Blending Paints on Carvings - Spanish Credenza
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I could not and still do not believe we found this solid walnut credenza in Albuquerque, New Mexico for only $500. It’s 7 ft long and is perfect for our extremely long living room. Yes, we kept this baby for ourselves! Because the wood grain in this piece is so beautiful, I decided to only paint the doors. I wanted this piece to be the focal point of my room but I didn’t want to disturb that beautiful grain.
Before:
Other than being extremely dirty, this credenza was in excellent shape! So heavy! This piece is solid wood! The only challenge in this project was deciding how to paint the beautiful carvings in the doors. Read on to see my process.
Step 1 - Painting the Base:
I’m afraid I didn’t video me painting every step but here is how the doors look after my first attempt. At this point, I had added Wise Owl paints in Siren Song and Republic Red and blended until very muted. My living room where I was planning on putting this really isn’t that well lit., and because of this, as you will be able to see in the photos below, I decided that the colors needed to be much more vibrant.
I don’t have videos of all of the steps but at some point, I added green and other colors to the petals in the middle. This video shows the technique I used even if it doesn’t show all of the steps.
Step 3 - Adding details
These doors were definitely a work-in-progress! I didn’t really have an exact plan but I was having trouble getting them to look the way I was envisioning. At this point, I began adding brighter colors to details such as the petals in the middle of the door. If you look closely, you can see that I added 4 different colors as I worked around the center flower. I also began adding some yellow, turquoise, and red to the swirls and petals .
Which Step is this?
I didn’t really like the yellow that I added in the step above so as you can see, I got rid of it. Here I started to really make the red and turquoise pop. Basically, when you make a decision to blend paints, you just keep adding and blending until you have the look you want.
Have you noticed that I haven’t painted the outside trim of the doors? That’s because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do so I left that part until I had the carvings the way I wanted them to look.
Almost there…..
I finally painted the remaining part of the door! If you notice, I have added more turquoise to the inside of the door as well as the outside trim. I blended the indigo blue, the turquoise and added Republic Red at the top to create a gradient effect on the door.
For a final step to add to that pop, I added touches of copper to the raised areas of the carvings. A flat brush is a very helpful tool when you want to just skim the tops of carvings. Lay your brush flat and move across the surface. You can also use your fingertip but for something this large, it’s a little slow.
I didn’t mention the prep work that I did to this piece before painting, but I spent a lot of time vacuuming and cleaning this piece. Luckily, most of the shelves came out which helped me have access to clean inside the piece and to oil the shelves before putting back in. I will show you all of the pictures that I have below.
I love to use Wise Owl Salves on the inside of drawers and shelves because not only does it bring the wood back to life, but it comes in so many amazing scents, as well as unscented. Hopefully, you will be able to see the difference from before and after in the pictures.
Here it is! It is finished and as much as I love it, I look at it every day and wonder what I could do to make it better.
