Sunday, February 26, 2017

A Concrete Idea

The client has an older home that he is re-decorating in an industrial/commercial look. A few years ago, we papered all these walls in red mortared brick, very realistic and looking like an old warehouse. Now the idea was to make it look like a concrete tilt-up building. This upstairs bedroom wall required two 16' wall murals, side by side. The first panel goes in the middle of the wall, very carefully levelled and plumbed.

The reason he is having the walls re-papered is because he had a flood and when the restoration crew pulled the baseboards to put down new floors, they used a crow bar and ruined the brick wallpaper. Unforgiveable! With three panels up, I now begin working to the right until I reach the corner.


Now, working to the left. I join the second mural to the first. The pattern does not line up exactly, but the concrete seams in the graphic are not supposed to be perfect anyway. The panels are 3' x 3' and come un-pasted. They can stretch easily and the challenge here was to wrap the window and deal with the beam and the sloped ceiling.

Done! I was very pleased with the way it turned out. After 8 panels, a mural is likely to go squirrely, but after 16, we were right on the line to the very end. This is not a one man job and I am grateful to my son, who has taken over the painting end of our business, for his two day assistance on this project.  

Then we moved to the lower floor and began the 3 mural long wall, from living area to dining area. I started about 1/3 of the way in and hoped for the best.

Going around a window, the pattern and seams rarely meet after going under and over the opening. I got into some small trouble on the far right corner, but only I know about it. Concrete is very forgiving.


Working to my left, I had another window to go around and was afraid the same thing would happen. I took great pains to plumb and level all pieces, all while wrapping the window returns to give the wall a solid concrete look.

Thankfully, this time it worked better. I cruised to the far corner without trouble.


The overall industrial/commercial look was nicely achieved with these 5 murals and it really does look like concrete.