When we decided to remodel the kitchen, one of the first projects I thought of and one of the last ones to be completed was a custom mural for over the stove.  I knew right away which picture I wanted to use.  It was the Dream of St. John Bosco as depicted by artist Matthew Brooks.  Not only do I love the prophecy behind this painting, but the brightness and contrast of the colors that Brooks rendered it in were stunning.  I knew this would be a great piece of teaching art to have in our homeschooling household. 

However, I was not sure how to go about getting it on the wall behind my stove.  At first I wondered if it was possible to place a copy of the print behind a layer of protective glass, or if it would be possible to have it printed on a piece of aluminum that would withstand the high heat behind a stove.  But those did not seem like practical options.  What I did not realize was possible at first was the that you can have your own custom-designed tile backsplash made from a high-resolution image.

I got in touch with Matthew Brooks and received permission to use his work for the mural for a modest stipend.  He agreed to send a high-resolution file directly to the tile design place, once I decided on one.

I tried a couple of different online providers of custom screen-printed tile murals, but the one that was most responsive and pleasant to work with was Tiles By Design out of Ft. Wayne, Indiana.  Matthew forwarded them the needed file, and Lori at Tiles by Design e-mailed me a proof showing me how the image would look divided up into individual 6" tumbled-marble tiles (I wanted the slightly rough look of the tumbled marble so it would seem more, well, ancient I guess).   I placed the order, and within a few days I received a small but very heavy box of tiles, miraculously all intact. 

Now that I had the centerpiece of the kitchen, I could finally begin choosing the rest of the design, like the cabinet finish and countertops.  Everything was chosen to go along with the mural, even the tile-look laminate flooring which is in colors reminiscent of the ocean. 

The backsplash tiles, of course, were the last things to go in.  I ordered the stone-look tiles that I had installed over the rest of the countertops from a nearby town, and their installer was able to put in the mural as well, creating a rough border around it with half-pieces of the stone-look tiles.  In the end, I was very pleased with the results!  Here you see the mural and some of the surrounding kitchen, even one of my kids for whom the mural was chosen.

Above is a view of the backsplash with the island in the foreground.  The countertops are quartz.  The sunlight coming in the corner window from the kitchen sink area is rather blinding.

Here's the mural shown with one of the reasons I chose this image... I like my kids to be surrounded by teaching images, and this tells a vivid lesson about the nature of the Church:

Posted by Caeli at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The wall mural in my daughter's room is a work in progress.  Not a whole lot of progress lately... but when I began, I did a lot all at once.  I decided I wanted it to be a mural of a garden wall that went around the entire room (not a little ambitious, eh?).  I found my inspiration in an old picture of a garden wall and a garden urn. 

Before painting, I decided to try out my concept as a drawing on my computer:

 I thought that looked kind of cool, so I decided to go ahead with it.

Step 1: Prime.  Actually, I skipped this step.  The walls were beige, I figured it was a neutral enough background and any griminess or marks and even spackle would be covered over by layers of decorative paint techniques.

Step 2: The sky.  I wanted  the mural to include a sky to cover the ceiling and the upper 1/3 or so of the walls, so I painted that first so that the brick wall could cover part of it and look more natural.  In the past I had tried to be too realistic with the sky, following some precise directions I found in a painting book.  This time I just used something of a French-brush technique and swooshed and smooshed light blue paint, then off-white paint together on the ceiling and walls.  I liked the result.

Step 3: Drawing out the walls.  I followed some advice from a book about mural painting, and measured out my walls, then drew the lines with a yard stick.  I didn't worry too much about perfect straightness, though I tried to keep it fairly parallel with the floor by measuring up and making hash marks and connecting those with the yard stick, then making my pencil line.  At this point I was just concerned with the top of the wall and the cap stones of the columns.

Step 4: Tape off the top of the mural wall.  I had to make a protective barrier between what was to become the wall and the sky, not to mention other things that needed to be masked off, like woodwork.

