Oh, What A Ceiling!

After completing a powder room, 7 ceiling medallions, 4 corbels, a dozen cartouches and many, many feet of crown moulding, we moved on to Dave & Rita's dining room.  The decor is Empire~Louis XIV, which is quite ornate.  It was decided that we would go big on the ceiling, yet subtle.  Is that possible?!  D and R wanted their dinner guests to be seated, casually glance upwards and...ooohhh!  The wow effect.

So...go big or go home...we brought a carpet (in the form of a stencil) up onto the ceiling, filling the 8' x 10' tray, as well as all four corners.  To accentuate the tray, the 4" soffit was gilded.  As well as the medallion.

We applied Lusterstone in a pale, silvery grey on the ceiling.  The medallion and soffit were base coated in black, then gold leafed.  Just this change alone created a dazzling effect!

Next, the ceiling stencils were installed.  We painted 3 layers: a 1/2 tint of the wall color, the Lusterstone, then highlights of gold.

Wow!!!

Although there were many elements to this design, each was important to the end result.  We had to to keep the design well-balanced.  Otherwise, the dining room would have appeared unfinished.  The ceiling is truly bold, yet subtle at the same time.  Our next project is Dave & Rita's master bedroom...yep, you guessed it...the ceiling!!!


Susan & Tracey
FWS

Bathroom Nightmare

This was truly a bathroom nightmare. Very scary cherubs painted on a light blue bathroom ceiling. In the ladies' room... of a restaurant. The restaurant owner had expected roly-poly cherubs. Instead, she got skinny elves with pointy chins.

We are not bashing the artist. The client was just not happy with the work. She had let go of the idea of a cherubic ceiling and was looking for a quick fix. And a quick fix it was!

We went in immediately and painted the offensive ceiling black. Getting rid of the blue ceiling (not to mention the cherubs/elves) was an immediate improvement. The walls had already been glazed with a metallic bronze over black, so the black ceiling gave the ladies' room a more cohesive look.

Of course, we did not stop there. We decided to layer a stencil over the bronze glaze. And since this was a quick fix, we went to our library of stencils. The large damask cartouche that we had used in Julie's dining room was the perfect fit. The all-over stencil went up quickly, using a copper metallic glaze.

The owner was thrilled with results.

Small bathrooms can be jewel boxes. Have we mentioned this before? A professional opinion here: the best way to ease color and pattern into your home is in a small bathroom.

Start with a bathroom!

Susan and Tracey

FWS

Form Follows Function

This was a fun and functional project in Breda's kitchen.  Rather than cluttering up the fridge door with magnets and stuff, why not put a decorative magnetic board right onto the wall?   And why not make it a lovely restaurant-style menu board with gold leaf scrollwork?

That's exactly what we did for Breda.  We selected a 2' x 3' decorative frame stencil to fill her blank wall.  We masked off the area of the frame's scrollwork and painted it out with 3 coats of magnetic paint. 

 

 

The magnetic paint was then given a decorative coat of color with a textured bronze paint.  The stencil was installed on top of the magnetic area and given a basecoat of black paint.

Once the paint was dry, a coat of size was applied. The stencil was then removed, and a variegated gold-leaf was added.

 

And voila! A beautiful magnetic board/wall! Another great idea would be to install this stencil with chalkboard paint, rather than magnetic. Either way, the grocery list becomes a piece of artwork.

 

Susan and Tracey

FWS