Home Renovation

Home Renovation with Thorndown Wall Paint & Wayne Perrey

Wayne Perrey (aka the TV Carpenter) carried out a complete home renovation with Thorndown Wall Paint, colour drenching every surface throughout the house.

When he and his wife bought a gorgeous Edwardian forever home it was very dated and in need of modernisation, but it gave Wayne the perfect opportunity to start from scratch, from installing a new eco heating system to designing a modern and intelligent lighting system throughout.

They didn’t know where to start with colours so went with the advice of an interior designer friend (the very talented Lucy Gough)to select 5 core colours to use throughout the home. Colour drenching was a great design style for them to use as it would compliment and enhance traditional features such as coving, and work with the high ceilings creating an even airier and grander sense of space in the rooms.

Thorndown Wall Paint was the perfect choice for Wayne as it is a highly durable paint that can be used in every room and surface throughout the home. With no need for a primer it can be painted on walls, ceilings, metal radiators and wooden surfaces from doors to window frames and skirting boards, and can be painted on plaster or synthetic ceiling roses and coving.

The gorgeous flat matt finish of Thorndown Wall Paint is further elevated by the VOC free exterior grade colour pigments that give a superior and rich depth of colour that lasts for many years.

SAMPLES

As with all design projects the first place to start is with samples to try out your design ideas and make sure colours are exactly what you want. They’re also a really good way to check that colour combinations work well together in adjoining rooms and with soft furnishings, fixtures and furniture. You can also refer to one of our hand painted colour charts with chips painted in all of our wall paint colours by emailing studio@thorndown.co.uk which will help give you a starting point to see what colours you want to try.

Wayne tried a number of Wall Paint sample tins, painting up large patches and circles on lining paper. He stuck the large pieces up on walls, moving them around the house to see what walls they worked on, in what rooms, and how light at different times of the day affected the colour.

He also used the smaller circles to see what paint colours worked together and complimented the fixtures and fittings he was going to be using.

Wayne and his wife Anna saw a trend where colour choice was moving from big bold colours to really rich neutrals, so they chose 5 central colours to provide cohesion throughout the whole house. With colour drenching it meant that each room talked to each other and were able to celebrate all of the beautiful architecture they put back into the house from coving to ceiling roses.

They also wanted something that would elevate all of Wayne’s art as it’s quite colourful and strong, and he’s really passionate about it so they wanted a beautiful backdrop that would frame and lift it all, letting the art sing. The colours they chose really do that!

From here he and his family settled on Whey White and Cow Parsley White for the majority of the rooms, with Greymond, Marshland Green and Yew Green providing heritage elegance and focal points in the remaining rooms.

PREPARATION

Wayne spent months stripping out then installing internal insulation, a new heating system with radiators and underfloor heating and many other essential construction and renovation projects. Once the ‘bones’ of the house were finished, then started the next phase of decorative details, fixing existing coving and picture rails, putting in ceiling roses, and installing an intelligent lighting system with strip uplighting along the top of picture rails to highlight traditional features and the lovely high Edwardian ceilings.

Wall and ceiling surfaces were checked, filled and sanded until smooth, with lots of re-plastering in rooms that needed it. All woodwork from skirting boards to doors were checked, fixed and filled so that surfaces were perfectly ready for paint to go on!

From experience Wayne knows that the more time you spend in preparation, the better the final results.

PAINTING

Fresh (and fully dried) plaster needs a mist coat to seal the porous plaster and provide a good base coat for paint to go on. You can make a mist coating by watering down wall paint by 30% or up to 40% if you’re painting on a really hot and dry day.

Painting an entire house is an enormous amount of work, so by choosing a high performance paint such as Thorndown’s Wall Paint you’ll have something that not only looks gorgeous but lasts for up to 10 years. It’s a highly durable paint too performing better than many leading premium brands in scrub tests so you shouldn’t have to do any maintenance or re-painting for a long time.

Our Wall Paint is water-based with virtually no VOCs or odour, and perfect for use throughout the home from bathrooms and kitchens to bedrooms and nurseries.

We use VOC free exterior grade colour pigments that give our paints a unique and stunningly rich depth of colour that last for years and years without fade. The flat matt coating has less than a 3% sheen rating, leaving a beautifully smooth and resonant finish.

