Wall Stencils: Advice from a Pro

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The parlor walls of the Bob Vila’s Home Again Season 13 Modern Colonial project house were stenciled with reproduction stencils from the Daniel Kingsbury House in Brookfield, Vt. The stencils are available from MB Historic Décor. Artisans Polly and Ken Forcier of MB Historic Décor joined Bob Vila on the Season 13 "Modern Colonial" project house to decorate several interior walls with colorful stencils. The following stenciling advice, which can be found in its complete form on the MB Historic Décor Web site, offers practical tips and advice for applying decorative stencils to interior walls. Wall Stencil Supplies Few supplies are needed and all can be obtained at your local craft shop and hardware store. · 1-inch or 1-1/4-inch brush (one for each color) · Paint (latex is preferable) · Stencil patterns · Spray adhesive for the back of the stencil · Masking tape, Scotch tape · Measuring tape and wooden or cork back yardstick · Indelible fine point pen (if pattern is more than one color) · Pencil/eraser · Baby Wipes and paper towels to clean brushes · Palette with dampened paper towel to squeeze the paint on · Palette knife · Plastic baggies to slip the brush into when not in use · Plumb bob · Small jars (for mixing paint colors) · Painter's tape — 3-3/4-inch for ceilings, 2-inch for woodwork · Ladder · Paint thinner (for oil-based paint) · Bristle brush (for cleaning patterns) · Drop cloth · Worktable · Background Paint The Room Begin with an idea about the placement of the frieze (the decorative horizontal band along the upper part of a wall in a room) at the top of your wall. You will begin here. You have some options: If you have a fireplace, you may want to center the pattern above it, if it is large and noticeable. Sometimes each wall was treated as a separate entity, and the pattern began and ended with a full unit at each corner. A little stretching or squeezing in the placement of the units, which is imperceptible when completed, is usually successful. Or, you can start and end in the least obvious corner of the room and just carry the pattern around the corner as it comes. Computer buffs can easily plot the whole room using measurements and graphics. The rest of us can use a calculator, graph paper or scratch pads, or just start in! Using 3-3/4-inch painter's tape, mask off the ceiling as you work, not all at once. Remove it as soon as possible.) Mask woodwork using 2-inch painter's tape. After stenciling the frieze, do the chair rail and baseboard horizontals. Now you are ready for the verticals. The pattern is reasonably small. It is hoped you can begin and end with a full unit. Using a pencil to make a dot through the register holes, plan your spacing for the first time before applying the paint. Start with the same top unit by the frieze each time. Measure spacing from the ceiling. If you must use part of a unit, fade it out at the lower level close to the chair rail or baseboard horizontal where it will be below eye level. Sometimes a little squeezing in its placement can help it come out right. If you have a slanted ceiling or floor in an old house which causes the floor-to-ceiling distances to change, make compromises. Stenciling is great for old houses where wallpaper would be a disaster. Don't insist on straight and plumb with the woodwork - just follow it. "Out of square" will be less noticeable in the end. Paint Mix your paint, enough for the whole job to ensure uniform color. For an average room, three small baby food size jars should be more than enough for the major color. One small jar is ample for the second color, less for the third.

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