TV Cabinet Conversion - background... A lil help please?

[HarleyD]

This will tell you everything you need to know!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDUH5B7I790

Harley.

 

[kagarrampton]

Yea I meant use the screws to attach the render to the wood. I would worry about puttying anything over the wood. I attached my rock walls straight to wood and I have had no problems.

But don't you think that using screws would give it a dull look?? And if I'm not wrong then it would be in the living room isn't?? it can be done as firstly try to screw the render then once its done we can put some solution or material that is used to fill those wholes that would be made by fixing those screws like this, I had used this method while refurbishing my used office furniture and believe me it really works!!
I hope my suggestion would definitely help you.

 

[oOLaurenOo]

Lol, yea it would look dumb if you could see the screws. if you are going to render it inside the enclosure just put some screws through the foam sticking out just a small amount and them render over the top. The render will form around the screws and after a couple of layers you won't even be able to see where they were. But like I said, silicone was all I used and it worked a treat. I guess it just depends on how tight the fake wall sits, how heavy it is (will the weight break the foam and pull it forward) and how much pressure will it be under with animals crawling all over it

 

[justin91]

That's why you screw it from behind. I just used the remainder of my liquid nails and a couple screws from behind. Obviously the screw wasn't thicker then the thickness of the cabinet, the ply the styro is on and the styro itself

 

[Skippii]

It's occurred to me recently that I really put things off when I'm dreading them.. It's taken me months to get up to where I'm up to with the rendering. And I'm not even quite finished! So close to being finished rendering that I'm hoping to knock it over so that I can start painting this weekend.

Anyway, I decided to get off my ___ and get some hideous pictures together for you guys. Honestly, once I started rendering it, this thing looked shockingly bad. It's only now starting to come together and look like something remotely acceptable to the eye.. haha (though I'm still not overly happy with it)
One disappointing thing that I really should have expected, was I lost all of the texture (pretty well) that I painstakingly etched into the styrofoam with a soldering iron months ago. All gone.. At least I'll know what to expect next time (assuming I decide to work with render again).

So this is the render I used, nothing earth shattering... Just some acrylic render I picked up at Bunnings.

I know this stuff looks like septic sludge or Shrek soup, but I assure you it's render. For my first coat, I wanted to colour it in some way, so that it would be easily visible which areas still needed additional coats. Problem was, I had nothing to colour it with, so out of desperation I ended up dumping in some imitation saffron.. Yeah.. I'm really not sure why an orange powder that stains everything yellow would make this stuff go green, but there you have it. Imitation saffron makes render go green.

Of course, once it dried it yellowed out quite a bit (still a slight green tinge), and actually looked kind of cool here, from a distance. But this was only the first coat and was very thin and crumbly and awful up close, plus it hadn't really taken between the "bricks". I noticed once I started on the second coat I started to lose a lot of my brick texture, which made me die a little inside (mostly because of the amount of time it took to texture all the bricks, not to mention risk of toxic inhalation I faced! lol)

This is a few days ago, when I decided once again that I'd been putting it off too long and started rendering again. I don't know if anyone else made as much of a mess as I did (these photos really don't show the extent of it), but boy did I make a mess. I made a mess that my friend's 3 year old kid who splatters half of every meal against the wall/floor/furniture and ends up wearing the other half would marvel at.

[And yes, in the picture above, that was a cake-icer.. I was having a hell of a time trying to render in between the gaps. I tried several basters, syringes and cake-icers. Broke all of them, plus the 5 brushes I destroyed... Go team!]

At this point I'm really not overly pleased with how it's turning out, it's lost a lot of it's definition and texture, but it might still be redeemable once it's painted and covered in plants! I'll get some more pictures of it once the rendering is finished and all dry, and I've done a proper clean-up around the edges. I'm looking forward to painting, hopefully I can do something interesting with it. I just want this rendering to be behind me! Dreadful stuff :shock:

Any suggestions as to brick colour for when I start painting?

x

 

[smileysnake]

looking really good skip....i painted the in between the bricks black for more definition then used a grey colour for the bricks with spots of black and lighter shades of grey lol....then i will try and use some green for a moss kind of effect just go with what you like colours and shades will always vary and you can always paint over if you dont like it..just pick a brick and experiment.....good luck

 

[Woma_Wild]

Just render what you can and then before you paint it buy some paintable sealer and paint over it when you paint the whole thing. Done

I sealed last and sealed everything, Using a pond sealer. There are a few brands like PONDTITE and CROMMELINS.

