Honorable Mention "Home Decorating Store"		Before you apply a Faux Finish, you will want to review these steps. As with many other things, there are several ways to get the results you want. These tips are intended to guide you and to give the most general of situations the best advice. If you have any questions, please call us at 781-447-4469. Preparing the room Begin by removing everything you can from the room. If large pieces of furniture can't be taken out, put them in the center of the room. But it's well worth the effort to get it as cleared out as possible. Remove the shades from any light fixtures that are attached to the walls, and mask off any parts of them that would be damaged by paint. Take out their bulbs if you can't keep the masking well away from them, or the heat could start a fire. Take down any window coverings and rods. Use a central container (like a pie tin) for all the miscellaneous hardware, screws, picture hanging hooks or nails, etc. Also remove all switchplate and electrical outlet covers, even if you'll later be painting them the same color as the walls. Put a piece of masking tape over each switch and electrical outlet to keep them clean. It's easiest to cover the entire floor with one, or several, dropcloths rather than move a smaller one around as you go. And speaking of dropcloths, the best ones for the floor are either the old fashioned heavy canvas, or the paper/plastic laminates. Plain plastic on the floor is slippery underfoot, and paint spills and spatters are not absorbed; you'll likely track the paint out of the room and onto unprotected areas. Old sheets and fabrics are okay for spatters, but will allow spills to penetrate to the floor (or furnishings) underneath. Furniture and other objects are fine with the inexpensive, lightweight plastic. Preparing the wall itself Obviously you'll want to repair any major damage first, using wall patching compounds for the big stuff, spackling for small holes or cracks and sand the area so that it is smooth. Paint these repairs with the same paint that's already on the wall if you are going to be using that existing color as your base for your faux effects. Large repairs should be primed and painted. In any room, your walls should be clean and free of dirt and dust. Bathroom and kitchen walls should be scrubbed with TSP or other wall prep formulas. Walls that have a sheen to them (i.e., not flat) should be lightly sanded. Incidentally, if you use a wet method to clean the walls, do it before all the masking. Masking the area For a sharp line between the ceiling and walls, or between the wall and a ceiling molding, pull long lengths of painters tape and apply to the ceiling or molding, making a straight, or nearly straight line. Particularly on older surfaces that have been painted many times, it can be hard to decide exactly what is wall and what is ceiling. Split the difference, and try to make smooth curves rather than jagged lines. After masking, run a very thin bead of wall color along the edge where the tape and the wall meet, leaving a thin coat that is partly on the tape and partly on the wall. This will keep paint from creeping under the edge of the tape. This tip works anywhere that two surfaces meet, such as trim-to-wall. For painters tape, they're usually blue in color and are made to stay up for several days without leaving residue behind, as standard tape can do. Although it's not necessary, but it does make for a neater project... overlap this line of tape (back behind the clean edge you just painted) with a 6 inch or wider band of masking paper onto the ceiling or trim. Or tape lengths of newspaper out onto the ceiling. This will prevent paint smears on the ceiling as you manipulate the paint on the wall with your sponge or rag, etc. Do the same with all the other edges of the walls where they meet baseboards, door and trim moldings. Getting ready like this takes a little time, but you can now be quite sloppy with your brush, roller, rag, or sponge, and it will be much faster and less frustrating than trying to go around wiping up paint or touching up later. Choosing a technique You will be happy that you spent the time on all of this preparation. It not only makes for a better job, it's an easier one as well. When you don't have to worry about bumping into things, or working carefully around exposed details, or wiping up after drips or splatters, you can focus on your painting and the effects you're creating. If you're going to be using the existing wall color for the base of your new look, you are practically there and ready to start. If you're going to be starting with a new base coat of paint. First you have to ask yourself what kind of technique you plan to use for the decorative part, or the faux part. If it's an effect that doesn't rely on "slipperiness", you can use a flat sheen paint for your base wall color. An example of this would be sponging. Here you don't particularly count on any areas of squishing one color onto or into another. But that might be one of the few, though popular, effects that will work on a flat sheened surface. For most other techniques, you will want the ability to move the top coats of paint or glaze around a little (or a lot) and here you will want a little bit of slipperiness. For these kind of looks, you'll be better off with an eggshell, satin, or semi-gloss base paint. These paints are not only smoother, they're also less absorbent, and so will let you manipulate the glaze mixture around without immediately sticking to the base paint. A satin is probably the best choice for most finishes except maybe for a stippled look, where you may want to choose the semi-gloss. Now the next choice (decisions, decisions!) is whether to use a latex paint or an alkyd (oil base) paint for your base coat. For furniture, you may want to use oil products for their durability, ease of manipulation, and transparency of color... although you don't have to. For walls, the easiest and preferred choice is latex. For certain professional projects or specific looks, oils are available. It's a choice, and you get to make it... Let's begin!! So get out your roller and tray, and a brush for cutting in the edges that a roller can't reach. Use a short nap (1/4 inch, or foam) roller for smooth surfaces, a 3/8 or 1/2 inch nap for textured surface walls. Latex or alkyd, open windows and put a fan in one of them to exhaust air out and help keep the