Weekend Project

I don't know why, but I decided to paint the long wall in our kitchen this weekend and add a glaze/faux finish to it. Probably because I had nothing better to do and its so much fun to do those kinds of things with a 4 year old and 20 month old under foot.

Anyway, last night I spent 4 hours painting the wall a soft buttery-yellowish color that I "customized" from a bright yellow that I used in the bathroom and some brown/gold craft paint that I had laying around. About 1/2 way through painting I started crossing my fingers that I would have enough ... which I did.
* Lesson 1 - Get over fondness for 4 inch rollers on big walls. They turn the project into a much bigger project. Learn to love full sized ones. In this case, size does matter.

This morning, figuring that the glaze process would be pretty quick, I decided I would finish up the wall, clean everything up, and be on my merry way. Not so much. About 6 hours later I finished.
Lessons learned from working with glaze
* I should have tinted the whole gallon of glaze or at least a lot more than I originally did. I kept remembering Adam's mom saying that a little glaze goes a long way, so I started out by mixing it in a pie plate-type container. I think I did this at least 6 times during the wall and I think I kept getting a tad bit darker every time I mixed up a new batch, so I feel like the right side of my wall and the left side are drastically different. Thankfully most of the middle is open, so I don't think its too noticeable. And there's a lot of wall decor to be hung up and Joel's high chair hides most of one section of the wall.
* I don't know why I didn't think I could use a roller to apply the glaze. Putting it on with a brush made it a much longer process and I don't think it would have mattered that much.

Adam's mom (I blame most of the stress of the project on her because she's the one that gave me the glaze and tools yesterday morning) mentioned that she wanted to try a technique where you put your glaze on, then press a plastic sheet to the wall and then immediately pull it off for a unique finish. I thought that sounded like a cool idea, but didn't have plastic or want to attempt something that big on my own, so thought I would try plastic wrap.

I ended up using Glad "press n seal" and it turned out kind of cool. I bet the good people at Glad never thought of using it that way! I joked to Adam that it would be my luck that "Glad" or "press n seal" would be etched into the wrap somehow and I wouldn't notice until I stepped back to look at my wall and saw my own personal billboard.

Pictures to come once I get everything hung back up. I have an Uppercase Living piece that I'm going to hang near the entry way and want to paint the frame of one of my pictures before I hang it up.

Definitely a learning experience, but I've gotten the seal of approval from 3 female neighbors ~ one even wants me to come help her do it in her bedroom and I think the next time I do it I'll have a better idea of how to do it more efficiently.