Valspar Faux Collection Tuscan Accents Paint

I have been helping my ex-husband decorate his house since he moved in. When we got to the downstairs bathroom, I was dreading working in there. I knew he wanted to repaint it but my past experiences with painting bathrooms have not been pleasant ones since they have so many built in obstacles that have to be worked around and getting a smooth coat of paint up is hard to do.

Since we knew we were already facing a challenge, we decided to go with one of the faux finish paints since some of them do not get applied like a traditional paint. We went to Lowes and found a paint chip color that we really liked so we went with that.

The paint is part of the Faux Collection by Valspar. Please note that this is not cheap. It requires 2 different cans of paint that were both in the $30.00 range, a special roller, brush and smoothing tools which ran about another $25.00, but the finished effect was worth it.

The effect requires a 3 step process. In step one, you apply the Signature Colors Tuscan Accents base coat with a roller and allow it to dry for 24 hours. It is important to use their base coat and not just a regular paint primer if you want the paint to go on and perform correctly.

In step two, you apply the Tuscan Accents paint in small crisscross X's working in a 3 foot by 3 foot section at a time. This was actually really fun to do and anyone even the kids can help with it. It was very relaxing to just make X's everywhere and not have to worry about things like brush strokes. When you complete the section, you go back over it without reloading paint on the brush and brush it in different directions to smooth it out and blend in the strokes a bit. The paint for this part looks a little strange. It has what I would describe as globs of white paint mixed in with it. When we first applied it we thought the top had been off the paint and parts of it had started to dry up. We then reread the directions and understood it was supposed to be there and was important for step three.

In step three, you wait for 10 minutes after the paint has been applied and has lost it's wet look. For this step you use the smoothing tool which is a flat piece of hard plastic with a wooden handle. You drag it over the paint and pop the white particles that are on the surface. This adds a layer of color and dimension to the wall. You then continue to run the smoother over the walls using a light touch and random patterns until you have the desired look you want. We tag teamed on steps two and three and the job went really fast. I started with the painting and he followed behind me a few minutes later with the smoother.

The end result is a finish similar to a Venetian Plaster but with alot less work. This was the most stress free painting I have ever done and we were able to do steps two and three in a full bathroom in about 2 hours.