Camouflage Room

 

Here is a boy’s room I painted.  Two of the walls are a dark green.  The other two walls I painted to look like camouflage.

This was a pretty easy project.  The trickiest part was mapping out the colors.

I think I need to go back and get some pictures with the furniture in it.

The Burkhardt House

Sorry, I’ve been lazy about keeping up with my blog.  I was gently reminded by several followers that I needed an update.  I WILL get better about updating more often.

Here is some work I did at a friend’s house.  Their oldest boy loves frogs.  We started with a green khaki base coat.  Then I added some little accents around the room.

View Full Album

In addition to painting the bedroom.  I’ve painted an accent wall at the end of the hallway.  It’s a tissue paper texture with a colorwash.  It makes a great background for her mirror wall.

Vickie’s Nail Salon

First, let me apologize for my lack of posting these past few months.  I have been enjoying my time with the kids being out of school.  That being said, I haven’t made the time to be on the computer or work much for that matter.  I’m trying to get back into the groove.  Less than three weeks until school starts again.

These pictures are of a nail salon I had the pleasure of doing a couple years ago.  The owner, Vicki is a great person.  She is very involved in our community and a great inspiration to any businesswoman.  I met her several years ago and we instantly hit it off.  It amazes me the amount of things she can pack into each day. 

After many years of being on Main Street, Wauconda her business was becoming too large for the space.  Vicki built a new facility with lots more room.  It’s got separate areas for the spa, facials, hair and nails.

I gave the upper half of the walls a colorwash treatment in an eggplant color.  The lower half was textured and colored to give it a limestone finish.

This was my second time doing a commercial job.  I ran into some problems with the other contractors, that did the prep work and base coating.  The walls were to be primed and base coated prior to me starting.  Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that the walls weren’t actually primed before the base coat was applied.  After taping off the stones and applying the texture, I allowed it to dry.  When I started peeling the tape off, it was removing more than just the tape.  The paint and everything all the way down to the drywall was coming off.  It was a complete nightmare.  After several discussions with the contractors, we got confirmation that the walls were never primed.  This meant I had to patch the areas that were ruined and prime the walls again.  Oh yeah, and redo all the taping and stone work.  Once this was done the stones were colored to create the look of limestone.

pedicure area

The wall behind the chairs is bronze with a turquoise colorwash.  I love this color combination.

This back wall has tissue paper for texture.  Then I applied copper paint and colorwashed with more turquoise.

It was a relief to finish this project given the problems I encountered along the way.  It was quite a learning experience for sure.  It goes to show why the prep work is one of the most important parts of the job. 

Vickie’s is a place I visit frequently.  It’s where my family goes for all our beauty needs.  We recently had the pleasure of celebrating my daughters’ 7th birthday there.  She invited five of her friends and I invited some of mine and together enjoyed some pampering.

My Current Project

Here is the house I have been working on for the past couple of weeks.  The homeowners have been remodeling their house and had some faux finishing done.  They weren’t happy with the way their last faux finisher did the dining room.  They contacted me to redo it.  I redid the silver stripes and completely changed the ceiling.  The ceiling had a sponged look before that didn’t compliment the walls at all. Sorry, I didn’t get any before picture of this room.  Here is the completed room.  I can’t wait to see what it looks like with the furniture in it.

I also repainted their bathroom.  It had a venetian plaster type finish.  I think they were going for a marble look, that didn’t turn out quite right.  So, I repainted it with a bronze linen type look.   After several days, the husband decided he didn’t like this either.  It’s too close to the wood tones, so I’ll be lightening it.

 

I was also asked to change the living room.  It’s a green plaster, but too much green for the homeowners.  I troweled some of the gold I used for the dining room ceiling over the green.  This toned down the green and also helped the two rooms flow a little better.

 

 

 

 

The after picture didn’t photograph very good.  The gold was still wet and looks a lot more blotchy than it actually is.  It has more of a subtle marble look to it.  I’ll have to get another picture of it when I go back.

I am also doing the bedroom wall that they didn’t like.  The headboard wall had a cloud-like finish on the upper half.  I had suggested to do a colorblock technique and incorporate the two different blues, some silver, brown/bronze and white.  Well, I got it drawn out and started painting it.  To my surprise the next day I got a call and the husband thinks it’s too contemporary.

