Heavily Textured Wall – Venetian Plaster

A few years ago, this wall finish was quite popular. There are different levels of thickness, but the general name for the style is Venetian Plaster. To me, this looks rustic and “Tuscan,” yet people were putting it in modern homes, and even Victorian styled homes. Today it’s out of style, and people are going back to wallpaper.

The walls will have to be smoothed again, before wallpaper can be applied. Because this particular example is especially thick, it will take a lot of smoothing compound and a lot of drying time.

The second photo shows the wall after I applied the smoothing compound. It had to dry overnight, with three fans set at ‘high’ blowing on it. In the third photo you see all the dust on the baseboard and floor, from sanding the wall smooth. This is way more than usual, because of the thickness of the original texture that I was covering up.

The last photo shows the wall after I sanded it and primed it. It’s now ready for wallpaper!

Venetian Plaster – Whoever Thought This Was A Good Idea?!

In the early 2000’s, someone got the idea to put Venetian plaster in American homes. The fad caught on, and soon people were forsaking wallpaper and covering their walls with the new trendy texture, which was supposed to look “rustic,” and “Tuscan.”

To me, unless you had a house that was designed from the ground up to look “Tuscan,” this wall finish never looked good in the typical American home. Even worse was when the finish was poorly executed. Please see the photos.

I’m glad that the pendulum has swung, and people are going back to wallpaper.

There are special prep steps that must be taken, so that the texture won’t show under the new paper, and so the paper can adhere to the surface (true Venetian plaster has a slick wax coating).

Pearlized Chinoiserie Blends Historic With Contemporary

Chinoiseries (Oriental-themed patterns) date back hundreds of years. But they can be adapted for modern tastes, too. The muted colors and pearlized shimmer of this design by Thibaut fit right in with this young couple’s furnishings and with the architecture of their Briargrove (Tanglewood) area home in Houston.

The largish powder room originally had a Venetian plaster type finish on the walls, and it was painted a glossy one-color grey. Suffice it to say, the room was downright unattractive.

I smoothed the walls and applied a primer. As the paper started to go up, the homeowner exclaimed, “I didn’t expect the wallpaper to make the room look bigger. But it DOES!” She also loved the pattern, and the oh-so-very-subtle pearly sheen.

Quick Change of Plans – Got to the Home Show After All

The client I was supposed to do a small repair for today is not answering her phone.

Wish I had known this earlier, as I wanted to go to the Home Show, and can sure spend the entire day there.  Hmmm… think I’ll dash over there anyway, and see what I can see before closing time at 8:00 pm.

Update:  I got to the Home Show about 4:00 pm.  The Reliant show is much smaller than the one in the fall at the Geo. R. Brown Convention Center, so it was, indeed, possible to see all the booths in the four hours I had.  Well, I should say three hours… Because just about as soon as I walked in, they announced the start of an hour-long Faux Finishing demonstration.  Michael Graves is the guy, and he’s GREAT.  http://www.michaelgravesstudio.com/

Michael is based out of Dallas, but works all over the state (and probably the nation), and has a studio here in Houston.  I have seen one of his assistants put on a demo last year, and it was wonderful, too.  This time it was the real guy himself, so that was a treat.  He  covered different material from what the gal demo’ed last year, so I learned new tips.  He’s wonderfully down to Earth, explains things well, and was well prepared, with all his materials laid out and ready to go.  He even offered to answer questions by phone for free.  You can find videos on YouTube.

About the neatest things he did was to use a polyester doily to stencil a cabinet door.  He placed the doily on top of the door, took a trowel of Venetian plaster, swiped it over the doily, then removed the doily.  What was left on the door was the design of the doily, made from little bitty raised dots of plaster.  Once that dried and he got various coats of stain and paint and glaze over it, it was stunning.  Depending on what he did with it, the effect could have been old world French (faded smokey blue with gold dots), Morroccan, antique Chinese (blackish base with red dots), or Martha Stewart modern.

There was another cool product I was interested in, which was a guy who does concrete overlays on just about any surface, and finishes them to look like granite, marble, stone, etc.  In other words, you could take a Formica countertop – even a sheet of plywood – and he could transform it to look like granite, for a fraction of the cost.  I don’t like cheesy looking stuff, but I have to say that this man’s product looked pretty darned good.  And – the guy who worked the booth and sells the product is the same guy who comes to your house and does all the work.  I really like that aspect, because that’s how I run my business, too.  You meet me, you hire me, you trust me, and I’m the one who will be working in your home – not some strange guy you never met before.  Anyway, this product is called Stone FX, the guy is Adam Morse, and find him at www.StoneFXInternational.com

Did I buy anything?  Well, besides jewelry (this gal making really cool bracelets and necklaces out of tiny scraps of colorful wrappers from Tootsie Roll Pops, and another style with itty bitty gears, all embedded in resin), OK, besides jewelry and a philodendrum plant, I bought two 25′ hoses that are really cool – they expand to full length when full of water, but deflate into what you can fit into a 1 quart flower pot when empty, will not kink or break.  Similar to this – wish the one I bought had been this green color.  http://www.flexablehose.com/  I am looking forward to trying this product right now, when I do my Sunday morning pond maintenance.

I love home shows.  These days I am not often able to get to them, but I was so glad it worked out for me to make the mad dash over there yesterday.  I had a good time and saw wonderful products of all types for the home and garden.