A New Frontier (Road)...

We painted the front entry of the shop this weekend.  While that sounds relatively benign, I promise you that it took forever and when I can actually raise my arms above my head again without wincing from sore shoulders, I'll be sure to let you know.  Also?  I went to JoAnn's Fabrics more times yesterday than in all of 2013 (and probably 2012 or EVER) as well. So, let's break it down from starting on Saturday morning to 10 pm last night when we locked up the front door.

Because we are women who live for some last minute pressure, we didn't gather any paint supplies until Saturday morning.  I'm sure some of you just recoiled from the procrastination in that sentence, but had we actually had any time that didn't require we HURRY UP SO WE CAN PAINT RIGHT NOW, we probably could have never made any decisions.  Because we have priorities, we first swung by the Starbucks so that we could be properly caffeinated for all the design decisions to be made (side note:  Starbucks doesn't offer the Trenti size for their hot beverages...Jeanne still harbors resentment).

Beverages in hand, we rolled into the store with a "sorta idea" of what we wanted to do...but no solid plan.  We were pretty settle on Benjamin Moore's Buttered Yam and had the loose plan to explore patina over that Buttered Yam (no, we knew nothing about patinas..we place all the blame on Pinterest).

We quickly discovered that to make the patina work, we needed a darker color.  Hello, Valspar's Frontier Road...

A five gallon bucket of Valspar primer, 3 gallons of Frontier Road in Interior Satin, and all the supplies later, we were ready to start on PJP Buttonwood.  And because PJP is a really fancy operation, our paint crew pretty much consisted of Jeanne, me, Behind-The-Scenes-Tech-Guru Jason, and our kids (who are 11 and 8).  Don't you think that is how Rachel Ray gets stuff done?  And to be honest, the only way I lured Behind-The-Scenes-Tech-Guru Jason and our son in was the promise of access to a scissor lift...

In their defense, driving it around was Bucket List item worthy and we all fought over the controls for the first few hours until the allure wore off.  We primed A LOT - as in every single drop of the 5 gallon bucket with many prayers that we would not have to return to the store to buy more.  We finished with absolutely none to spare.

While the primer dried, we went to El Maguey.  This is the only painting tip I will ever offer you...drinking a jumbo strawberry margarita on the rocks mid-afternoon and mid-massive painting job is a really dubious decision.  Afterwards, we really just wanted to lay down for naps and we lost half our crew to a 3:15 showing of "Divergent" before we could even open Frontier Road.

Truth be told, we were a little nervous about the color because we chose it on such a whim. That said, one roll of our 3/8 nap roller and we were in love.  I don't have any pictures of the color as it first went on because hello, JUMBO ON-THE-ROCKS MARGARITA.  The 3/5th of us left painting had a lot of wall to cover and we pretty much consistently painted for the next several hours until the sun went down (and we ran out of paint).

We found a piece of spare drywall and painted it Frontier Road to take with us as we went home for the night.  After it fully dried, we covered it in the patina glaze we purchased and waited for it to dry overnight (per the Valspar video on YouTube).

Epic. Fail.

We wanted a rich aged feeling over the paint...almost an oxidized feeling on that deep brown.  What we got reminded me of a dining room wall in a house that the Sugarbaker girls on "Designing Women" did in 1988.

Plan C put us at JoAnn's Fabrics on Sunday right as they opened.  We rushed in wearing paint covered clothes and no makeup, breathlessly asking where they keep their burlap.  All of their burlap.  You get a lot of questions when you buy over 100 yards of burlap.  Just saying.

Our plan?  To lattice weave the burlap over the walls.  We needed burlap, spray adhesive, and furniture nails.  I said to someone in my Inner Circle that perhaps I was crazy or perhaps I was genius.  The response was that perhaps I was a bit of both.  Truth.  But look at this..

And then as we started to weave the horizontal strips of burlap in...

These pictures make it look easy, but I promise you...it wasn't.  We were pretty much covered in spray adhesive and it worked well past sundown.  12 hours in, our love for the wall went from adoration to WE STILL HAVE TO DO THE OTHER ENTIRE WALL.

That said, we cleaned up our mess, drove through Andy's for large cups of custard and went to my house, wherein we fought over who got the first 45 minute steaming hot shower and then slept like the dead with visions of this dancing in our heads...

The other painted-but-burlap-free wall mocks us.  We had an internal debate of whether to finish while we were so sore that more movement could only help but in the end decided our sanity would be better served by waiting a day or so to tackle it.  We like the warmth and texture that the burlap brings to the concrete and exposed ceiling.  We can't wait to see how finishing the other side balances out the space.

Thoughts?  Crazy?  Genius?  Both??