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Remember last week in the previous installment of this series I discussed how to prep your walls for painting and how to tackle a paint job. If any of you are curious what owners of old houses are facing , have a look at Newborn House.
Have you ever picked out a paint color, brought it home, and painted your walls only to discover that it looks nothing at all like the the little chip you thought was perfect in the store? I have. Most recently I painted a bathroom a color I hoped would be a soft buttery yellow. Instead it was the color of urine. Not at all appealing, even in a bathroom. It just happened over at M and C Build a House, too.
I have attempted to do faux finishes twice in my life as a homeowner. Once was a rag rolling technique that a friend of mine assured me was easy. Not that she had ever done it. But she knew someone, who knew someone who told her that it was easy. And based on the information I was set to do my entire dining room.
Needless to say, it was not as easy as I had thought it would be. And half way through I was tempted to stop, but I perservered. The result wasn't quite what I had envisioned, but I was happy enough with it to leave it.
When we bought our next house I decided to do a suede technique in a small powder room off of our mudroom that is frequented mostly by children. Dirty little children who come running in from the great outdoors and fell compelled to wipe their hands on every surface possible. It turned out wonderfully, but it was a lot of work. I would never want to do it in a room larger than 6' x 4'.
But then there are times when you think painting should be easy.
A good friend of mine just moved into a new house. She wanted to paint one wall of her massive living room and accent color. Something with a tuscany feel. We quickly eliminated all the techniques which required applying layers of plaster to the wall, and then basically anything that required more tools than a roller.
She picked a metallic copper color. How hard could that be to paint? Well as it turns out, it does have challenges of it's own.
Metallic paint is expensive. First you want to paint the walls a color that matches the metallic color you will be using. Think of the metallic paint as just a sparkly top layer.
Painting with metallic paint is not like painting your walls with regular paint. You can't just take your roller and paint your walls all willy nilly, confident that once you have coated the entire wall surface it won't be visible.
The single most important thing about using metallic paint is to make sure your roller strokes are consistent. Your end roll must end in the same direction, decide if your last roll will be up the wall or down the wall and stay with it. Something about the metallic pigments lining up, but what it means in layman's terms is that you won't get overlap marks or roller marks to mar your beautiful new surface.
Should you feel like doing a faux finish, I highly recommend that you first read a guide. And remember to use you newly discovered technique sparingly. One room with a faux finish is lovely. Every room with a faux finish, is anything but lovely.
When she isn't blogging at www.notesfromthetrenches.com, Chris is busy rescuing her old house from a century of neglect and bad taste. She may have to have the paint brush surgically removed from her hand.
