Painting Faux Stone

I am making a Harry Potter themed bedroom for my kids, and I want it to look like something right out of Hogwarts Castle. So the first phase is making the boring walls look like they're made of stone!

• Light gray paint
• Medium gray paint
• Dark gray paint
• Paint rollers and trays
• Sea foam sponge brush
• Painter's tape

This is a painting project, so you will have to spend time moving furniture, taping off the ceiling and trim, and laying down tarps.

I chose for my base coat to be a light gray, because I wanted my grout lines to be light. For our paint, we found an "oops" paint at our local Restore for like $2.

There was no science to how I sized these up. I just thought 9 inches seemed like a good height, so I measured and put little lines 9" from the top of the baseboard, and then continued to measure 9 inches up from each line. I placed the top of the tape right on each little line across the wall. Then for the vertical pieces of tape, I just randomly placed the tape so that the bricks would all be different, random sizes. I went through four rolls of tape or this one room (room size is 12.5' x 13.5' with 8' ceilings).

Use a sea foam sponge to dab on the next coat, which is your medium gray. This was another "oops" paint we got for cheap. And this doesn't take a lot of paint, so one gallon is more than enough for one room. You don't want to completely cover up your base coat. Just leave some coming through, but you can always go over this again if you feel it's not dark enough.

Once the previous coat is dry, go over each brick in an "L" pattern with your darkest gray paint. The "oops" paints at Lowe's weren't quite dark enough, but if you ask them to darken it up for you they should be able to do it for no extra charge.

Once the dark gray is dry, get your medium gray back out and lightly dab over each brick. This just helps to add texture and really give it that stone look.

Remove all of your tape and enjoy the awesome look you've created!