Painter Girl

The Stenciled Collage Wall in Progress

 The pictures you will see in this series are sections of a 15' long x 7 1/2' high wall. Since I am still working on this wall and other walls in this teenage girl's bedroom, there is a lot of furniture in my way, as well as all my painting supplies.  As I finish each of the 3 girls bedrooms, they are putting the curtains back up, and moving the furniture into place.  I'll re-shoot their rooms again later.

   

 

 

 

Well, I hope you can get the visual of layering stencils/patterns on patterns from these photos.  The final layer will be to add three groupings of very large, metallic flowers.  Once I base painted my wall in the orange tone, I lightly sponged on some Tequilla Sunrise Lusterstone and some white glaze, just randomly throughout the wall, to give it some visual texture and interest.

All of these stencils shown are from Royal Design Studios.  Some of the stencils I have had for years, but I also just recently purchased a few stencils from Melanie's more recent additions.  The newer stencils include:  Large Ikat Zig Zag, Kimono Allover, and Allover Oriental Vine.  The older stencils used were:  Basketweave and Floral Chain.  I also used a variety of paper and foil doilies for one time use stencils and some mesh fabric.

Stenciled Collage Room

I am very excited about starting the work in this room.  A few years ago, I did this accent wall, but now that will all change as the room gets a big makeover.

I've painted out the entire room; three walls with this shade of green that I love, love, love, and the accent wall is done with the same orange I used in the Jungle Room.  I think I am going to have to use this green in my back hall, whenever I can find the time to finally redo that area.

Here is the sample board that I am working off of.  I will stick with these colors, but will be adding some new stencils I just bought from Royal Designs.  If you have not had a chance to check out Melanie's latest collection of stencils, get on over there and do so.  She has some fabulous new designs out!

The room has a LOT of furniture in it, so I am quite cramped with all my painting supplies scattered about.

This is driving me a bit crazy, because I like to stay neat and organized while working.  Because the space is limited, I am constantly moving my boxes all around the room as I maneuver the ladder.  It's adding a little more time onto the job and I'm feeling a little stressed about my self imposed time schedule.  Now all the base painting is done, the real fun will begin!

Prepping the Jungle Room

The pink walls have now been painted with this awesome shade of orange.  I am using the Aura line of paint from Ben Moore on the walls in all three bedrooms.

The ceiling has also now been painted a medium tone of blue and some soft, white clouds added.  This corner of the room pictured here, will be where the Jungle Mural will be painted.

I'm doing all of the prep work myself for this job, vs. subcontracting.  Sometimes it is just nice to have a break from the finishes and do some straight painting.  All of these walls and ceilings in the rooms are in very good shape, so that makes it much easier!

This bunk bed weighs a ton, is not on wheels, and is on carpet.  It would not budge, so I painted the 2 other walls and just did the cutting in along the ceiling line on the remaining 2 walls.  The bed will be moved for me by the next time I come to paint. 

Having a few hours left to my day and no way to complete the other 2 walls in the Jungle room,  I moved on to the Sophisticated Elegance room.  This room belongs to a 15 year old girl.  There will be a lot of black and white on these walls with some deep red accents.  I don't want to confuse you with all of these rooms, so even though I am jumping around from room to room while working, for the most part, I am going to try to present one room at a time here.  I wanted to get the ceiling done in here because all 3 bedrooms will have ceiling fans installed today.
The fans are all in boxes in the hall.  I am hoping the electrician can get them all installed in one day because Monday I will be doing some studio work and then returning for the remainder of the week.

Living Room Project Continues

 Now I have added the final details to the flower groupings... a little darker blue and some green stems.  There is too much furniture all pushed together in the middle of this small room to get a good, full room shot at this point.  I will try to get some finished room shots on my last day, when I can put some of the furniture back.

While I am here, I am also going to repair two pieces of furniture that have been damaged.  This first piece, a bench, had been chewed by a dog the homeowner used to have.  I sanded the chewed corner and then filled in with some wood filler and have left it to dry for now.

This cupboard was a piece the homeowner bought quite a few years ago.  I don't know where she got it, but it is all hand painted and quite pretty.  Unfortunately, her late husband was a smoker and left his cigarette on the top one day. :-(

Someone took some type of cleaning solution to the top and took off some of the finish, so now it has the burn mark as well as the finish wiped offed in this one corner.

So far, I have just sanded the burn mark and filled it in.  More later.  I have a small garden mural to do in the galley kitchen here and then I will be done.

Living Room Project

I am well underway with this Living Room Project.  Here are two "Before" shots showing just the plain, pale yellow walls.  It's a small, one bedroom condo in a Fifty-Five Plus condo complex.  The homeowner has not moved in yet, but most of her furnishings are here.

