This is the second post about our private saloon project. The previous post talked about the what we did to make the new tin ceiling appear to be naturally aged.
The second part of our project was to make the new sheet rock walls appear to be 100-year-old plaster.
We began by painting a color on the walls that would show through any “holes” in the plaster. Brenda used her skill with the trowel to make the effect look natural, as if the plaster had aged and places had come loose.
The final step was to apply a glaze. The glaze gives the effect of the natural aging process you see in old plaster, especially an old saloon. Years of smoke combine with the natural color changes that occur in plaster over time. Our glaze accomplishes that look in a day. I’ve included a video of just one wall. The video condenses 4 hours of work into 3 minutes. The pace is sped up in the video, but when she does it for real it’s about as hectic. Once she starts she can’t stop until the wall is completely glazed.
Here’s another picture of the glazing process.
Glazing walls is hard work. Here is what it looked like when we finished the walls. You can see that the stark white is gone and the look of aged plaster is subtle in order to make a good background for the accessories that are coming.
The ceiling and the walls were what we were originally asked to do. But as you can see the new rough-cedar trim in the picture to the right looks nice and new. There were also large rough cedar beams with the same new look. Our clients asked if we could do something to make this new wood look as old as the walls and ceiling.
The next blog post in this series will talk about how we accomplished making this new wood look old.