My Worst DIY Project Yet: Chevron Stripes

Chevron stripes- they're cute, trendy, a touch modern, and ultimately my worst DIY enemy. I'd like to consider myself a semi-intelligent person, one who can at least draw what looks like a bunch of "v's", but alas they had me beat. I see all these adorable projects on Pinterest or other design blogs and they make it looks so simple. I've come to the conclusion that those people are actually not human- they're superhuman. So if any of you chevron superheroes out there would like to share your advice on how to equally space those pesky little "v's", please (please) do. In the meantime, here's a step by step tutorial of what not to do. It's like the show What Not to Wear, only it's What Not to Do...I think I'm onto something here.

Welcome to one wall in our living room- the window seat, aka the radiator cover. I haven't been able to find a cushion big enough to cover it, and I'm too cheap to get one custom made. So I decided to paint it and throw some pillows in the corner. My step one was cleaning it off. It was embarrassingly dirty. Like five paper towels and windex dirty.  

After eyeballing where I wanted to put my tape, I realized I needed a center point of reference because tape doesn't tear off at a perfect angle to form the v. I used duct tape because it was all I had. Don't do this. You'll see why later. 

I used tape in between the stripes to measure the width before laying down the next stripe, and then pulled the middle one back up again, leaving the white part to be painted later.

I took a razor blade and used a coaster as a straight edge. Yes, a coaster. Yes, duct tape. Yes, I am ridiculous. This is what not to do, remember? I followed the outer edge of the left line of the v and scored it. Then repeated on the right side of the v, until the two scored parts met and I could peel up the middle section. Confused yet? 

I rolled on paint with a small, thin roller. This was by far the easiest step. Everything else up to this point took me forever to eyeball, lay the tape, and cut out the middle line connecting my edges. I almost wish I would have had one of those protractor thingies, and just measured my angles with a pencil and ruler instead of using tape and my eyeballs. 

I think I can paint a straighter line sans tape than the result I got after ripping up the duct tape. Can you see those chunks of white paint that were ripped off, too? Nothing better than creating more work for yourself because you're too lazy to go buy painters tape. Here's a really good tip on how to paint stripes without having the paint bleed through the tape from this designer's blog. Paint the the first coat the same color as your wall, and let it dry, thus sealing the tape. When you go to paint your second coat with the color stripe you want, the only thing that will have bled through the tape is the original color you painted. I clearly didn't do this here, but I'll definitely do it next time I attempt any stripes. 

Has anyone else out there successfully attempted chevron, or should I just stick to my go to vertical stripe?