Reptiles may poo in the ground but they can and will walk over it.
Sealing enables you to clean enclosure and hides thoroughly.
Urine will seep thru timber and it does warp laminate over time.

I wanted a natural looking enclosure so I googled Tanami desert and found photos for ideas. For a sandstonish look, on my last coat of render, I went over it without re loading more render on my brush. Hard to explain but it gives a good surface texture.

hope some of above helps.
Your wall looks awesome.

 

[Lawra]

Hey Skippii it looks good if you want more texture on your bricks I'd suggest lying the cabinet on it's back and sort of sculpting the render on each brick. Not thickly of course and use pva glue in the mix. The consistency should be thicker so it doesn't flatten out too much.

It looks good - don't give up

 

[Skippii]

Thanks guys, you've all been a huge help!

I've actually started painting tonight (and in my usual fashion, I've made a huge mess in the process.. luckily, water-based acrylics are much easier to clean up than render), and it's coming along quite nicely I think.

I'll post up some pictures when I've got the base colour on all the bricks, hopefully tomorrow. Afterwards, I'll be going around painting between all the bricks (and of course, more pictures), and hopefully doing a little dry brushing to bring out what little texture remains after the onslaught of render that took place

I decided to go with just your basic red-ish/brown brick colour, and I'm glad I did.

x

 

[Skippii]

Ah what the heck... Here's where the painting is up to at this point:

It's scruffy around the edges right now, but I'll neaten it up when I paint in the "mortar" between the bricks. I'm also still tossing up whether or not to attempt painting some kinda moss.. I'm tempted, but at the same time I'm nervous I'll muck up the whole thing. Something to consider I guess.

Oh also, I obviously still need to do some cleaning up around the edges of the render, there's still some render where it shouldn't be! I've noticed it rubs off pretty easily when it's thin like that (probably because of the smooth varnish). I'll get this thing finished yet!

x

 

[Woma_Wild]

You should have a look on YouTube under model train landscaping. There are some awesome technics. They use acrylic also.

 

[Skippii]

Will do! Any video related research will need to wait until the 11th though. I've currently gone over my depressingly low download limit, so I'm on dial-up speed until the new billing month. Basically means nothing (and I do mean nothing, not even google pages) wants to load for me, I end up waiting a VERY long time for most pages, and video won't even load at all.

Anyway, this is just a quick update to let you guys see how the base colour is looking [Feel free to ignore the lousy picture quality!]. I'll finish up getting the base coat onto the remaining blank bricks either tonight or tomorrow, and then I might have a bit of a practice at dry-brushing to kill some time. On Monday, I'll pop out to the art supply store and pick up the grey paint I stupidly forgot to buy the other day :facepalm: so that I can neaten this whole thing up by painting in some "mortar" between the bricks.

x

 

[Skippii]

Starting to get that really aged-brick look I was after, so that's good I guess. The colouring looks slightly different (a little richer/redder) than this in person, the lighting in here is just quite yellow, so the fail-boat camera doesn't pick up the red very well. Still, this gives you some idea how it's coming along.

x

 

[ronhalling]

Hey Skippii, I wish you would stop being critical of your artistic ability, as far as i am concerned and i daresay the rest of our crew here at APS that looks "FANBLOODYTASTIC", have you had a look at it under the lighting that will be in it ??? i think you will be pleasantly surprised at what the light and shadows will do to it if you have not done so yet. I think the reason i like it so much is the fact you have gone away from the usual mundane rock wall look and created a very large as life brick wall (not that rock walls don't look good as well) it is refreshing and very well thought out and any critisism is only in your head. If i may put forward 1 small bit of advice it would be that from this point do not over think what to do with it next coz anything more than painting the mortar at this stage might detract from it's simplistic beauty. ......................................Ron

