Textured Fresco Walls; A New Technique for ANCIENT Houses
by Anita Sands Hernandez
After
spending a month looking for an apartment, and finding only ghastly, overpriced
cracker box units, I decided to rent an 80 year old, 1 story Spanish house.
It was in a weird part of town but it was much LESS money than an apartment. I
asked the home's owner to give me a deal as I'd paint, tile and carpet the
thing. The man thought about it and agreed to l00$ off. I was ecstatic and
moved in, 3 bedrooms for 950$ a month! 
First
day, all my so-called friends stopped by. From them, I learned this was the
wrong side of town. It was the barrio and the house was a 'White Elephant.' It
would take ten men to paint it. Yes, I responded but I needed exercise, I
craved big, empty spaces. Besides, I loved ethnics. Hadn't I keep the kids'
daddy's last name? You'll need to put it on the mailbox then, they said, to
SURVIVE. “And besides a Rottweiler, you'll need roommates, who pack heat.” I'm
not that social, I responded as I showed them the door. Newly on my own, I
didn't want roomies. I'd turn two of the White Elephant's 3 bedrooms into work
rooms. Having a single office space had NEVER been enough. My old office was
crowded with computers, reference books; shelves of computer discs in different
sizes for different machines; shelves of scripts. Then, at cross odds, an
entire section of astrology chart files for clients, and all this clutter made
it impossible to do the reflective but messy work of sewing and painting in the
same room. The disciplines were mutually antagonistic.
For
art work, I needed a great deal of light, large work tables at chest height,
plenty of space and a good music system. One corner had to be dedicated to
storage shelves. For scripts, I needed to do manuscript sorting along with
shelving and filing. Couldn't do that in my primary office where I must type
daily and see astrology clients, and where I require neatness, clarity of mind.
I have lost some of my best scripts in the mess that used to be in my primary
office, not to speak of clients who take a dim view of psychics with clutter. I
really needed two work rooms, maybe three ---as I didn't want to place
OLD computers in my typing, client-seeing, primary office. Doing 'On line'
astro-prediction services with a 24 hour modem was in the back of my mind too.
People who refuse to work for corporations, and won't hoe anyone else's row,
need home work areas with computers and modems.
Cottage
industries are based on having clearly defined work spaces for clearly defined
chores. So I wanted multiple work rooms. This old house was going to make
freelance survival in the city possible.
My
kids came over with house plants and shook their heads, warning me against the
omenous echoes their footsteps made, the huge footage, all those nasty walls
with peeling wallpaper. "You don't expect we're going to help you make it
habitable, do you?" Not me, I crossed my heart. Painting four huge rooms
would be great exercise. If I went to La Costa Health Spa for the 7 days I was
planning to spend painting, I'd have paid ten grand for so much exercise and
exhilaration. I am going to save ten grand, plus get my house painted. I'll do
all the work in a week, and turn these distressed spaces into a new living
room, bedroom, office, and sewing room. Why should I want to share all that joy
with kids?
The
kids' eyes narrowed into a suspicious squint. I could see they didn't believe
me and after cleaning out the fridge, they went out the door grumbling about
having a daft mom, leaving me to my Ecstatic Nest Syndrome. I rolled up my
sleeves and went to work.
Little
did I know that I was to discover an innovational technique for resuscitating
the crumbling, wallpapered walls of old homes turning them into magnificent
90's, post-modern, textured finishes that drop the jaws of all who see them. I
didn't see the possibilities myself at first. The first room --the planned
sewing/art room--had layers of peeling wall paper and window shades. It was
murky and disturbing but when I tore off the shades, I saw a magnificent
southern exposure with waving palms, ferns and bananas outside, a lot of So Cal
light. Sure, in the brightness, one could see that the wood window trim had
small pox. Previous inhabitants had stapled up curtains, pitting the wood. The
walls were in really bad shape, crumbling plaster, torn wall paper, weathered
moldings, nicked wainscoting. Little did I know that all of these were going to
be ASSETS.
