Saturday, February 21, 2009

Accent wall back to wood

We may be onto something with the pesky accent wall. Our granite guy (who is also a paint guy) stopped by last week. Shad likes to look around the house and note what has changed, and he casually asked about the paint-test wall. The sun was almost down by then, but he squinted and said, "I like the green. I think what I like about it is that it is distressed." We had only a small sample, so painted it hurriedly over the white undercoat leaving a streaky effect.

All of a sudden the frustration of the wall came into focus. The paint, no matter the color, is so solid and static and one-dimensional compared to the lovely wood, tile, and stone all around. He suggested, "When we mess up, we
paint the wood back to a wood color, then we stain on top of the paint!" So that's what we're trying.

The first draft of "wood-look" was applied with too much contrast between the darkest and lightest colors (above), so we glazed on a thinned down coat of beige to tone down the light sections (right). Stay tuned for the green, coming soon....