So far, I have had the opportunity to do my decorative painting on walls, ceilings and stairs… so I was excited to jump at the opportunity to do a decorative floor!
For this project, I worked with a designer and another decorative painter on a home in Newton. As a component of his overall remake of these two rooms, the designer wanted a roman key pattern stained into the floors. The floors were in rough shape to begin with, so they were sanded down and re-stained – but before they were coated, we came in with our stencils!
Raw floor with stenciled loosely placed
The biggest challenge was laying out the pattern to get a clean, symmetrical look in rooms that were not necessarily symmetrical (or square!). To help in the corner transitions, we used a separate square pattern – but the hearth was particularly challenging (and fun!) because we needed to match up the rectangular pattern to “turn” in a way that looked natural without using the squares. After some intensive problem-solving, this ended up being a highlight of the room.
Stencil with square corner applied
Stencil wrapped around hearth with corner "turns"
Once the stencils were down, it was a matter of careful staining to make sure the stain didn’t creep underneath the stencil. Here we figured out an approach to use a lighter application with 2 coats to give a nice crisp edge.
The result drew many “wow’s” (!) from other people working on the house – and from the designer!
Enjoy,
Jason