The
thing is, don't stop to get depressed. Plug in KPFK-FM, * (live
link,) politically conscious talk radio and get right to work with a claw
hammer. Entertained by Roy of Hollywood, Noam Chomsky and Blaise Bonpane I
first tore out all the seedy carpets. I cannily left the carpet tack strips on.
Why? Well, underneath, the wonderful, hard wood floors were amazingly ugly, scarred,
combination puppy-pee stains and rainwater leak spotted floors. It wasn't my
house, I was renting, I didn't need to invest in the infrastructure or improve
the home's value. An ancient Buddhist text says 'he who can accept being
imperfect is the most perfect.' Buddhist to the end, I accepted the room's blemishes.
I didn't want to rent a machine sander, much less use it or go near eco-toxic
varnishes. I prefer the luxury of carpets under foot. I decided to go for free
carpeting. One visit to a carpeting company and I'd arranged a trade. I'd do
fortunetelling for parties in exchange for a four rooms worth of carpet ends.
All carpet men have ends the size of the average room, or slightly damaged
goods, still sprightly. He did.
I
wasn't worried about installation. I wasn't going to pay huge bucks for
padding, laying. I knew I could find Mexican carpet layers on street corners
outside carpet stores and get them to lay carpet in four rooms for a tenth of
the price a carpet store would charge me for their guys. I'd find them later. I
gave the carpet man a few days to find the end pieces, meanwhile I rolled up my
sleeves
There
was a lot of badly applied wallpaper on all the walls. I wasn't working at my
daily job; I didn't have money to rent a steamer to get the wall paper off, nor
did I have a lot of time to fuss as I have to get back to earning money, i.e.
to my various cottage industries, painting, writing scripts and articles,
seeing astrology clients, talking on psychic hotlines, running the L.A. Free
Screen Writing Co-op, my hobby. So I decided to paint over all this guck.
Again, it wasn't my house and time was a factor. This health spa exercise
vacation could take no more than seven days. I needed an EASY, fast method. So
I steeled myself for just painting over what was on the walls. Little did I
know then, that this would accidentally be the most beautiful tack to take.
As I
studied the ancient house with its many antique-y architectural features, I
remembered I loved Jocasta Innes* books on
painting walls and always had wanted to do a room with Renaissance crumbling
textures that imitated the ancient, multi-colored hues of crumbling, faded
frescoes. Why not use all that crud on the walls as texture? Just paint over it
like fresh lava boiling over Pompeii. I made the decision and have forever
since been glad I did.
The
next fortuitous accident was the fact that I was too broke to buy just one
shade of paint. Painting ten rooms would mean spending on fifteen gallons of
paint. Or would it? I looked in the garage of this home and found a dozen cans
of paint, in all colors. Lavender, white, pink and a great many partially
filled gallons of different deep copen blues, icy pastel electric blues and
some bright ceruleans all left over from some tenant in the Rainbow Flower
child 70's. Well-sealed, they were all in perfect condition.
I
went to the neighborhood Paint Store, which has a nice habit of remaindering
custom-tinted paints that clients return, in other words, giving you the best
and most expensive for the least cash. There, among a stack of cans, with
swatches painted onto their lids, I found a flat exterior water based
paint which the clerk warned me was gritty with textures I might not
want, as well as very slow-drying. It cost 1$ for almost a gallon as it
was a remnant. I opened it, found griege muck with a lot of texture.
I ran
home and slapped it on the walls and ceiling. When it hit the wallpaper, the
paper bubbled up in places. A day later, still damp, pieces of the paper were
actually coming loose. I slapped them back on the wall haphazardly, not
necessarily where they'd come from, either. The paint dried---this mess
hardened. Now it looked like a real, stone wall, rampant with texture. PERFECT!
