Faux Painting = Faux Pas

Well, I actually think that 'faux pas' means a big boo-boo as far as etiquette goes, so maybe gaffe or blunder, or just BIG MISTAKE will suffice!!
I attempted to do a type of faux finish in our living room, but I did not get a beautiful blend of colors, my walls did not look color washed, they looked yucky! I had done a faux finish in the kitchen a few months ago. My husband and I did a base coat and then the next day I did the sponge painting with the glaze, and while it didn't look like a professional finish, I was happy with the results.
But I forgot one thing. Our kitchen was remodeled and the walls in there are all straight, and smooth, and pristine. A nice canvas to start with.
The walls in our living room and dining room, well, not so pristine. They are old, and they are hand plastered with a stucco finish. I love them, but they are not the canvas for a washed/blend paint finish, at least not for me to attempt a washed/blend paint finish. I started out by following the directions I saw on a video online. I mixed the paint and the glaze, and I got a bucket of water and a big car washing sponge, I rinsed the sponge, wrung it to near dry just as instructed, then I dipped the sponge in the glaze/paint mixture and went to work. It wasn't blending, it wasn't even covering, the stucco was much too thick for such a big sponge. I moved on to using a little sea sponge (that's what I used in the kitchen), but this wasn't giving me a nice blended look either, it wasn't even giving me the look I had in my kitchen, it was just a mess! The more I swirled, the worse things got! It just looked like someone attempted to paint the stucco walls and did a bad job of covering the previous paint color! Ugh! Oh Puke!
(This picture I took after the first attempt with the big sponge, it looked a little better but not much after I went to work with the sea sponge.)





So when Ray came home from golfing, he agreed with me that it looked horrible, and he rescued me by taking a trip to Home Depot, buying more paint and rollers and brushes, and went to work on painting, just a normal paint job, no faux, no fuss.
(Don't ask why nothing is off the walls when we are painting, Ray refuses to take anything down until he gets to that spot, then it comes down, and goes right back up the minute the paint is dry!)






We still have one more wall to go (that wall with the candles still on it, it's also the wall with Ray's big TV on it! Yikes!), and we won't get to it for a few weeks as we have a party tomorrow, and then another party next Saturday, and then there will be NO PAINTING on Father's Day, so we'll wait until the following week. But I'm a very happy camper!
I took some pictures but they are lost somewhere on this computer! I'll look again in the morning. I'm tired and I'm going up to bed!


Okay, Ray found the 'finished' pictures. They were still in the camera! Duh!
Well, it was late and I was tired.
So here there are:
(These two were taken last night)




(This was taken this morning, but it's not true daylight as it is raining AGAIN! So the color isn't true in any of these pictures, it looks more yellow or yellow green to me in these pictures, the color actually looks more cream, the name of it is Country Beige.)



Okay here's before and after to give you an idea:
(Before on the left ~ After on the right ~ Can you see any difference?)




It's not what I had originally envisioned, but it's fresh, and it's clean, and I'm very happy!