My client sent me this piece of wallpaper and asked me if I could copy the flowers and paint them randomly scattered on the walls in her Living Room.  I took the wallpaper to Staples and enlarged the two groupings of flowers on a copier.  

I then cut a silhouette stencil for each of the groupings:
 

Using this stencil, I went around the room and just roller stenciled, in white.

So far, so good.  The only glitch was the fact that I forgot my good glasses and had to resort to digging in my backpack for a back up pair.  Sad to say, this was all I could find.  Luckily, I had on my baseball cap and that helped to keep them in place!

Next, I went around with an angle brush and just painted in this medium blue tone, looking at the wallpaper for guidance.  

And this is when I had a little accident with the blue paint.  I don't know why I am such a klutz these days, but I have spilled more paint this year than in all previous 12 years of painting - total!  I was working from a small sample sized paint jar, maybe 4 oz. of paint in the jar.
As I moved the ladder, the leg caught a bit on my drop cloth and the jar flew off, right onto my chest!  Some paint hit the wall, but 99% of it hit me and the steps of my ladder. 
Here you can see my shirt lying on a drop cloth.  Note all the blue paint on both sleeves.  My sleeves were so heavy with paint, that I had to take my shirt off and put on a sweater I had in my backpack.  When I took my shirt off, my arms were also a light blue from the paint seeping through my shirt!  I looked like a Smurf.  Remember those???  My bib overalls also took some of the paint.  Here's a shot of them, with me now in the sweater:

I wasted about 45 minutes cleaning myself and my mess up, but in the end, I did remain pretty much on schedule for the day!  I really need to order some new overalls....

Is This Job Done Yet????

Remember the Media Room job I started several weeks ago?  Well, I've been there for what seems forever, due to one very incompetent contractor.  The first week I started, I was just doing a lot of prep work, so did not mind that there was a lot of commotion going on in the room while I'll worked.  Once my prep was done I told the contractor to call me when it was 100% done and I'd come back to do the final finishes.  I got the call, returned, only to find the room was far from 100% done.  The room remained under some state of construction and in fact, is still not 100% finished.  It has been frustrating to say the least. 

Here's a good example of what a typical day was like for me on this job.  The contractor would say the remaining crown molding would be installed by the end of the day, so I could do a finish on it.  He would set up his saw, in the middle of this small room, not cover anything, saw away, get saw dust all over my walls and woodwork, in my boxes of supplies that were on the floor, etc.  It was beautiful weather out, a deck was less than 10 feet away where he easily could have set up the saw.  I would return the next morning to find the job still incomplete.

Weeks ago, I brushed some metallic bronze paint into the grout lines that separated these wooden panels.  I then laid down a 1/4" tape over the bronze and base coated the panels.  I thought I would be glazing these panels the next day, but due to contractor delays, I could not glaze them until 2 wks. later.  By then, the tape had sat on the walls way too long, pulling a lot of the bronze paint off when I finally was able to remove the tape.  I had to go take a small artist brush and hand paint in all the chipped off areas.  Thank God there was only this one wall to do!
Here you can see the retouched lines and you can faintly see the striae on each panel.  The direction of the striae changes on every other panel.

I got tired of waiting for this contractor to remove this junction box and patch, so I decided to go ahead and do the wall and deal with it later.

Eventually it was removed and patched and I, of course, had to redo the panels involved with that patch.

The columns and this side of the room was done first because for a long time, it was the only side of the room ready for me.

Here's another view.  This Media Room is in the center of the house and is open to a large, formal living room.

Back over to the other side of the room, crown molding was still missing, which held up my finishing that piece of the job.  Here you can clearly see that there will be no room for the rim of the speaker because the molding is now in the way.  I'm guessing when the guy comes to do the speaker install, some fur is going to fly.

Running out of time and patience, I put the finish on the molding.  I'm sure I will be touching it up after the speaker install!  Also, the contractor decided NOT to install the adjacent molding and had me paint it on the floor instead.  He will install later.  Another touch up, I'm sure!

When I complained about the large gaps in the corners, this was his solution!  He globbed in a very thick layer of putty, which took 2 days to dry.  Apparently he never heard of applying thin layers.  He also kept trying to pawn this type of patching and all caulking off on me, but since I had to repeatedly redo areas that he damaged, I was not about to do him any favors. 

Here's a good example of what I mean about having to redo areas.  This wire was moved twice AFTER I had glazed the wall.

I had two areas that I had to rework because they were just a little too dark.
 

I struggled with trying to get these areas to blend for hours!  Today, I put in an S.O.S. call to my good friend and fellow decorative painter, Denise Kilpatrick for some technical assistance.  I did the best I could, decided to let the walls dry and will tweak a bit more if needed when I return for all the touch ups I know I am going to have to do.

