Pretty....Pretty grim. Using this fake brick in Peekabooplayland (www.peekaboopland.com) was a clever way to add some character to the walls. The down side was the color it came in was simply awful for the application. The dark brown and black was decidedly not in keeping with the rest of the space. Everything else in the indoor play area is fun and colorful without being tacky. What this looked like was a place to send kids for being naughty, not having a good time.

First things first, I had the painters prime the vac form plastic "brick" sheets grey. When that was dry, I roughly troweled on white paint. The purpose of this was to leave the majority of the recessed grout area grey and give the brick surface a light tone that had a lot of variation but would lift the the brightness of the next color that followed. This room received the least amount of natural light. In creating this effect wanted to make sure that it was a rich palette but not dark so that it would reflect the maximum amount of light.

Sharing the Playground with the crew from "New Girl"

Just to complicate things, a T.V. crew was using the space for shooting the series "New Girl" while we were doing the work. We tried to stay quiet and out of their way as best we could.

Next step was to apply the general red brick color. Mixed into the paint was 25% water based faux glaze. Using the side of a 4" chip brush in a technique called "scumbling" the paint on the brush only hits the high points of the surface. This creates a random pattern that accentuates the bricks's texture.

My son Joshua who is 7 has really picked up the knack of it and was a great help.

Another way of applying the paint to accentuate the surface's texture is to flit the brush back and forth quickly as Joshua is seen doing here.

The white color and terra-cotta does tend to end up in the grout, touching up the grey with a 1/2" fitch works well.

After coming back with some more white using the same scumbling technique to soften the red, it's done.