My (Copa)Cabana, the Hottest Spot North of Havana

Last year, I got a crazy idea to turn a very boring and non-descript section of our home into something fun. I like to do my boldest design work in little areas-- that way, it's like a surprise when you come around the corner and also allows your eyes to rest in often-used spaces like living rooms.

I love any sort of design that makes you feel like you're on vacation. I also love the preppiness of a cute cabana. Therefore, I decided to create a cabana out of a little hallway that separates our primary bedroom from our primary bathroom. The cabana is exposed to our living room and acts as an inviting entryway to the bathroom our guests also use.

I truly thought this would take me about a week but it ended up being a month-long project. The stripes were easy with the right materials but REALLY tedious. I'll link to what I used to get perfect stripes at the bottom of this point.

Without further adieu, here's our indoor cabana!

The vintage swimsuit was purchased off Etsy and I framed it. It's one of my favorite parts of the space.

The ceiling was harder than it looks. It involved lot of geometry and decision-making. I had to veer from my original plan of carrying the narrow stripes from the walls up to the ceiling. In the end, I love that there's different width of stripes and think it's one of the best parts.

I love the view from the inside of the cabana. Here, I am standing in our bathroom and looking out to the living area.

So, the key to making perfectly crisp lines was using painter's caulk-- make sure to get the "paintable" kind marked on the tube. Something like this is similar to what I used. I don't remember the exact number of tubes I used, but it was several.

Here's a little tutorial: You put down painter's tape (the blue kind works great for this) and then cover the entire edge that will be painted in caulking. Do smaller areas at a time because you need to wet the caulking with your finger and smooth it over before it dries. After it dries a but, you paint over it like usual. The caulking fills in any gaps under the tape and gives the paint strength so when you tear away the tape, there's hardly any bleed-through. This was especially important when I was painting over different levels of the baseboard and trim work around the doors. I have used Frog Tape before and it would have probably worked OK for just the stripes on the wall but with all the different levels of the trim work I was painting stripes over, caulking was the way to go.

Let me know if you have questions. It can take a little time to get the hang of but then you are off and running.

Happy Painting,

Rachel