Faux wood graining saves the day.

Faux Wood Technique

Out on my back porch there are several wood columns that are currently painted white. I decided to change the color scheme of the entire porch from gray/white to soft gold/dark brown. To make a long story short, I had a problem....

I painted the columns a dark brown. Three coats. Still streaky? ugh. I did sand them before painting but they still remained streaky. A few family members mentioned that the streaky look was appealing......... which gave me an idea. Why not try to do a faux wood finish on the columns to make it look just like a real piece of wood. I just happen to have a faux wood tool downstairs, so why not give it a try?

Here's the tool.

And how do you use it? I watched some videos on Utube.com first and did a little research on Google. Basically it's a rock and drag motion. The more you rock, the more circular wood like grain you get. It's all in the wrist!

I mixed up the original paint (dark brown) with black glaze. 3 parts paint and 1 part black glaze. The glaze takes some time to dry so you really have some time to work with it. If you make a mistake, you can fix it. I practiced the technique on an old piece of wood before starting this project.

This is the streaky piece of wood that I didn't like: it actually looks like wood right now.

Here it is after applying the faux wood technique.

Now you can see a real distinct wood grain.

Although you can't really see the column that well from the picture above, you get the idea! They now all look like that and a lot better than before, so the faux wood technique rescued my streaky paint job!

and..................

My "sneaker head" son dared me to custom paint a pair of his sneakers. He wanted them painted in the "nerf" design (whatever that is). He downloaded a photo and gave it to me.

He gave me a pair of white sneakers to work with.

I had to use leather paints and a leather finisher.

Here they are: I won the bet!!

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