 

[Skippii]

Hey Skippii, I wish you would stop being critical of your artistic ability, as far as i am concerned and i daresay the rest of our crew here at APS that looks "FANBLOODYTASTIC", have you had a look at it under the lighting that will be in it ??? i think you will be pleasantly surprised at what the light and shadows will do to it if you have not done so yet. I think the reason i like it so much is the fact you have gone away from the usual mundane rock wall look and created a very large as life brick wall (not that rock walls don't look good as well) it is refreshing and very well thought out and any critisism is only in your head. If i may put forward 1 small bit of advice it would be that from this point do not over think what to do with it next coz anything more than painting the mortar at this stage might detract from it's simplistic beauty. ......................................Ron

I think this is one of the best compliments I've ever received for any of my little art projects, and it means a lot. I do tend to be critical of everything I make, as far as I'm concerned nothing I do ever quite reaches its potential. Apparently that's a bit of a mixture of perfectionism, low self-confidence and just a touch of OCD

Anyway, thanks again for your encouragement and suggestions. I actually really love the look of aged brick, for a while I was considering doing up one of my bedroom walls (as a feature wall) with faux-bricks. But after seeing the amount of effort that would take, and the fact that I likely won't be in this room for all that much longer, it's probably not going to happen haha. So as soon as I decided I wanted a background for one of my enclosures, I already knew it had to be brick. I'll keep in mind what you've said, about keeping it simple. I suppose I probably should ditch the idea of painting in a little "moss"?

I haven't actually installed the lighting into the enclosure yet, so I haven't seen how it will look under the light. I'm going to go with a warm-white light, so hopefully it plays up the warm tones of the "brick" and gives it that nice cozy look.

You're a good egg, Ron. Stay that way

x

 

[Skippii]

Oh also, for anyone that may be curious, these are the paints I've used so far. Tomorrow I'll be getting a light grey for the mortar. These are just cheap non-toxic water-based acrylics from the little art supply store. To apply the paint, I used a combination of small (1/2 inch), soft paintbrush and just a cheap sponge from the grocery store.

x

 

[Skippii]

A quick photo from earlier, when I was attempting to dry-brush a little to bring out some of the texture. I added a little more red after this photo was taken, but the texture still looks very similar up close.

I can't wait until I can get my hands on some grey paint to go in between the bricks a little, then I'll just need to seal it! And to think, both Floyd and people that look at it in future will never know the work that went into this thing...

x

 

[Gruni]

Looking good Skipii, personally I would have done the mortar sections first and the brick surfaces second but I'm sure you'll pull it together.

 

[Skippii]

Looking good Skipii, personally I would have done the mortar sections first and the brick surfaces second but I'm sure you'll pull it together.

Ta, Gruni. I was actually tossing up which to paint first, but I ended up accidentally forgetting the paint I need for the mortar, so that (plus my impatience to start) kind of made the decision for me haha. I'm actually happy that I painted the faces first, because I noticed to get the edges of the bricks I really needed to press the brush/sponge into the mortar space. I've got a finer brush I'll be filling the mortar in with. It'll be a slow process, right up close filling in the spaces, but I'll make it work.

x

 

[Gruni]

Based on model building experience, if you ever do it again prime it all in black then do the deep spaces and work your way up. Even with pressing your sponge in there it would not affect the deepest spots where the mortar is as you can see by all the white in your pic. But that is the beauty of doing this. a) there is no one right way to do it b) you learn a heap on the way c) even if there is an 'easier' way you can still pull off a really great looking result.

Looking forward to seeing it all done and with plants or whatever decorations you use. I think it would be cool to see what someone could do with an air brush on somthing like this by finishing it of with some grungy graffiti and make it into a bit of a back alley scene with a dumpster hide and a pallet stack... Hmmmmm