Thursday, March 25, 2010

Wool Double Roller Faux Painting

We used this double-wool-roller technique in two rooms of our house. The first room was the living room and probably my favorite. It has been a couple years but I believe we purchased the roller kit at Menards. It is a Wagner brand "Wall Magic" kit. The kit explains that you pick out 2 contrasting colors and start from there.

I was way too nervous that our ugly primered walls would show since the walls hadn't been updated in many many years.  We brought our medium khaki color from the dining room into the living room and painted a base coat.  I aslo decided to leave one wall near the windows the base color as an accent wall.  Anyways... We then chose a very light tan and also a chocolate brown for each side of the roller. 


The trays aren't very deep so I recommend being careful not to overfil with paint so you dont mix the colors.  It isn't a huge mishap if it happens, since the whole creative idea is to swirl the colors, but it just doesn't work quite the same.  Once yout get paint on both rollers, work the roller in a "W" pattern over your wall.  The more you roll over an area the more blended it will become.  I was scared of how hard it was going to be make this look nice and not messy so I started in an area that I knew would covered by our TV and entertainement center.  Looking back, I am bummer because that wall turned out the best.  Here our some photos are our living room:



The picture below shows the difference between the "accent wall" base coat and the other double-rollered walls


The paint reflects light very differently in the light.  Sometimes it even looks to be a pale eggplant color.


In an unsure effort and running out of time before move in, we also painted Princess Sass' room with the same style.  Unfortunately her room is the only room that has not had the plaster gutted and replaced with drywall.  The plaster is then covered with a lovely wood paneling.  After covering the nasty wood paneling with 5 coats of Kilz brand primer (which was a white color) I decided to go purple in her room.  Since I knew what the base coat would look like(white)  I chose a deep bold purple and also a light lilac for my two color choices.  I personally think it left a neat effect on the paneling because it didn't reach into the grooves, and you get to see white stripes going through it to add more contrast. 



I re-rolled over the walls so it gave it a more blended loook. 



Here is her finished room, hot pink curtains and all!


One problem I had with the directions that came with the roller were how to deal with the wall corners and where the wall meets the ceiling.  If you have ever worked with a paint roller before you will know that it is round and obviously doesn't fit in corners or straight edges.  I found the best technique for me was to go to my local store that sold paint and paint supply and purchase a $3 "sea sponge"  they are large enough that you can dip each end in each color and start blending away. 


Learn from my mistakes and tape off your ceilings first. 


If I was trying to hard not to make a mess of my ceiling then my random sponging technique looked awful.  I suppose the ceiling probably needed a new coat of paint anyways, maybe someday....



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