As you may have guessed by now, we are huge fans of texture. And we love to use our CNC router to build texture into our work. When our friend Jeff Hartman, one of the authors of EnRoute software, first showed us the rapid texture function he was developing my father immediately thought about using it for creating unique wainscoting. Rapid texture was released just in time for this project and we designed the wainscotting with this technique in mind. The beauty of rapid texture is the speed at which you can add texture to large surfaces. It used to take hours to route panels like these, but with rapid texture it can be done in a fraction of the time.
We used four different rapid textures in four areas of the building.
In the entry/reception area (above), we used a 3/4" ball nose bit to create vertical lines in the MDF wainscot panels. We added just a teeny bit of wiggle to “happy” them up just a little.
The hallway’s (below left) were treated as a transition area — we wanted to hint at what was coming in the board room. We used MDF and the 3/4" ball nose bit once again but made the lines a little wavy this time. The pattern resembles ocean waves as seen from an airplane. The trim was accented with a routed linear gear motif — reinforcing the building’s “CNC theme”.
The “fossil office’s” panelling (below right) looked like it was hewn from flint. The lines were routed in MDF with the same 3/4” ball nose and tweaked to wiggle every so slightly both vertically and horizontally. You will notice we incorporated the “M” medallion into the trim.
For the nautical boardroom we wanted to evoke the feeling of ocean waves. The texture was created with a 1.5" V-bit and the patterns resemble a stormy sea. We ran a test using MDF but were dismayed to see chunks of material breaking out. For our second test we used a sheet of 3/4" 30 lbs. Precision Board HDU — happily, it worked nicely. As an added bonus, priming the HDU (with Coastal Enterprises high build primer) required fewer coats than the MDF.
We painted a sample board to show the client, opting to use cool silvers on the wainscotting to play against the warm rust tones of the “iron” ribs.
While we wanted to play cool colours against warm we also needed to stay within the theme, which meant “dirtying up” the wainscotting to match the rest of the room.
We painted the wainscotting a blue base colour first. (We used the same colour on the top portion of the wall.) Next we used a blue jean coloured glaze and a custom glaze (a mix of dark brown, cherry red metallic, dark blue and a little black).
The base board and trim are MDF while the “M” medallion and rivets are routed from 30 lbs. Precision Board HDU. We painted them with a rusting metallic paint. The resulting colour palette works together nicely.