If you’ll recall, last week I showed you this sketch of my little daydream for our master closet.
The plan was to add vertical stripes to the top portion of the closet for a little fun. The color was inspired by my new jewelry board frame – a dark charcoal gray.
I was excited to tackle this project and decided it would be a great time to try out Frog Tape – a product that has gotten rave reviews throughout the blogosphere for its anti-leaking edges.
Here’s where I defend my process, so you’ll know it wasn’t my fault I got the results I did… 😉
I put the tape on the walls along the edges of my stripes. Because the closet walls are textured, I made sure to push the tape on really well with my fingers and then run my fingernail along the edges of the tape where I would be painting.
I was SUPER worried about leaky edges, so I painted over the edge of the tape with white primer. I had to prime the glossy white walls before painting over them anyway, so I figured this would kill two birds with one stone. I made sure to cover the edges really well so that if any leaking occurred, it would be of the white-on-white variety.
Once the primer was dry, I applied the stripe paint. I was careful not to put it on too thick so it wouldn’t seep under the tape. Luckily the stripes only required one coat of paint.
As recommended on the Frog Tape label, I pulled the tape off before the paint was completely dry to avoid tearing the tape or causing the latex paint to stretch and pull.
Now you can see why this post is titled Frog Tape Frustration! After all that effort, here are the messy, leaky lines I was left with.
Severely disappointed, to say the least. You’d better believe I’ll be asking for my money back!
I tried to get a good photo of the other issues I ran into, but if you can’t quite see the problem, let me explain. On the edges where the paint didn’t leak (there weren’t very many), the tape actually pulled the base paint off the wall.
They say to make sure your base paint is fully cured before taping it, so y’all can be my witnesses that these walls were painted 6 months ago! If that isn’t “cured,” I don’t know what is.
Needless to say, I’ll be spending another hour or two on the ladder tonight, fixing EVERY SINGLE edge of EVERY SINGLE stripe before moving all our clothes back into the closet.
Not quite the Valentine’s Day I was hoping for…
Now it’s your turn. Anybody have a good or bad painter’s tape or Frog Tape experience to share? I’d love to hear if you have any suggestions on what I could have done differently (but be nice because I’m at my wit’s end with these stripes!!!).
All that being said, I’m going to look on the bright side. It’s above freezing, the snow is finally melting, and we’re at least one step closer to finishing our master closet and bath makeover! I’m not going to be a Debbie Downer today! 🙂
