Painting A Wall To Look Like Driftwood Planks

I had a real busy day today creating a driftwood look on a wall niche.  This niche is in a Realtor's office.  The niche is about 7.5 feet high and 11 feet wide.  The office is brand new and as you enter there is a curved wall that has floor tile applied to it to make it look like driftwood.  My task was to paint the wall niche to match the existing driftwood look.

Here is the curved wall;

So the first step is to mark off the individual planks.  Each plank is 8 inches wide.  To mark off jobs like this I have a laser level that works great.  I make small pencil marks across the wall at 8 inch intervals and then with the vertical setting of the laser level on I hit each mark with the red laser light.  With the light shinning on the wall I use it as a guide to put the tape on. Using this technique I don't have to mark up the wall with a lot pencil marks. The next photo shows how the first set of planks were taped off.

If you look at the next photo closely you can see the red laser line in the middle of the picture.  Just wanted to show how that works.  When I tape off with the laser I just butt the tape right up to the red line.

The next step is to paint the first set of planks.  You can only work on every other one using this technique.  Once the first set is dry I move the tape over on the other side of the line and on top of what I just painted.  That way I can paint in the second set of planks.

I used 4 different colors to get this driftwood look.  That means I painted a vertical grain pattern 4 times on each plank.  After all the planks where finished I then painted in a dark seam line of about 3/16's of an inch between each plank.  I think you can see that in the next picture.

The next photo shows the whole wall niche completed.  Looks like driftwood to me.

Of course after I finished creating the driftwood look I sealed the work with a clear acrylic sealer.