Its eco credentials are boosted further by the use of a 100% recycled plastics resin in our unique resin blend. You can find out full product information and application advice for our Wall Paint by following this link to Advice – Wall Paint Products

You can apply our Wall Paint by brush, roller or sprayer. Wayne had so much surface area to cover and wanted to colour drench every surface within a room with the same paint colour. As our Wall Paint adheres really well to all surfaces including metal radiators, synthetic or plaster detailing such as coving and ceiling roses, and woodwork with no need for a primer, Wayne elected to use a sprayer to speedily transform his home.

A professional decorator friend came with his sprayer and years of experience to help train Wayne and get him started. You can use our paint direct from the tin in HVLP sprayers (high volume low pressure) and once you get the hang of it, it’s incredibly fast and satisfying. Just make sure to cover over all surfaces that you don’t want covered in paint!

The resin and solids content is so high in our Wall Paint that depending on the sprayer that you use, you can water our paint down by about 10% going up to 20%, without it affecting performance and solidity of coating.

Thorndown Wall Paint dries really quickly and in warm, dry conditions you can be ready to overcoat in 30 minutes to one hour. Only two coats are needed as the paint quality is so high and colour pigments so rich and full that you get great coverage and opacity.

HALLWAY

Edwardian houses often provide the perfect opportunity to create a grand and impressive entrance to the home.

Wayne capitalised on all of the period features and installed wall panelling, then sprayed the ceiling, ceiling rose, coving, panelling, skirting boards, stairs, bannisters and walls in Thorndown’s Whey White Wall Paint to create a stunning hallway.

KITCHEN

With a combination of some very savvy shopping and doing a lot of the carpentry work himself, Wayne created a stunningly chic kitchen with modern fixtures and fittings whilst conserving the heritage feel.

Leading from the hallway he carried on with our Whey White Wall Paint to create a sense of unity and flow. Our deeply rich Yew Green was used on the large standing kitchen unit, acting as a beautiful contrast to the creaminess of Whey White. In the adjoining dining room area Whey White Wall Paint was again used throughout to continue with the colour drenched theme and inject and reflect warmth and light pouring in from the garden.

LOUNGE

As with the rest of the house this room needed a lot of work doing to it. Wayne preserved period features and added to them then colour drenched all surfaces from ceiling and walls to the door and skirting boards in our Cow Parsley White Wall Paint, creating an elegant and inviting space for the family to relax in.

BATHROOM

In a bathroom the use of a hard-wearing high performance paint is even more essential as it needs to stand up to large amounts of humidity and cleaning.

Wayne used our Greymond Wall Paint for a cool and sophisticated light grey that compliments the brass fixtures and fittings and deep green of the tiles. Again he colour drenched applying to the ceiling, coving, walls, panelling, skirting boards and door.

On the ceiling you can see how the strip uplighting adds a glow and warmth to the cool grey of Greymond, almost making it look like a different colour.

BEDROOMS

In the principal bedroom Wayne and his wife selected our Cow Parsley White Wall Paint to colour drench their room, tying back into the paint colour from their lounge and providing the perfect canvas for artwork to be displayed on and soft furnishings to finish a mature and restful space.

GUEST BEDROOM

In this space Wayne created a totally unique feel from the rest of the house, using reclaimed floor boards that he’d had to strip out to panel the walls in.

Rather than using our Wood Paint he painted the wood panelling in Marshland Green Wall Paint so it would have the same flat matt finish as the rest of the house. As detailed previously our Wall Paint adheres to multiple surfaces including wood without the need for a primer, which is one of the many reasons why our Wall Paint was the perfect choice for Wayne to colour drench his home in.

Marshland Green is one of the trickiest paint colours within our colour range to photograph accurate colour representation of so you can see below the vast difference in colour from Lol Johnson’s professional photo shoot to Wayne’s bottom photos taken with his phone camera. Our colour chart with hand-painted colour chips shows exact colours and you can easily order a 150ml sample tin on our online shop.

BEDROOM 2

Their daughter chose Whey White Wall Paint for her bedroom where Wayne sprayed it on the walls, ceiling, skirting boards, door frame and door.

This beautiful off-white with a rich creamy tone adds a touch of sophistication to her bedroom where the natural muted earthy and brown tones form a calming palette for her to relax in.

The use of Whey White in the bedroom leads an interior design journey seamlessly from the hallway into the kitchen, up the stairs and through to this room.

It contrasts starkly and dramatically against the beautifully dark charcoal of the metal radiator, whilst also adding softness to the space.