Restoration of a tiled room with molding

This was a difficult job. Putting makeup on tiles! The client felt very sentimental about this room and wanted to keep it and have it look good. There were many old holes and stains. The tiles were lovely, wisteria and other flowers but the general impression was not clean. 

I scrubbed them, even sanded some to remove old grout and mortar. I filled in the holes then went about retouching them with acrylic artist paint. As they were very old tiles, each has a slightly different hue. I had to mix a slightly different color for each retouch I did. I warned the client that the overall effect would be cleaner and better but that looking closely, paint would never have the same aspect as tile.

 After retouching, I worked on the wood molding that had been painted flat green and was chipping. There were however small examples of original tiled molding to use as inspiration. I sanded the wood and painted it white. I then applied highlights and shadows like the original.

I finished by painting the radiator egg shell white like the background tiles.

Decorative painting on a wood and tiled fireplace

 I hadn't seen this fireplace before the painters applied white paint to the panels so don't know what it originally looked like. With the architect and the client, we decided to use the color of the lovely dark red tiles at the bottom and the ochre yellow ones.

 I used artists oil paint for the panels. The luminosity of the patina doesn't show in my photos which is too bad as the panels glow a bit.

I then realized that the tiles were stained with dark brown wood varnish so scrubbed them with acetone. I also retouched the wood and bamboo bits with a little brown paint to mask the nicks.

False Marble Fireplace

 After doing false stone and false bricks, I'm now doing false marble on the same job in the enormous town house in a very wealthy district in Paris.

As the original false marble was not very nice and rather damaged, the architect advised me to re-do it entirely and the lovely client told me to do what I thought would be best. (so cool!)

I sanded and primed it in off white. I put an ochre patina on the inner part thinking it would look good with the parquet floor. Then I did a softish pink fantasy marble. It was a bit of a whim but why not?

False Stone Work / Fausse Pierre

This entranceway had an elevator installed and doors moved. There was a lot of plaster rebuilding. The client wanted to keep  the old false stone work so I was asked to do the same thing on the new parts and also fix up any damaged areas.

Here I am using an old ruler to paint in the joints.

And a thin wooden strip which is the classic tool to rule in mortar.

False Bricks

I put makeup on the facade of this Normandy style house situated in the courtyard of a private mansion (town house) in Paris. The masons, after installing some pipes, patched up the hole. The dark red patches were left from former workers although why they bothered coloring the concrete is baffling. The guys I spoke to asked me if they should also tint their cement but really, a gray patch doesn't seem any more offensive than the dark red ones.

Anyway, these panels are made up of false bricks. I just had to repaint them and redo the joints. I filled in the brick color than painted in the mortar the following day with a ruler and a bevel brush using a whitish/gray/ slightly pink color. All in acrylics and permanent. Just call me fast and furious!

False Marble Repairs

Repairing imitation marble walls in a friend's apartment.

Plastering cracks, priming then patching an existing decor with oil paint. Work I hadn't done in a while but luckily and surprisingly, the hand doesn't forget. Check out my palette and groovy brush which looks homemade but is store bought.

More Flowers and a Tree

I just can't believe how old-fashioned my painting is. I've got to get modern!

So these are from Villandry, the Loire Valley and also Paris, metro Javel.