Glazing a Wall

Are you thinking of redoing your walls, but want something a little different than wall paper or the traditional paint job, you may want to consider glazing. While the traditional paint jobs on walls can look nice, or even potentially fantastic, glazing is something truly amazing. When it is done right, glazing a wall can make the room you are working on truly remarkable. To get that remarkable look, all you need to do is follow these simple steps.

1. Get the tools. Since glazing is a type of painting job, you will need to get all of the traditional painting tools that you see in other types of paint jobs. The only real difference is that you will also want to get a squeegee, a ruler, and some neutral glazing medium. Be sure that you get enough of the glazing medium to complete your work. Also, when you get your paint you will want to make sure that you get semi-gloss paint only.
2. Prepare your room. As you always do with a paint job, make sure that you prepare the room properly. This means that you need to place painters tape along the trim, light switches, and even along windows to help protect them from accidental painting. If possible, remove anything that can potentially lead to you having an accident when you are painting. Don't forget to lay down drop cloths over large furniture and on the flooring.
3. Make adjustments to your tools. Before you can really begin glazing walls, you need to make a slight adjustment to one of your tools. That tool is the squeegee, and that adjustment is cut a few notches in the rubber of the squeegee at regularly spaced distances using a ruler to get the distances right.
4. Paint the room. Paint the room as you normally would, with the lightest colored paint to work as a base coat. The easiest way to do this is by using a paint roller, though you will want to "cut-in" near the trim and other difficult areas with a hand brush. Allow the walls to completely dry prior to proceeding to the next step. In fact, it would even be a good idea to allow the paint to dry over night before going on, you really want the walls to be bone dry.
5. Make the glaze. To make your glaze you will need to mix together four parts of your glazing medium to one part of the darker colored paint. Pour the mixed glaze into a painting tray and begin painting the walls using a foam based paint roller. As always, use a hand brush to cut into the difficult areas.
6. Begin combing. When you have finished painting the glaze onto the wall, you will want to use the squeegee to "comb" the walls. This is when you run the squeegee along the walls in curved strokes. Since you really want to do this work while the paint is wet, you may want to have at least one other friend and an additional squeegee to help you do the work.
7. Allow the paint to dry. Once you have finished working the squeegees over the walls, you can allow the paint to dry before you can begin removing the painter's tape. On the average this will take about four hours to do, though you can easily let the paint dry overnight to really get it completely dry.

After the paint has finished drying, and before you begin cleaning up, you really need to inspect the work. Inspect the work, and make sure that it is completed the way that you want, and that you haven't accidentally gotten any of the paint somewhere you don't want it to be. In the even that you do find some paint on the trim, you will need to cover the accident with some paint that matches the rest of the trim work. Just be very careful when you do this, since if you get any paint meant for the trim on the wall, you will need to repaint the entire wall to repair the problem.