Salvaged Paint Covers Multitude of Sins

When you build with mismatched scrap wood, paint goes a long way to giving the completed unit a finished look. I'm not sure how I feel about this scratched up dragging technique. It looks like a bad paint job though in a stylish way so appears intentional. It certainly distracts from any imperfections in the wood and joinery.

Dragging a brush through wet paint was a popular technique for walls in Victorian times which favored rich textures in decor. A number of painting techniques were derived including ragging (rolling a rag through paint) and lots of faux furniture finishes. I loved the book "Paint Magic" by Jocasta Innes though I rarely had the patience to do more than sponging two colors.

As for mixing paint I read an article once about a painter of San Francisco Victorians. He had a large collection of paint in quart cans in his truck and when he was on a job if he didn't have the color he wanted he would just mix it.

I collected the paints my clients were discarding in garage clean-outs, then culled it down to gloss or semi-gloss or flats of strong colors. And if these colors weren't right for a project I'd mix a new color. Some of these paints were 20 years old in cans with rusty rims. But as long as the paint could be stirred into a smooth consistency with no solid bits they were fine. Sometimes adding water would help.

It was always an experiment not the sure thing that a paint chip would provide, but paint chips have notoriously turned out to be the wrong choice due to operator perception error. Or you end up trying out 14 different colors looking for just that certain shade you saw at someone's house. Better that you are making samples as you go and if you mix it yourself you are more likely to like it hooked, as it were, by the transformation of it all.

I started with a base coat of a grey green from the Ralph Lauren collection. I am not a designer label person but the color choices are nice. It tugged at me in a visceral way (which Mr. Lauren probably intended thus his success). I liked it better than the blue grey I had. Then I mixed some garish green and some deep blue paint to get the teal.

While browsing Pinterest for paint techniques I found a recipe for chalk paint and since I already had Plaster of Paris on hand I decided to try making chalk paint. And while I was looking in my paint stuff I found a wallpaper brush I bought once because I liked the old world look of it. I decided to use this brush for the dragging part.

The recipe I used was 1/4 cup water, 1/4 cup plaster of paris, 3/4 cups latex paint. It expanded the amount of paint and toned down the intensity of the color a tiny bit, but it dried chalky as promised. Then because I wanted a washable surface for my kitchen I put on a final coat of semi-gloss varnish from a job refinishing desks for an office. Now it was no longer a chalk paint except where I left it unvarnished inside cabinet doors. In the end I would have preferred a satin finish, but this project is all about reuse and a decorating preference did not justify buying new had it occurred to me beforehand.

Painting takes very little time to apply, but needs time to dry so it's nice to have a place to paint where I can leave it and work on it when I'm home with 15 minutes to fill here and there. I sure will miss my painting porch here at Ridge Ranch.