| Brightening
Rooms Stripping Furniture Choosing Colours for a Room Floor Paints Painting Furniture Painting Over Tiles Decorating a Bedroom |
Q Dear Jocasta — I’m in a decorating quandary. My basement flat is really short of natural light. This doesn’t worry me at night, when I just switch on lots of table lamps etc and it looks and feels friendly and cosy. I’m out at work every weekday. But it really gets me down when I am in at the weekend and the sun is shining outside but I’m cooped up in this bleak looking place. I painted the walls white after I moved in because I thought that would help, but it’s started looking grubby and I think I need to redecorate. I'm a bit sick of white to be honest, but I worry that bringing colour in will make the place look darker still. Any suggestions? — Yours hopefully, Sasha Burnett, Islington |
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Dear Jocasta — I fell for a hulking great Victorian ( ?) gateleg table at auction recently. It is just what I needed, big enough to entertain my friends folded out, and small enough, flaps folded down, not to get in the way. But it is so dark and gloomy looking — maybe oak, but hard to tell. It has twisty legs, and seems very well made and sturdy. But how can I make it fit in with my style which is sort of modern. . . plain white china, stainless steel cutlery etc? Even covered with a nice plain cloth, it still sticks out like a sore thumb. Sarah Thornton, Macclesfield |
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Dear Jocasta — this question feels very general but I am trying to choose colours for a room and I don´t know where to start. How do you go about choosing colours? Jane Griggs, London |
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I have painted my bathroom (wooden) floor white but all the floor paints I have tried, end up marked with bright orange splodges where the bleach bathroom cleaners have sprayed on to it. I would like to find a floor paint that wont discolour or a covering that would give it a protection. Nicki, England |
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I have painted a bed and two chests religiously
following your instructions and recipes on pages 144 to 155 of "The
Completed Painted Furniture Manual" by yourself and Stewart
Walton. I used the berry and leaf motif and the ribbon and bow motif
on a base of cream emulsion and thinning the gouche with gum arabic.
I fixed the hand painting with spray varnish and then coated the
furniture with varnish tinted with raw umber. The effect was beautiful
but now several months on the hand painted pattern is inexplicably
flaking off. Could you please tell me what could be causing this
and how I can avoid it in the future. I would be grateful. |
| Q I inherited hideous kitchen tiles. Want to paint and stencil over the line of pretty pru pra pink ones there now. How? Help, please. I hear there is a product which seals the tiles and enables me to paint over then varnish over the top? Where do I buy it. Thank you. Ruth (London) |
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I am re decorating my bedroom and not sure Komla. South Africa |
Jocasta Innes Advice |
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Dear Sasha, you say you painted the walls white, but you don’t mention the floors. Pale floors actually reflect light back more effectively than white walls, especially in a basement. Check out the British Museum’s newly glazed in court-yard with pale marble paving, and you will see what I mean. Lighten up your floors throughout the flat and the place will look transformed. OK, so how? Wooden floors can be painted. Cheapest option. But go for a warmed up white, like Buttermilk. Standard emulsion will do the trick if you give it three coats of acrylic varnish ( fast drying) as protection. A lot of basement floors are concreted under tacky wall-to-wall carpet. If this is you, consider taking up the carpet and painting the concrete screed in a similar warm white colour — industrial floor paint is the best, toughest option here. A trade outlet like Travis Perkins should stock this, or trawl the LYCO website which is aimed at industrial premises. They do mail order. Then re-introduce colour on your walls, warm sunshiny colours like yellow, apricot, pink. Two coats of standard emulsion will suffice, but for maximum effect try a colourwash in these colours -Ê colourwash being semi transparent the existing white base will lighten and brighten the final look without being at all bleak. Colourwashing is perfect for basements for this reason. I used pastel shades of colourwash in a basement flat and the result was so ravishing I felt like moving in myself. Let me know if you have any further problems, I love problem solving. . . — Yours, Jocasta Innes Back to top |
| A Dear Sarah, I can picture your table vividly — yes, well made, yes, truly useful. Probably Edwardian,made during the heyday of mock-Jacobean furniture designed to give class to tea rooms and boarding houses. It almost certainly is Êoak, solid oak, not veneered, which makes it a clever buy these days. Even cleverer when you learn that oak can be stripped back, quite easily, to the pale biscuit colour of the raw wood. It is quite a dramatic transformation — like a brunette going blonde. The dark colour is probably as`Jacobean oak' Êvarnish stain, which you need to strip off. Start by brushing on a patent varnish stripper, following instructions, and tackling the table one surface at a time. The twisty — barley sugar-legs will be the tiresome bit. I use medium, then fine, grades of steel wool to remove the surface gloop — ie dissolved varnish stain and/or French polish. When the surface looks close to how you want — try swabbing on methylated spirit (Êuse a brush and work with the grain), leave for a few minutes, then follow with the pad of fine wire wool, also with the grain. This final treatment will leave your oak paler and paler. When it is how you like it, neutralise all surfaces with water with a splash of vinegar added. Let dry. Smooth the wood ( water raises the grain) with a fine grade abrasive paper. Finish, as protection to your masterpiece, with a colourless furniture wax, smoothed on,left to harden, then rubbed up to a sheen with a cloth-suiting Êflannel is the professionals choice. This is quite a bit of trouble, but I guarantee you will be proud of the result! Yours, Jocasta Back to top |
