Dear Debbie: We are creating panels on our dining room walls with moulding strips, and I want to fill in the panels with a paler shade of the main colour or paint the panels white. Is there a paint technique that would suit these walls? Annabella
Dear Annabella: This sounds like a great project. Panels make a stunning highlight in a dining room.
One way to decorate the inside of the panels is to apply a strie finish. Strie is like dragging, where you pull a stiff bristle brush through a coloured glaze to produce a fine pattern that looks like linen. You can apply strie to a whole wall, but it is easier and more effective as a highlight technique. Using two colours that are close together will make a soft, sophisticated finish.
If you want a more dramatic look, try a red-coloured glaze over black; for a contemporary setting, mix a silver metallic glaze and drag over blocks of white panels.
In the photo shown here, the walls are painted Wedgewood blue and the panels and mouldings painted off-white. I mixed a coloured glaze -- one part water-based glazing liquid and one part blue paint. By adding glaze to paint, it becomes translucent, which allows the base coat colour to shine through. Glaze also slows down the drying time so you can work with the paint.
I rolled the blue glaze over the panels and while still wet, dragged a hard bristle paint brush through the glaze from top to bottom, keeping the lines straight. I repeated the dragging until the effect of soft white and blue lines was achieved.
For a more casual look, try strie on chair rails and trim work. Always drag in the direction of the grain or the length of the moulding. This technique also works for furniture. Tape off panels on drawers and on the sides of a dresser, or highlight the centre panel of a dining room or play table.
Dear Debbie: In my basement, the bottom half of the wall panelling is mid-green. I would like to whitewash over the panels. Can this be done? Thanks. Betty
Dear Betty: Whitewashing wood with diluted paint is one way of colouring the wood while allowing the wood's natural grain markings to show. It is applied to raw wood, and wood that has been sanded to open up the pores. However, the same process can be used over wood that has been painted if you want to see some of the colour showing through; in your case, the mid-green.
Latex paint will not cover oil-based paint, so check first to see what type of paint is on the panelling. Then, clean and sand the panelling lightly to prepare it for the wash. The whitewash recipe is equal parts white latex paint and water. Apply the wash with a brush, moving in one direction for a neat finish as the brush strokes will show.
Dear Debbie: We painted one bedroom yellow with a bit of an orange hue. The floor is a medium shade of hardwood, the furniture is mahogany. The room looks like a big, bright lemon. What would you suggest for curtains and bed linens that would help? I've put up gray/blue picture frames and they seem to work. Thank you. Elean
Dear Elean: Yellow can be a difficult colour to work with and the amount of natural light the room gets will also determine its brightness. Take a cue from your frames -- silver or pewter gray is a good way to tone down the yellow. In fact, you can paint the wall trim gray, also. Anything white or cream will make the yellow look even brighter.
Debbie Travis' House to Home column is produced by Debbie Travis and Barbara Dingle. Please email your questions to house2home@debbietravis.com. You can follow Debbie on Twitter at www.twitter.com/debbie_travis, and visit Debbie's new website, www.debbietravis.com