Step 5: Base coat on the brick wall.  I just filled in the whole silhouette of the brick wall part of the mural with a gray paint, a gallon I had picked up on the reject rack at Lowes, I believe.   At this point the mural looked like this:

Step 6: Faux-paint a stone texture on the wall.  For this, I used my favorite technique: plastic shopping bags and glaze.  I mix up my paint about 50/50 with glaze, and pour it into a paint roller pan.  You don't need to make a lot of glaze.  A cool-whip bowl full of each color was more than enough.  I went over the base coat with two other shades of gray.  So now I had this mottled-looking mess:

So the final part of the glaze was a light gray, thin-consistancy glaze that helped pull together all the other shades of gray into a finish that to me looked pretty convincingly stone-like.  Here is the way it looked with final glaze (left) and without the final glaze (right):

Now came the meticulous part.

Step 7: Painting urns in the wall mural.  I made the pattern for the urns (based the inspiration urn) out of a piece of cardboard that I folded in half and cut out, then opened and traced at the top of the columns.  No two turned out exactly the same, but that isn't a problem.  I filled them in with a base coat, sponge painted them, added some green to make it look like they were kinda mossy on the north side, and used some gold metallic paint to make them shine a little.  Here is the in-progress and finished look:

Step 8: Detailing the brick wall.  This meant getting out the yard stick and measuring rows of bricks and drawing horizontal lines.  This included marking off the lip at the top of the brick wall and the tops of the columns.  Then the vertical lines were added, forming the individual bricks.  They were in a staggered pattern with spaces between, so it was necessary to erase parts of the vertical lines on the mural to form the bricks.  It's hard to explain, but looking at the diagram of the mural above you can probably see what I mean. 

The most tedious task was outlining the bricks.  I used little bottles of black and white craft paint to outline one side of the bricks and the top with white, and the other side of the brick and the bottom with black to produce a three dimensional effect.  The same applied to the top of the wall and the columns. 

Finally I used a dark-gray paint to fill in the spaces between bricks.  They should probably show through to the other side, but for now, they are just filled in.  Maybe later I'll have foliage poking through etc. 

Step 9: Adding the landscape to the wall mural.   For this I did nothing too fancy.  I just sketched out free-hand some gradual curved lines to form a horizon, then filled in below it with purplish toward the top and greenish toward the bottom. 

So here's the final look:

Oh yes, and a river runs through the mural on one side of the room:

As you can see, it's not really done yet.  There needs to be flowers in all the urns, trees reaching over the garden wall, and other embellishments to really make this wall mural complete.  But it's a very good start, if I do say so myself.

Posted by Caeli at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

To build a pergola or not to build a pergola, that is the question.  The previous owners of our house obviously thought it was a good idea to build a pergola over the top tier of the three-tiered deck they attached to the back of the house:

As you can tell from the leaves littering the deck, there are LOTS of trees in our yard.  Plenty of shade.  What is the purpose of a pergola?  Well, among its decorative purposes, it is meant to give shade. 

We did not really need the shade.  In fact, the excess of shade in our backyard was causing the deck to turn green.  Plus, the pergola was serving a further function: it was home to spiders.  I really hate spiders.  I don't like walking under them or through their webs every time I go out the back door.  I don't like wasps either, who build their nests inside the crevices of pergolas sometimes.  Birds also like to make nests there, which isn't so bad unless you want to have birds swooping at you every time you walk out into your yard, or don't mind cleaning up after them. 

I also didn't appreciate all the shade our pergola was casting through the deck doors into what is now our dining room (since we remodeled our whole first floor - there will be more blog entries forthcoming about that).

So I offer this reflection to anyone who may be considering building a pergola.  Ask yourself, do I really want shade in the places the pergola is going to cast them?  Do I hate spiders, wasps, and other creepy things that make their homes right above our heads in pergolas?  Do I care if birds have a perfect place to build a nest right outside my patio door?  Think this through carefully, because you may otherwise find yourself doing this to your pergola someday:

Trust me, the view to the backyard is much improved sans pergola.  The sunshine coming into the dining room is great too.  So at least when it comes to an attached deck, I vote no to building a pergola.

Posted by Caeli at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)