I Want It the Color of This Pear

by Mitchell
(North Carolina)

My kitchen, or shall I say my wife's kitchen, has this ugly wood wall made of cedar planks hung diagonally. I did not know what to do to hide or disguise it. We did not want to just paint it. I always thought that if there was some way to make it look old and weathered, that would be interesting.

So after I read your site and got some ideas I settled on a crackle faux finish.

But I still did not know what colors would look good. So my wife came up with an idea based on one of your suggestions. She came out with this wooden pear and said,"I want it the color of this pear."

Perfect, all I had to do now was go to the paint store and get them to help me find the two colors in that little pear. That was actually very easy.

They suggested that I prime the wood first so that no ugliness would bleed through the paint. So I painted the wood first with an oil base product called Kilz.

That dried very quickly and I was able to paint my dark brown base coat over that. I did this with a brush since I had to get the paint into all those grooves.

Then I painted on the crackle medium and let it dry.

After about two hours I brushed on my top color and as it dried I was amazed. The cracks just started showing up. The paint store salesman told me that if I brushed the final coat that the cracks would be long and narrow. This is exactly what happened. And it is exactly the look I was going for.

Thanks for giving me the confidence I needed to go ahead and try this myself.

By the way, I put the pear on top of the spice cabinet in the picture. Pretty good match, huh?