Paint color and sheen absolutely added to the interest of this small niche. I “gifted” this feature wall as a housewarming present to my nephew who just moved into a new house. This is the before picture of the space. (There used to be a fish tank there.)
My nephew selected this photo for design inspiration. (Design credit to Gwendolyn Akers)
To be honest, the design is more complex than I have tackled. And, I needed to consider an efficient way to paint with the two sheen. Hand painting would be very labor intensive. I drew a sketch to get an idea on how many diamonds would fit on the wall, top to bottom, left to right. Essentially, I installed board around the perimeter of the area and found the center of the wall. The center was the center of the first diamond. Each diamond was approximately 17 inches wide. I marked the wall 8.5 inches on each side of center. I installed two boards from top to bottom to create two sides of the center diamond. The angles on the top and bottom were 30 degrees. I installed all the board from top to bottom so the diamonds were 17 inches wide. I marked the angles on the end boards by holding the piece up to the wall. (These were difficult for me to cut. The angle was wider than the angles allowed on the miter saw.)
For the boards going the other direction, I laid boards (right top to left bottom) and marked where each of the boards needed to be cut. Most of the angles were 30 degrees. I used the level to ensure the middle of the points of the diamonds were level.
Naturally, one of the boards ran into the outlet. I pulled out the outlet and cut pieces to go around the outlet. I filled the nail holes and seams with wood filler and caulked all the edges. Then, sanded everything.
The easiest way to approach the paint job was to spray the entire wall with flat black (Limousine Leather (color from Behr) in a Sherwin Williams product.
I used a small, 4 inch roller to apply the satin sheen onto the boards. This worked well. This was a challenging project for me. I felt like I did a lot by sight, with a little math. But, I definitely learned a lot!
