WALL & WINDOW TREATMENT

Michael Holigan: A lot of new homes like this one don't have any molding or trim around the windows or those architectural details that give a home a lot of character. Today we're going to show you how to add character to a home with stencils made from craft paper, charcoal, and believe it or not, something very similar to a cattle prod.

Jer Giles: This particular motif around this window is called "Egg and Dart". It's kind of a baroque carved stone piece. I think that a stone treatment around the windows not only adds a little drama to the window, but expresses the scale of the house a little better.

MH: This egg and dart motif is intricate. You can use the same technique with a more basic design. First Jer tapes a piece of craft paper over one-half of the window and outlines its shape with charcoal. He then follows his outline three more times to create a wider border flanked by two narrow stripes. Jer evenly spaces vertical lines to mark the design's repeat pattern. He then sketches the egg and dart motif halfway down the window.

JG: Now, what I'm going to do is pounce it, and what that means is I have a little machine that burns holes through the lines that I've drawn.

MH: Now, if you don't have an electric cattle prod just lying around the house, you can buy an inexpensive pounce wheel at any sewing or fabric store and it'll do the job just fine. After the sketch has been pounced, Jer hangs it back on the wall and rubs it with charcoal. This transfers the design to the wall. Jer then moves the stencil to the next section and repeats the process until the charcoal design frames the entire window. Next, Jer paints over his charcoal sketch adding light and dark shading that gives the appearance of hand carved stone.

JG: Now that we've done the painted architectural relief around the window, the next step is going to be to glaze the wall and we're going to be using two or three colors and what I've done is I've mixed up a glaze. In this case I've mixed the glaze in latex wall paint, because the latex paint's going to dry flat. We're going to put the glaze on with a four-inch house painter's brush. We'll work out on the tips of our bristles and mix up our brush strokes with some wrist action and keep our wet areas in kind of continental shapes, nothing up and down or horizontal or anything like that.

MH: Jer follows behind with a sea sponge to feather out any harsh lines.

JG: Where we'll need to, we'll take the sponge and kind of sponge a little bit and wipe a little bit so that you really can't tell where the color is and where it isn't. You can go ahead and dip in that darker color. That's going to be scary at first, but you can handle it. Wait till it hits the wall.

MH: Our second glaze is a brownish burnt umber.

JG: You see how now we're getting two different colors on the wall. It's starting to look a little more interesting.

MH: The third glaze is almost burgundy in color.

JG: Let's start by putting it right in here where the color would have gathered down through the years. There you go. There you go. Looking better already. And then, I think if we can take a little bit of the dark...that coloring in the middle there and cut in right here and actually hit this pretty hard so it gets darker and that'll make this plane of the trumploi pop out.

MH: Gives it a three-dimensional look.

JG: Right, it'll give it some depth.

MH: We continue to alternate between our three glazes concentrating the golden color in the middle of the wall while using the burgundy glaze to make the corners of the wall drop off and anchor the ceiling and floor line. Careful blending gives our wall a real Old World look that compliments our painted window treatment and really transforms this plain room.

JG: If you don't hang art then you've got a wall that's interesting enough to look at on its own when we really want to bring the whole room together and let it be an environment.

Purchase Video

Episode 63 1997 - 98 Season

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