Silver Leafing Ceiling Begins

Susan and I are fitting in one last job for 2009. We have been eagerly awaiting the start of this job. Our homeowners are away on vacation this week and asked if we could come in and silver leaf the dining room ceiling while they are gone.

We ordered two boxes of Schaibin Aluminum Leaf from the Gilded Planet and if you read my post last week, I picked up the Wunda Size at Sepp’s while in NYC two weekends ago. I had planned on starting this job yesterday, but the keys I had would not open the door to this house. Luckily, the house sitter who is staying here at night to take care of the dog and cat was able to get in with her keys and is now leaving the door unlocked for us during the day.

I had already base coated the ceiling a medium tone of gray a few weeks ago. This bare bulb will be replaced with a beautiful chandelier soon. Susan and I cleared out all the furniture, covered the floor, and put plastic sheeting up everywhere.

Here Susan is showing a piece of the Schaibin. The pieces are quite large, making it easy to apply. Oh, btw, we have two coats of Wunda Size on the ceiling.

The leafing goes much quicker than we had anticipated! We decided to do half the room and then quit for the day.

Here’s a close up of the application.

Now for the messy part. I am brushing the leaf to smooth it down. We will go over it again tomorrow.

Susan was calling me the Leafing Bandit because I tied a bandanna around
my face to keep the flakes from getting up my nose and in my mouth. I also put my glasses on to protect my eyes from the falling particles.

If you click on the picture to enlarge, you can really see the aluminum pieces flying all over the place.

Once we completed this part, we spent a lot of time cleaning up. We were able to save quite a lot of the large pieces that flaked off and will use in the future for smaller jobs such as mirrors or stencil designs.

More tomorrow.