Tags
color matching, decorative painting, faux finish, interior design, marbling, trompe l'oeil, wood graining
Here’s a quick little post about all of the color matching I’ve been up to these days. I love these projects; some are very challenging and others are pure play. I also end up jumping all over town, which is fun.
We’ll start off on Sutton Place on the East Side with a damaged crown molding in a bedroom. It was originally painted as a faux wood burl. Water damage wiped out a long section over the bed between two windows. Here’s the repaired area, just primed.
This is the final finish. It took about five hours to base coat, glaze three times, then paint in the black lines. You can still see the water damage on the fabric-covered wall.
Next up are a couple of thermostat heat sensors on the Upper West Side. These are placed on walls and are about 1-1/2 inches wide. They usually stick out like sore thumbs. This first one is painted to match a wall upholstered in a velvet fabric with a recessed pattern in a contrasting color. Tricky.
The next one is on a sisal wall covering. The colors look off in the photo, but match in person. The best part of this one was trying to create a three-dimensional trompe l’oeil effect on such a tiny scale.
Below is another wallpaper, a mini tragedy to a home owner on the Upper East Side. The paper was damaged and a new portion was cut in. Unfortunately, the reserve roll didn’t match the paper on the wall. This area is about 4 x 6 inches, between a crown molding and the top of a door frame.
I was able to paint it to match by carefully layering on color, but there was no way to hide the cut lines. The client was not happy, but there are some things I can’t do with paint and erasing cut lines is one of them.
Now we’re getting into the really fun stuff. This violet marble is spectacular; it clads every surface in a tiny powder room. For some reason it was really easy to match, a total blast. In case you ever have to match this marble, here’s the skinny: Permanent Violet Dark combined with Red Oxide and Black.
Here’s a close up.
The same marble was also used in the apartment’s kitchen.
Just for fun, here’s the view from this apartment’s living room. That’s the Plaza Hotel, perched on the edge of Central Park.
And we’ll finish up on the Upper East Side again, in the bar area of a brand new apartment renovation. Usually when I paint outlet covers, I’m asked to leave the center plug section unpainted because the paint will scratch off eventually with a lot of plugs going in and out. In this case, though, the designer asked me to paint the whole thing, and it let me create a vanishing act.
Love this brown travertine marble. Where’s the plug?
Right there, silly.
And the next corner.
And the third corner.
That’s it for now. Happy weekend, everyone!