a different angle.
After I painted all of the bricks and let it dry for a day, I went back with a small sea sponge and sponged a lighter hue of the brick color, (Valspar, flat finish) to give it depth. By the end of day 7, this is the finished product. I was proud at what I had accomplished.
You can't really get the full effect of the bricks by seeing just the picture. By using the Graphite paint, it actually had texture. If you decide to do this just be prepared to spend a lot more for this type of paint. This ran me about $50/gallon. Oh well. It was worth it. You should have seen my son's face when he saw his room for the first time!!
Next order of business....find some hoodlum to come over and spray graffiti on that wall for free. (I talked to someone about coming over and doing it for me. I nixed that idea once he told me he charged $80/hour.)