I
started on the second layer of paint, but really the first color as the first
layer was just texture. This layer was the background color (so it has to be
the darkest of all the colors you have on hand.) It was rolled onto all five
surfaces smoothly and evenly. I had chosen a bright, dutch iris shade of dark
blue. More loose wall paper pieces came up here and there and all the cracks in
the wall paper started to gape. I deliberately ripped them open. Gashes
appeared at intervals.
My
daughter came to visit and says 'Mommmm, you should have steamed it off first,
are you crazy? "Like a loon" I say, 'see what empty next syndrome has
done to me?' and I keep slashing. I cover the entire room, gashes and all, with
this icy, dark pastel blue. My daughter leaves, shaking her head.
By the
time this coat was dry, I mixed a second color (two shades lighter, like
blueberries and cream) and I begin the interesting work; using a wide brush
dipped in paint then rubbed clean on the edge of the paint can, almost a dry
brush, as there can be no dripping paint, I start 'brushing' the cheeks of the
room. Now here is the sole technique. The brush is held sideways and loosely so
the flat of it from wood head to tip, simultaneously and lightly brushes across
the wall, catching all the crud on the wall. I tickle the cruddy wall, like
stroking a baby, with the flat of the brush covering a foot long swatch in a
single brushstroke. The trick is, the paint only catches the prominences. In
the hollows is the original, dark, iris blue paint. And, as I'm using a paler
and warmer pastel cerulean, the contrast brings out all the gritty textures. I
go over the entire room, four walls and ceiling.
It's
light, careless work, Jai Uttal is blaring –(
PLAY this guy, his amazing, spiritually ZINGY HINDU MUSIC, and google
around and find some SARANGI MUSIC for quiet moments, but the best and
most lively is JAI
UTTAL. ) and with that music, the
work goes fast. The only hesitation is having to climb off the ladder,
move it a few feet and climb up again.
There
are now two colors on the wall. It's a little tame for my taste, so next I mix
a bucket of cerulean with white paint to pale it down like melted, pale,
sky-colored ice cream. I baby-kiss the walls on all 5 surfaces so the pale sky
texturing is set off against the two darker blues.
I
have now tickled every surface twice and textured it once and painted it once.
A total of four times over the surfaces but tickling goes fast. Now there are
three colors in overlaying layers. The room starts to look as if it were all
ancient, crumbling, sky-blue stone. Or, in my daughter's eyes, as if a really
bad painter had hit it because the work is different everywhere. In places, you
just can't get an even texture and you see brushstrokes. Some of my friends say
they like the natural stone look, others prefer the brush-strokey areas and a
third group, my kids, are telling me it's ALL a big mistake and if I move quick
and far enough, the owner will never find me.
But I
dip my last dry brush in white with a little pink and whisk it over ceiling and
walls frosting the peaks, leaving the most contrasting of all the three color
changes on the highest points of four walls and ceiling. Then, I add a little
blue so it's pale lavender and whack a few areas and now the wall has depth,
texture, grit, an almost iridescent winter dawn glimmer of four shades of
pastel. The brush strokes for the most part have disappeared all that's left is
this pulsating rainbow acid trip.
I
stand back and am dazzled. I proudly invite the kids back. They only see how
all the walnut varnished pine lumber on the window sashes, floor and
wainscoting trim doesn't match this candied, pastel-paint theme but I spackle
the staple gun scars, sand lightly, take a piece of thin cardboard, lay it on
the glass, and start doing the window sashes, wainscoting all in frosty white
enamel. They shrug, clean out my refrigerator and leave, but I see the effect
is dynamite. I excitedly call the carpet man asking 'do you have a 12 x 13
piece yet? He responds: 'Hey, some decorator borrowed a piece twice that size
for a video shoot, and left this big piece out in the rain, go get it.
I do,
driving into Hollywood, --hoping it's not brown, black or red. Those are the
three colors that will turn me off and make me leave this freebie in the rain.
