Create Faux Wood Grained Finishes - Cover boring or plain surfaces with the look of high end wood - Decorative Painting
Urban Revivals

verve Urban Revivals

Faux Finishes & Restoration Techniques for Historic Homes
Faux Graining
Transforms Stair and Landings
Brings new beauty to plain woods and painted surfaces!
Get Rid of Plain
Ugly woods like this go away!
Transform plain posts, handrails and doors into works of art.
Match
Your Flooring or Cabinets
Faux Graining unifies your decor and removes distractions!

From Plain to Inspired!

Urban Revivals can simulate nearly all types of wood. Your wood graining effort will commence with creating a sample, intended to capture your preferences in graining, hue, and saturation of color. We can vary the intensity of graining, add "flyspecks", knots, burling, banding, and other wood phenomena through paint, glazing, lacquering, varnishing, and brushwork techniques. Your wood is first painted a close base color and graining is applied sequentially over this base. See more photos from the wood graining project!

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Wood Graining    

Wood Graining Before
Here's the Before
Finished but unattractive wood has its finish softened and the wood is primed and then a base paint coat is applied. For stairs, one must take care to tape the spindles and the areas where spindles join the floor.
View the whole wood graining project!
Wood Graining After
Here's the After
This finish consisted of graining by hand and light use of a wood graining rocker, with smoothing use long-haired soft bristle brushes. Liquin was used in creating a glaze. The finish was sealed with multiple coats of sanding sealer, and after quite a long time, polyurethane finish coats were applied.
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Highlights techniques and decorating ideas for faux finishing, historic homes, & DIY tips for ceilings, walls and floors. One e-mail a month (we keep it private!)

Wood Graining Samples
Samples are essential
As with any faux finish, it is essential to take samples of the grained wood to your client, to ensure they pick the finish they want (here a post shown in 2 finishes above and below the stripe).

about us

Founded in 2002

Licensed in DC, we decorated historic homes and condos across the Washington metropolitan area. Featured in newspapers and magazines, and now bring our tips online to do-it-yourselfers. We also distribute free e-books, and sell hand-crafted wood pet gates.
Our history

Latest news

15Mar
Easy non-drip stencil technique
Our upcoming April 2024 newsletter will discuss a paste based technique for creating stencils that will remind you of Italian sgraffito, and you needn't be Caravaggio to do it!

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