 

 

 

I must admit, this one was a little disappointing.  I feel it really looked nice with their headboard and bedding.  Oh well, it’s back to the studio to come up with another idea.

Sometimes, these things happen.  It’s hard for some people to visualize what an entire wall is going to look like from just a small sample.  I enjoy the challenge and look forward to finding the perfect solution for this room.  I’ll post more when it gets finished.

My Kids Rooms.

As you can imagine, my kid’s rooms have been painted several times.  Jake was my first born and while pregnant with him (not knowing if I was having a boy or girl) I painted my first mural.  This is what started my love for painting.  I painted the nursery with a colorwashed blue sky, grass, picket fence, tree, flowers and Suzy’s Zoo characters. Unfortunately, I can’t find my pictures of this right now.

While pregnant with Jess, Jake moved to his big boy room which was painted to look like Bikini Bottom from SpongeBob.

 

 

 

 

After a few years with SpongeBob, I changed Jake’s room to Herbie cars.  I don’t have pictures of this, because I was never very crazy about the way it turned out. 

Currently, Jake’s room is painted to look like cinder blocks with graffiti on it.  I also painted a large area with chalkboard paint so he can add his own graffiti. As you can see, other people like to add to it too.

View Full Album

Jess had the Suzi’s Zoo room for awhile, we added a rainbow to one wall.  Then, a couple years ago I decided it was finally time to paint over it and let Jess express herself.

Jess’ room is dark pink, light pink and black.  I painted a harlequin pattern on her headboard wall and she added some stick on Bratz wall art.  

View Full Album

Yes, it is very bright.  I fits her rockstar, girly, diva attitude perfectly.

Kids rooms are my favorite to paint.  I love to get the kids involved and have them help decide some of the key features.  Even if we adults don’t agree, I think it’s great to let them have it their way (to certain extents).

I designed their current rooms to hopefully last awhile.  Since the business is picking up, I don’t have as much time to repaint theirs as often.  I think they each have a room they can live with for several more years.  Although, I’m sure if they came up with another cool idea and asked me to do it I would… it’s fun to paint.

My Cabin Bathroom

This is my bathroom.  I started this project because I wanted to test painting over linoleum.  I told my husband I wanted to paint tree stumps on the floor with leaves scattered around it.  His comment was “you want to do what”.  Fortunately, I’ve yet to do something that he hasn’t liked, so I’ve still the freedom to paint as I please. 

 

 

We have a cabin in Northern Wisconsin and I just love all the cabin decor you can find.  So, to go with my tree stumps I decided to make this my little cabin away from the cabin.

On the walls, I stenciled some dragon flies with Venetian Plaster.  Then, I applied three more coats of Venetian Plaster over top.  This makes them very subtle.  Can you see it next to my towel hook?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the work was all done, I got to embellish the room with my cabin items.  I absolutely LOVE this room, it makes me smile and reminds me of Up North.

The only thing I STILL need to do is add a picture of our Cabin to the wall about the towel bar.  I haven’t decided if I want to paint one or just do a drawing.  After that’s done, this room will be perfect.

The Lindy’s project…

Here is some work I did at a restaurant in town.  The place started out as a little neighborhood bar.  A couple years ago, they did a huge renovation.  Now, it’s one of the most beautiful buildings in town (in my opinion).  It’s also got an amazing view of Bangs lake.

This is the faux brick wall I painted along with the billboard sign with their logo.  It was a lot of fun painting the brick while the real brick layers were working on the brick columns shown in the same picture.

 

 

This is a close up of the billboard I painted on the brick wall.  I woodgrained it and gave it an aged look.  We wanted it to look like an old sign.

 

 

These columns behind the bar are also faux.  They wanted brick columns, but the bar wasn’t strong enough to hold real brick.  I got some pretty funny looks carrying in these brick columns.  People thought I was really strong.  It was pretty funny.

 

 

Finally, here is a picture of the ceiling I did for them.  It’s got an aged patina look.  It really finishes off the space.

Luckily, I was able to work on it at home and have it installed by one of the workers.

This is one of those jobs that you don’t get much recognition from, because most people think it’s real and not painted.  A couple of the waitresses get a kick out of telling the customers that it’s actually paint and not real brick.

Keep your eyes open.  You never know you might be looking at something painted instead of the real thing.  That’s what makes faux finishing so much fun.