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Dear Jane No surprise to me that half a million folk are out there surfing the net hoping for advice about choosing the best, appropriate paint colour for a room/rooms they are planning to redecorate. If only there was a foolproof , one-size-fits-all, formula ! Instead there is a deluge of contradictory stuff from the interior design `experts', and endless colour variations shown on commercial paint cards, but the `chips' are so small how are you to visualise a tiny slice of Mexican Orange or Barbados Blue ( my own invented names ) blown up all over your walls ? My first piece of advice is RELAX. Getting colours right is part instinct, part experience. OK your colour experience is limited to finding the lipstick colours, or the T-shirt colours that suit you. But a room? How about your instinct ? Are you drawn to warm cosy colours — pink, apricot, saffron, red — or cool, ethereal colours like sky blue, pale lilac, misty grey ? The colour that speaks to you is the best starting point because this is your space, and the way you colour it should make you feel MORE YOU, at ease in your surroundings. ( You may find that unconsciously you have been working towards this in your choice of soft furnishings, pictures, already. ) Trust your instinct; it is a guide to what makes you happy, and this is one thing colour can do for you. Next Step. Buy sample pot sizes of the colours that appeal to you most. Most paint ranges supply these cheaply. Use these to paint up sheets of paper, A4 size. Pin or Blu-tak these to your walls, next to any colour fixtures like carpet, sofa covers etc. , and just live with them for a few days, in daylight if this is a room you inhabit at all hours, or under artificial light, if you are at work most days and only inhabit your space at night. A coloured A4 sheet cant deliver the effect of four walls painted the same colour, but it gets you closer than a tiny paint chip. It should also remind you that emulsion colours dry darker, so you might be safer choosing the next shade up ( ie lighter) on the paint chart. It should also — this is important — show which of your favourite colours work best with what is already there, because most people have to work round existing furniture, soft furnishings, when redecorating. Keep an open mind too — as you stare at your colour samples on the walls new and unexpected solutions may pop into your mind — a duskier red, a sharper aqua blue. Worth trying out in my view. O.K. more expense, more sample pots, but this is how you find out about colour, experimenting till it clicks, and you know you have got it right. Finding the colour that "clicks" for you, the space, the furnishings, has always struck me as far more central and helpful than worrying about the somewhat cliche advice about using warm colours in north-facing rooms, pale colours to "enlarge" tiny cramped rooms, cool, watery colours in super sunny rooms. All cliches enshrine a truth, so these prescriptions are not stupid, but decorating is one area where rules are made to be broken. You need to be clear what the room is about, the atmosphere — mood, ambiance -you are trying to create. . . a small room destined to be the nursery for your first baby needs different treatment from a small room destined to be your home office/work station. The mood you create in your bedroom is not the same as the one in the family kitchen, or your living room. Colour is so very personal: I would choose a washy yellow with a stencilled frieze, for a nursery, but a blue-grey for a home office, a warm, sexy, pink to apricot for a bedroom and a deep cream verging on ochre for a family living room, because these colours seem to me to fit the mood and purpose of these spaces, like `happy',`calm',`intimate',`friendly'. But this is just my own take on the language of colour; yours might be quite different. Some tips you might find helpful : I) Rooms look larger and more together if you use one paint colour over walls, fitted cupboards and any other built-in stuff. . A client wanted a pulled-together look for her bedroom, oddly shaped because an en suite bathroom had been carved off the original space, and a wall of mirrored cupboards installed opposite her bed. I persuaded her to remove all the mirrors — we kept one, fixing it to the wall just inside the door for last minute checking on outfit, shoes etc. We painted walls and cupboard doors the same greyish pink — the colour of new Thistle plaster — a feminine colour without being too girly. Immediately the room looked more of a personal space, with the focus now on the white painted iron bedstead with its pretty grey and white printed cotton coverlet. To reinforce the idea of the cupboard doors as walls we fixed framed black and white prints to them, two per door, with more of the same series on the remaining walls, and kept the handles small and discreet. Result — instead of that bitty "hotel room" effect of a chopped about room with too many reflections — how many times do you need to see yourself ? — she had a calm, pretty, enclosing space. 