Don’t Be Afraid to Paint Wood!

Really gotta love red – it is passionate, fun, vibrant, warm and here are some cabinets to illustrate all of that! We recently completed an installation of custom cabinets that we designed for a busy family with two kids needing a work area for homework and craft projects. The upper cabinets were in place along with part of the lowers…but they were golden oak…So we designed the completed components and painted the whole thing a brilliant, semi-glossy red! The work-surface is a manufactured material – a durable engineered product, “Caesar Stone,” in a dark charcoal color. The cabinet “jewelry” is a handsome pewter pull with an Asian bent. They read as punctuations accenting the bold color.
Who wrote these rules? Painting wood is a sacrilege! Yet, I can appreciate the natural beauty and integrity of any organic material – oak is a richly grained wood – cut/sliced many ways – rift or quarter, the character changes completely. But to paint a course-grained wood, one gets the details reading through the painted finish and it is almost like a moiré fabric – water-marks dragged through the surface – but in this case reading through with a wonderfully dimensional quality.
Don’t be afraid to paint wood – it’s just another beautiful way to celebrate its magnificent character!