But it isn't. I get there and see a neutral putty beige which will look
terrific against the wall's icy blues. I go to throw it in my car. The piece
weighs 500 lbs. wet. I can only hope it'll dry to 400. I drag it and huff and
puff and can't move it. Do I really need it? The floors at home are spattered
with five kinds of blue paint. I need it. I commandeer a male stranger off the
street and together we load it into my car.
Perspiring,
I drive triumphantly home, and unload it into the driveway. after scanning the
skies for signs of another rain storm and not seeing one I unroll it flat,
envisioning the sun drying this piece in a day or two.
As I
opened the front door of this huge old Spanish house, I thought how wonderful
it was to rent. If I'd owned the house I'd probably have sanded the hard wood
floors and varnished them, given myself brain cancer from inhaling old lead
paint and new solvent. I'd have steamed off the wallpaper and sanded the old
walls, filling my lungs with zinc and more lead. And if I had done all that
perfect-mundo and survived, I'd still have missed the miracle of what the four
layers of paint did in all the places where the wallpaper melted off. Anyway,
when the bank foreclosed all the work would have been lost. Renting gave me
cheap, free, fast and easy, disposable, innovative and last of all, but not
least, worth writing about.
When
I went into my new art/sewing room and look up at the iridescent stone walls I
again see that it is precisely on these surfaces of multi-layer textures where
dry-brushed paint collects. They're prettier than the flat places. I've turned
rot and crud into crumbling frescoes like those of Ancient Pompeii. I am
inspired. Why not start a new business. POMPEII PAINTERS, "the old is new, the new is old." Click and
you'll see the finishes such a business does, though not that name, I give you
that name, btw. But elegant walls for 250 a day, Cruddy walls for 150$ a day. I
decide against doing the biz as hey, I already have too many cottage industries
already, astrology, baby fruit trees, writing articles for Dell Horoscope
mag.., but seeing my own ancient walls, I am reminded of Darryl Hannah playing
a decorator in 'Wall Street,' a kind of villainously chic perfect foil for the
ambitious Charlie Sheen. She decorates this very plain, square four walls condo
he buys, and does a torn-paper-with -bricks-peeking-thru effect over all over
the walls. It's supposed to speak of the insanity of the woman. That's pretty
much what I did here, but the progression of blues from stormy to pale to white
foam isn't Manhattan sophisticated. It's kind of foamy sea cottage looking,
especially with the white trim, and has a Victorian look. 'Fanny and Alexander'
was on the t.v. and I was satisfied to see how my new room looked just like
their airy, summer cottage in Victorian Sweden.
The
next day the sun had dried the carpet; I went to a local barrio carpet store
and asked the owner if he'd lend me one of his carpet layer guys. "Sure,
any morning, I've got a lot of freelance guys here. Take your pick. Negotiate
with them." I came back the next day and found a nice Mexican gentleman
who didn't speak English but who knew how to say 'twenty' and who laid the
carpet in an hour. Now the room was beige and blue, spiffed with white trim
into a bandbox effect and totally immaculate. I moved in every book case in the
house, some extra desks, tables, hung pictures and created my new work space
with my tools: easels, paint stands, sewing machine.
I ran
out and got a lot of dime store sheets, dark blue with big pink roses, hemming
them in an hour and layering them with my old white cotton drapes and hung them
on brass rings, achieving a country effect. I put lace curtains on brass rods
on the lower side of the window a la Fanny and Alexander, sat back and typed
all night on this article in my finished office.
My
hands ached, and so did my back, but the very next morning, I painted the living
room, and the day after, moved on to the bedroom and art room. The ancient
wallpaper of these rooms never failed to buckle and peel, gash and tear all of
which I incorporated into the mess of textures and covered with slow-drying
gritty paint, then the rainbow layers. On the fifth day I did the bath in
semi-gloss and on the sixth day I did the kitchen.
A
kitchen is a special project requiring two items you don't use in the rest of
the house: TSP for scrubbing oily food scum off the walls. Next, semi-gloss
paint, not flat. But I use water soluble semi-gloss, not oil as I don't want to
gas my cats who like to sleep near the oven and are half-gassed anyway.
