Condo Blues: How to Create a Distressed Wall Treatment

Monday, May 12, 2008

How to Create a Distressed Wall Treatment

Before we bought The Condo, my painting experience was limited to finger and tempera. I wisely decided that my first attempt at painting an actual wall should be in the laundry room because if I screwed the paint job up horribly, who would see it?

Turns out I did screw up the paint job horribly but was able to save it by creating a distressed wall treatment. Now I take everyone to see it.


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Distressed Wall Treatment 

When bargain shopping, I love nothing more than The Thrill of the Hunt. I definitely found it at Habitat’s Restore . The Restore is a thrift store that sells donated new and used home improvement materials and the proceeds go to support Habitat for Humanity. I bought a new gallon of dark red paint for the walls and a 32 oz can of tan paint for the ceiling for under $8.00. Environmentally friendly because it keeps the stuff from going into a landfill and a steal because this paint usually goes for $24.00 at Sherman Williams.

The following weekend I cleared the laundry room of stuff, put down drop clothes and started painting the walls. The first coat of red paint was streaky but I figured that that the second coat would even things out. No such luck. After the second coat of paint dried, I still had blotchy walls. I used up all of my red paint and I couldn’t get more of that color because it was a mistint. Looks like I wasted a whole weekend painting. Gone. Kaput. Fineeto.



Not so.

I made a last ditch effort to save this blotchy paint job. I figured if you can distress furniture to give a rustic shabby chic vibe, then why not a wall? I grabbed a palm sander (another lovely gift from Husband), and artfully sanded at the walls here and there. To tie the tan ceiling color into the red wall color, rubbed a few splashes of tan paint with a rag onto the wall and up with this.

Here it is in relation to a photo frame.

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Different and interesting. Not at all what I originally intended when I first started the project but I can work with it. What do you think?

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1 comment :

Anonymous said...

I like it. Some of my best results have come from a goof in the beginning. That's what turns on the creative juices, and you come up with something that it totally yours and makes your home really feel like home.

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