rest of the house from smelling like paint. Use an extension handle on your roller will save you from going up and down a ladder, and will speed things along. Remember to paint separately any of the switch plate or electrical covers that you want to blend in with the walls. A BIG TIP - we recommend that you try your faux technique on poster board or dry-wall. In fact, if you're at all unsure about what base color you want to use to achieve the final effect that you want, you might want to do this long before you buy a gallon of paint. Buy a quart. Buy a sheet of drywall (it's cheap) and cut it (you can do this at the store so it fits in your trunk) into pieces that are large enough for you to judge the effect, and to practice the technique(s) you'll use. Soon, we will be getting in samplers of paint from Benjamin Moore. They are smaller than a quart size and will be VERY convenient when sampling a look. Now that you've got a nice fresh basecoat of the perfect color, let it dry overnight, longer is fine. Does it need a second coat? If you can see different sheens as you sight along the wall, it probably does. If you are just going for a pure, opaque color instead of secondary applications of glaze, it probably needs another coat. But if you are planning on any of the broken color techniques that will get a glaze coat or more, one coat is probably enough. If you will be using a technique that involves little or no "scrubbing" of the subsequent glaze color(s) such as sponging, ragging, frottage, positive styles of faux marble or other faux stone, you can move on. If you will be using any pressure to move or remove some of the glaze like negative faux methods or "antiqued" looks, let the base paint dry for at least another day. This assumes room temperature (or warmer) air and normal (or lower) humidity. Moving a lot of air around helps quite a bit. Keep the exhaust fan going in the window, with another blowing into the room. Maybe another small one in any corners that are out of the main flow. The secrets to getting good results with wall glazing include having enough of your glaze/paint mixture already mixed in enough quantity to do the entire room, so that you don't have to try to match and mix more for that last several square feet. How much you'll need depends on what technique(s) you've chosen; sponge painting and ragging on use a lot less than negative methods, for example. You'll treat each wall the same as if it were a large tabletop, working from one corner until you reach the other corner. For right-handers, it's usually easiest to start at the left edge and work to your right. If you are using a "positive" or printing technique, you can be quite casual about this. But if you're using any method that requires blending, or softening, that requires working wet into wet, you must work quickly enough to keep a wet edge moving forward along the wall until you reach the next corner or other break in the wall. This means that you may need (and it's always nice to have) a second, and maybe even a third person to help. Typically, the first person will apply the glaze with the chosen tool(s) while a second will follow, manipulating the wet glaze with another tool. A third person may be softening the effect of the second, or may be applying another accent color, or be directing the others while standing back far enough to see the larger effects happening on the wall. In practice, these positions may often shift as one person climbs a ladder while another works below, etc. The important thing is for the person applying the wet glaze to work fast enough that they are able to keep going forward from still wet glaze, but not so fast that they, or the others, cannot keep up with the manipulation of the wet glaze. Meanwhile, you have to try to stay out of each other's way...whew! You quickly discover what a relief it is to reach a corner, where you can rest (and regroup?). Here, once again, is where having a finished sample is so worthwhile. You'll have a good idea of how to get the effect you want, and know where you can dawdle along, and where you'll have to keep moving to keep the glaze wet. Before starting with the glaze, remember to replace any switch or outlet covers that you want to have receive the same techniques as the surrounding walls. If you remove them for the base color earlier, they don't get welded in with paint. You can replace them later, and touch in the effect to blend them in. You'll usually want to begin with the shortest wall, or least conspicuous wall. This is your "practice", because theoretically, you've already done that when you were making samples. But the full sized wall will always be a little different, and so this gives you a place to "warm up." If the worst disaster befalls you, or you don't like the full size results, a short wall will be easier to repaint. In fact, if the base color coat has had plenty of time to dry, you may be able to wipe off your first effort and start again. A fresh base coat will not stand much scrubbing though. More likely, you'll be at least reasonably pleased with your results, and may just slightly modify your techniques on the next section. Keep in mind that you will probably not be seeing most of the walls in their entirety after you replace furniture and pictures, and will not notice small differences, especially if the glaze color(s) stay the same throughout. If your chosen effect involves more than one glaze coat (such as a lacquer look, or multiple colors for faux marble, for example), be sure to let the first glaze dry thoroughly; it's more fragile than the base color coat against abrasion or solvents. When the glaze has dried overnight, sight along the walls to see if you're happy with the sheen. If you're pleased, you are finished! Now you can begin removing masking materials. If the tape is pulling up any of the fresh base coat and/or the glaze coat, use a razor knife or blade to slice the edge between the tape and the wall. This is particularly likely if you used base paint on the joint between the two. Removing the masking and folding up the dropcloths is certainly the most fun part! Seeing your walls bordered by the crisp lines of moldings and ceiling is most inspiring and rewarding... definitely a worthwhile project. Whitman Wallpaper and Paint Co., Inc. 242 Bedford St. Whitman, MA 02382 Phone: 781-447-4469 ~ Fax: 781-447-4516 2010 Copyright Whitman Wallpaper and Paint Co., Inc.