When
I finish giving the room 3 or 4 shades of deep to pale turquoise to navaho sand
and frosted with snow white, I add an extra fillip, possible in the oil and
gloss world: I took oil-based ultramarine blue color pigment, (I used Sherman
Williams silk screen paint but artist's oil paint would have worked just as
well,) thinned it with liquid 'scratch-cover' furniture wax. I glazed every
surface, then rubbed it off with a rag, antiquing every wrinkle.
On
the seventh day I rested. The rented house was transformed. It was a pleasure
to walk in its quiet, airy rooms which carpeted, no longer echoed.
I
begin to decorate. As I drive around the city, trash night yields unassuming
treasures. Can movie star John Philip Law imagine how good that huge,
Philippine wicker armchair he left on Miller Drive looks in my office? Or how
his wrought iron bathroom shelf looks holding paper and seashells next to my
toilet?
Thrift
stores and garage sales beckon and yield up furnishings for my home's huge,
empty spaces. Ancient couch frames get Tahitian cotton staplegunned to them.
Quaint old tables get stapled-on skirts; chest of drawers get a coat of white
enamel which I sand off in places to create instant Fanny and Alexander
rusticity.
To
stand or sit in the house's ancient quietness is a kind of prayer. And what
does one pray? Principally that at the first kiss of autumn rain, the five
layers of paint on that ancient wallpaper don't give up the ghost, slide off
the walls and buckle down onto the floors in a rumpled, soggy heap and that
Mrs. Beverly Hills princess doesn't get a staple in her butt while she's
getting her palm read.
My
children tell me the house has been 'Mickey-Moused' from ass to candlestick and
that it will all fall in, that chaos will return. But as this beauty was born
out of my acceptance of chaos, and I was surfing the river the way it was pointed,
I somehow doubt it.
The
wind catches in the chimes outside the windows and the still, quiet, gentle
voice of my 80 year old house whispers that she can hold out another 80 if I
require her to. So, I shrug and tell my children that, until the Iraqis bring
in the first suitcase bomb and doom hits Hell-A, I'll enjoy this crummy house.
But I
pronounce the word 'crummy' the way the Ancients did, when they called their
newborn babe a 'ratface' so the Gods wouldn't covet him. Kind of with a wink.
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*THE VERY BEST BOOKS ON DOING THESE PAINT FINISHES are the many titles of JOCASTA INNES and I’ve found these big BOOKS full of color plates for a dollar each at ABE BOOKS.comgo look, PUT the authoress' name into the ADVANCED SEARCH ENGINE, not the REGULAR. PICK THE COUNTRY YOU LIVE IN, TIPS ON HOW TO ORDER. HERE. Sometimes if I want, I put in the title but it's not necessary. PUt author in search box you get page. a dozen vendors pick one who has paypal. I do. I love paypal. (LOOK AT BOOK VENDOR INFO to see if he will) THEN hit his WEBPAGE, get the addie, the email blank say what I just said THEN, go to SEARCH THIS VENDOR's PAGES. You get a blank, a no, then back up and do it again. Always go backwards if it says no books by him. So again, you put in another fave author. Keep trying 'til you find a few books from this vendor so S&H comes down. If all fails, I just put HISTORY in the title section or CIA and I can get big choice of history books. Always interesting!
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Our POSTER is ANITA SANDS HERNANDEZ,
Los Angeles Writer, Futurist and Astrologer. Catch up with her websites TRUTHS GOV WILL HIDE & NEVER TELL
YOU, also The
FUTURE, WHAT'S COMIN' AT YA! & HOW TO SURVIVE the COMING GREAT
DEPRESSION, and Secrets
of Nature,
HOLISTIC, AFFORDABLE HEALING. Also HOW TO LIVE on A NICKLE, The FRUGAL PAGE.* Anita is at astrology@earthlink.net ).
Get a 15$ natal horoscope "my money/future life" reading now + copy
horoscope as a Gif file graphic!
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