The saving grace on this job is that the clients are very nice! 

Progress and Delays

The Before Picture (left) and where this room is now (right).  Remember, this finish went over some very old paneling. 

This close up shows the finishes much better.  The column will have a gloss sealer. 

This is the hardware that will go on the built-ins in this room.  The base and top of the column detail has a multi-layer metallic finish that matches the hardware.

Now I have pretty much gone as far as I can in this room until the contractor returns and finishes the remaining work.

This curved wall still needs to have the dentil molding repaired and that patch, dead center, is another issue. 

Also, this side of the room is still under construction.

Media Room Progress

With the Kitchen Job on hold for a few days of curing time, I returned to the Media Room Job I began a few weeks ago.  Unfortunately, the contractors did not complete the work that was supposed to be done while I was away working on the Kitchen Job.  I'm not really sure what is going on with the progress, or lack thereof,  on this job by others, but there does seem to be some communication issues going on.

Remember this curved wall?  Well, some issues still exists that prevent me from doing the final striae finish.  One... that outlet hole that has not been repaired and two, the dentil molding still needs repair work.  Waiting......

So, in the meantime I decided I could at least get the bronze color into the "grout" lines between the diamonds.

I brushed on the bronze, let dry, then taped out with this 1/4" tape.

Then I just rolled on two coats of my base coat color.  Next...whenever the repairs are completed... I will do the striae finish.

Here are all the finishes that will be in this room.

The largest sample board, with the couch fabric draped over it, will be applied to all the other walls in this room.  I did complete 2 of the walls, but did not take photos yet.  Two other walls are waiting for more work to be done by the contractor, so I'm at a standstill.

The Kitchen Job: Almost There

Again, I must apologize for my absence here most of last week.  I've been running around in too many directions with work projects during the day, leaving me just too tired to blog at night.  This week I have organized my schedule to be a little less hectic and a lot more productive! 

In the weeks to follow I will be making some changes, for the better I hope, to this blog site.  I feel I have fallen behind with some of the updates that should be made to this blog with some new technology that is now available.  I have vowed to set some time aside each day to read up on ways to improve my blog site.  It's all a bit mind boggling and time consuming.

Last week I returned to the Kitchen Job, adding some additional layers of glazes to the walls:

Wherever you see the blue tape, that is where the new addition begins.  To the right in this photo (left), where the shelf is, is the original finish, untouched by the construction.  The old finish meets the new finish just about dead center on the soffit in this photo.

 

I am close, but not quite there.  This photo to the left, shows what is happening with the lighting in this room.  In the photos above, where the old and new finishes meet, it looks very close.  BUT... in this lighting, you can see that the right side of the room appears lighter than the left.  There are so many light variations going on in this room, with shadows from cabinets, windows, nooks and crannies, that the finish appears light when viewed from one angle and dark when viewed from another.  I decided it was best to just let the glazes sit and cure for a few days and then return to make adjustments as needed.    My client was going out of town for a few days and some additional tiling on a back splash area needed to be completed, so it was a good time for a break.

The Kitchen Job Continues

Sorry I missed a few days of posting, so I will try to get you caught up to where I am on this job, with this post.  This photo shows the next layer of glazes applied over the green glazed layer I had done previously.  You can see the green glazed area below the outlet.  Above the outlet, I have now applied 4 glazes, all at the same time.

Here are my 4 glazes on my ladder, along with my ratty brushes, a Woolie, rag and Neon Leon brush.  I use all of tools to manipulate the glazes.

Here is another view of the same wall...with the 4 glazes applied from the outlet/switch plates up and just the green glaze below.

Now that I have these 4 additional glazes applied, this is what it looks like where the old finish is meeting with the new.  I still have a few more layers to add, so the transition will (hopefully) not be this noticeable.

I let this new layer of 4 glazes dry overnight before I returned and applied another layer of 4 glazes.

This layer uses 2 of the glazes in the previous layer and 2 new glazes, both which are gold tones.

 

The additional 4 glazes have been applied from the ceiling down to the middle of this wall in this photo.  You can see how the wall is now taking on more of a gold tone.  Also, note the missing cabinet doors throughout this kitchen.  My poor client has been waiting almost one year...yes that is one year!, for her doors!!  These cabinets were custom made by a small cabinetmaker.  His work is beautiful, but this job was just way too big for him to handle in a timely way.

See this deep Violet Earth colored glaze?  Well, I forgot it was on the tray of the ladder and started to fold up the ladder to move it out of this narrow space. :-(  The container fell forward, landing on each rung of the ladder and then upside down, thankfully on the drop cloth.  What a mess to clean up.  It also splattered all over me on the way down to the floor. 

This finish has 2 more layers to go.