plaster finish door-surround

...dings and finger prints...reminders of the kid's happy frolicking...love the frolicking but not so much the evidence - help!

 Our house is full of life...kids happily bouncing, running, swinging through doorways - yes, still, even though Madeline and Benjamin are now in university and Sammy is well into high-school!

My walls and doorways show the evidence of this - smudges, dings and all sorts of other representations of their happy frolicking. So I'm always on the search for a solution to keep the walls and doorways from looking like a haggard mother.

The doorways 'mid-house' were a hug mess, needing serious attention...and since I had just redone Sammy's room, they were really screaming for attention.

I set to the task of creating a solution for around the doorways that wouldn't require a whole wall treatment (no matter how much I love painting, the memory of painting those huge walls was too painfully fresh). I'm inspired by this Ralph Lauren picture but with a more subtle finish...I love this finish and style.

I begin framing the doors with a plaster finish, as I had previously done on other walls, using several different coats of tinted drywall compound for a soft plaster effect.  After that, I sponge glaze over the mottled finish (which has previously worked like a charm to deal with the excessively high-maintenance stairwell that had always shown full dirty smudges, finger prints and other unknown horrors).

I tape and trowel on tinted plaster...remove the tape...and tape again to prep for paint/sponge on the glaze.

I apply an iridescent gold glaze to add a wee bit of sheen and to add durability (to repel and hide fingerprints!). I apply the glaze with a paintbrush to a small area, then immediately sponge it to remove the brush strokes and mottle the thickness.

I tint the plaster with a grey paint that I had used on the flooring.  I hindsight, I think it would have been nicer to match the taupe color of the stairwell wall treatment, but the color is growing on me and I'm glad to have it completed!  Certainly, I'm loving the finish and having doorways without dings, smudges and chips.

I love the framing the trim gives to the stairwell entrance (although renoing this area still remains on my contemplation list).

have a beautiful week!

xo

shelley