Decorating

We've not done a lot of decorating as yet. We've really not got that far, but as you can imagine having this kind of thing to look at all day quickly becomes depressing especially with French weather keeping us indoors.

The walls really needed re-plastering but we didn't have the skills nor the money to pay for someone who did.  So we needed to find something that would give a reasonable look quickly and cheaply.

 Enter crepi.

You can buy it by the bucket full from as little as 5 euros from just about all the French DIY stores. So of course we went for the 5 euro buckets big time.

It comes in white or sort of a mucky cream colour. You can see from the shots above and below that more mucky cream was not an option. There are interior and exterior grades when you open the tub it looks like an oatmeal face pack or maybe school semolina pudding.

You can apply it with a plasterers float or with a little crepi machine that you load up and turn a handle this then splats it at the wall or with a roller. We used a wallpaper scraper. You scoop a lump out and sort of spread it across the wall. You will quickly get past the one lump for the wall and one lump for the floor stage.

 

It stays wet and workable for ages, typically it takes about 24 hours for the surface to go hard very forgiving stuff. This allows plenty of time for experimenting with different finishes. Think artex!

So we spread it on with aforementioned wallpaper scraper then because we didn't want it to look like icing on a cake brushed the ridges out horizontally with a dry paint brush (not too hard or you just take it all off again)

Crepi will happily cover most surfaces so in the alcove I just went straight over the manky frame from the old cupboard. It also fills in small cracks and holes. If you have large gaps though do some filling first because if you apply it too thickly it does sag.

So instant white and bright at a price that's right! (they should pay me for this).

Where the walls were not too bad we have used a matt white emulsion paint being matt it sort of tones in with the crepi. Again it was the finest and cheapest paint in the store.

I really thought we had gone altogether too low when I started to apply the first coat. It was practically transparent. You obviously don't get much pigment for 5 euros I was thinking. Strangely though as it dried the matt whiteness became more apparent.

Encouraged I tried another coat. This had the immediate effect of taking the covering back to transparent again. All rather unnerving. You will surely read on many forums etc if you are researching decorating materials in France that the paint they sell is rubbish compared to the paint in the UK. Rubbish may be a bit harsh certainly it is a bit different but it is useable and one good thing I have noticed is that sans odeur does mean no horrible paint smells. I don't think it's worth bringing it from the UK but this is the opinion of someone who only wants to pay 5 euro for 10 litres.

Back to the point then. Three coats slapped on and a reasonable matt white finish is achieved. As behind the Rayburn. It has the quality of looking kind of old and powdery which is nice for a kind of old house.

So crepi and white emulsion. It won't get us a spot in any of the interior design magazines and you won't see it on any makeover programs but it suits us and our old house.