The Walls Are A-Glaze

Today we continue our week of painting ideas and tips by taking a look at applying glaze to the walls of a room to achieve a faux finish.  So pretty, and easier than you might think to do yourself.
With only a few ‘easy-to-come-by supplies, you have everything you need to create a “designer look” .

This technique is something you can play with, experiment with.  We certainly have done just that over the past many years!  The wonderful part with this faux painting is that if you do not like what you have done, you just simply paint over it and start again or keep going and use what you have done as a base and layer on top of it.  Some of our best work started out as a mistake.  Years ago, when we were opening the second phase of our “Little Shop Called Chums”, we decided to tent the ceiling and then do some glazed, faux painting on the walls  After trying to put the ceiling up ourselves, we eventually hired a handyman to get the 100 yards of fabric in place.  We were thrilled when it was finally up and then embarked upon painting….and paint we did for days and days and days.  We faux painted the walls for the first time and stood back to look at it and felt that the color was just “a bit off”.  We tried again, this time with a slightly different hue, and again, it was slightly off.  Priding ourselves at knowing color (and, indeed, offering interior design services out of the shop) we felt that it was important to get the color right so try again we did. ……. and again, and again, and again.  Finally, one morning, we were so undone by all of this that we lay down on the carpet and just looked up at the tented ceiling.  Our answer was in the ceiling!  We realized that there were two dye lots in the fabric which made up the tented ceiling.  These two dye lots were very different and when you looked at the walls, they looked great from one angle  but terrible from another.  The thing we regularly did for our customers, we had failed to do for ourselves.  Before using the fabric, we should have checked to make sure that all the bolts came from the same dye lot.  It was a hugh mistake!   We called the fabric house and, after explaining our story, they generously agreed to send us another one hundred yards of fabric, this time from the same dye lot.  How grateful we were!

(Videographer: Trevor Bryson)

As you can see from the video, creating a “faux finish” is really a matter of applying layers of paint and glaze.

 

All of the paint and glazethat goes onto the walls just adds to the depth of the final finish.All this to say, it is really great fun!  If you make a mistake, you just keep sponging or rubbing or ragging or dragging.

Just like life, the sum total of our experiences make for a fuller, richer more abundant life.