2) Respect any architectural/ period features. Anyone who ripped out a Victorian fireplace or moulded plaster cornices must be kicking themselves today, when "original features" contribute to the re-sale value as well as visual appeal of old buildings. This doesnt mean,in my book, that you must keep to safe and boring `period' colours , or stripy wallpaper — old rooms can be rejuvenated by clean, strong colour schemes, cobalt blue, saffron yellow, pearly grey. But paint the cornice white, en suite with the ceiling, and leave the fireplace alone other than to hang a big mirror, or a favourite picture or textile, above it. 3) Dont think of your wall colour in isolation. It is — or should be a background to all the personal stuff — photos, prints, paintings, ceramics, textiles, whatever — that make up your family history, passions, enthusiasms, mementos. Most people are nervous of using strong, dark colours on their walls, maybe forgetting that these make a boldly dramatic background to your memorabilia. Once your stuff is hung on top of the dark or vivid walls, these recede, becoming simply a frame for what you have foregrounded, part of a richer visual mix. When I worked on wall colours for two Tate exhibitions, we chose bold background colours instead of the stark white usually favoured by galleries — black for stormy Turner seascapes, deep violet for Pre-Raphaelites, Venetian red and purpleish black for some Surrealist paintings. What this did for the viewing public was make them see the works in a quite different, and surprising, way. 4) It is normal, and human, to settle for a "safe" colour option if you are new to the game and find it hard to visualise a whole room painted out in the colour you instinctively love to bits. . White, cream, grey are perfectly safe and sensible choices for beginners, with the further advantage that they are easy colours to "paint over", when your colour ideas get more adventurous. One or two coats of acrylic undercoat is all you need to get a clean, ready-to-go foundation for further decorating. Some people are happy to stick with these neutral walls, but others — this must be a psychologically determined thing — begin to hunger for the missing element — colour. Colour to me is soul food; my house is full of it, but it isnt till I have been deprived of it — hospital is starvation rations for colour freaks — that I discover how much it means to me. Stepping back into my own coloured places, I have been moved to tears of joy and relief. I am about to start work on a Maggie Centre in Cheltenham, one of many springing up all over the UK, all designed by leading architects — Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, Richard Rogers. Mine will be designed by my partner, Richard MacCormac. They are named after Maggie Jenks, who died of breast cancer a few years ago. Her few last months were devoted to setting up a trust which would create Centres, alongside hospitals, where cancer patients could meet family, and friends, in homely but uplifting surroundings, get counselling or therapy, or just be peaceful, flick through a book or listen to music in a kindly, supportive — non hospital — environment. Maggie and I both went through breast cancer at the same time, which is a bond. I feel incredibly lucky to survive. My tribute to Maggie will be, I hope, to choose colours for the Cheltenham Centre which make it a warm, relaxed, comforting place. I cant think of a more special and satisfying use of my colourist experience, or my own cancer experience, which all took place in the basement of the now defunct Westminster hospital, darling doctors, kindly nurses and radiologists, but a subterranean, dimly lit, warren of waiting rooms, treatment rooms and passages which darkened our fears and relegated us to what felt like an underworld of silent, secret pain. We none of us spoke to each other. So this is the background for what I hope to contribute to a Maggie Centre, colours that radiate hope, life, generosity and openness. Back to top |
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Hi Nicki — you dont say which floor paints you have tried,
but I assume these are the type marketed as "floor paints"
mostly for use in factories, on concrete floors. I assume also that
you havent varnished over the paints ? You dont mention varnish.
I have floors painted in black and white squares and given several
coats of varnish. O. K. this isnt in a bathroom and so dont get
sprayed with a strong bleach solution, but they are mopped over
once or twice a week with water containing a little Flash and a
little bleach, and there are no orange splodges. I always varnish
painted floors as protection, and from what you tell me it must
be working ! Varnish acts as a seal to the paint and I think this
is what you need here. There are many types of varnish available.
Acrylic varnish is the ideal DIY option because it is easy to apply
( you can use a roller), dries really fast ( check maker`s instructions
but if you applied it last thing at night it should be hard dry
by morning) and doesnt yellow over time like oil based varnishes.
On the other hand it is not so tough so you need two-three coats.
I suggest you explain your problem to a trade supplier, like Leyland
or Foxell-James (in London)and get their advice on the best varnish
for your situation. Check too that the orange splodges wont re-surface
through a new coat of paint. They might recommend a buffer coat
in between. Hope this works. Good luck! |
| A Ouch,
Alison ! |
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Paint Magic used to sell, and may still sell, a product designed
to provide a key for paint on shiny surfaces. It was called tile
and melamine primer. It was brushed over clean tiles,left dry, then
overpainted. Acrylic eggshell would be a tougher, more durable choice
for overpainting. Or you could use standard emulsion, in which case
more coats of protective varnish are needed. One or two coats of
varnish over eggshell should be enough. Varnish can be mid -sheen
or gloss depending what effect you want. Gloss is tougher. Use a
synthetic brush to apply these products, it leaves less brushmarks.
In fairness I should warn you that over time the overpainting may
chip off, especially if you keep wiping them down ! But as a short-term
solution, I promise it works. Try the Paint
Magic website for information (I am no longer associated with
the company). Otherwise contact a trade shop like Foxell James in
Farringdon Rd, London. They are very helpful and almost certainly
stock a comparable product. yours Jocasta |
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Komla — ( hope I`ve got that right) I am imagining this bedroom,
buttercup |