Yipes! (Moar) Stripes!

So Saturday Night, after I started painting the floor white to fix my mistake, the stencil exacted its revenge. I tossed it in a garbage bag and sprayed it down with what I *think* was Simple Green (it was in an unmarked bottle, so who knows) and somehow as I was closing up the bag a drop of The Unknown Green made its way around my glasses and into my eye. So I spent most of Sunday rinsing it out, weeping pus-y grossness, and Maxwell Housing the crap out of the remains of the can of Fresh Day. I managed to eek out four coats, which I think is enough.

Once It was dry, I started the long, painfully boring process of stenciling, this time with the right colour. You can see below a side by side of the stencil in each color, and it makes me so glad that I risked blindness by repainting. Leaving it as it was would have been way too much white, and right now I am really liking the black stripes.

Slowly, super slowly, the stripes appear. It takes about an hour to an hour and a half to do three stencils worth, plus an additional four hours (and an over night wait) to clean the stencil halfway through. I think I did about 24 total iterations, so you can guess how I spent my week.

 

While I was stenciling myself into a corner I somehow managed to gouge my own leg with my fingernails. I then proceeded to drip blood in several places without realizing it. I'm becoming convinced that this part of the floor was built over an indian pet burial ground and is genuinely evil.

I decided I didn't really like the extra white stripe, so before I took off the Frog Tape, I repainted it red. Some of the white shows through on the edges, but I was going for kinda an inky woodblocked kinda look on this one, so I'm ok with it.  Once the stenciling was done, I went through and touched up the design, filling in where the stripes didn't quite match, painting over my blood spots, and fixing up other messy bits.

 

Today the polyurethane went on. I managed to get four coats out of what I had left, but I'd like to do a few more for durability. Looks like I'll be making the dreaded Saturday visit to Home Despot.  I'm not 100% wild about how wide I made the border stripe, but its too late now. It's already got cat hair sealed beneath the poly.