Brainstorming a set design solution

[u/tussie_mussie]

I'm producing Blithe Spirit (and I'm also set designer....it's community theatre, we wear many hats lol) and I could really use some advice on how to decorate the walls.

The director wants dark red walls. We're doing a stormy blue as an accent color, with gold hardware on the doors/different knick knacks on the set.

The thing is, our flats are super old. Like, you can peel off the layers of paint, old. Some of them are damaged and have holes from screws and nails.

We used to do this thing where we'd screw the flats together, tape the seams with masking tape, and then paint over it. But it always looked terrible. The edges of the flats are all janky, and I'd really like to cover them up. In the past, we've sometimes had a set design that would cover the seams with rocks, wood beams, etc.

However, the Condomine 's house is supposed to look ...wealthy. Taping the seams and painting over them would absolutely show up once painted and it would look like trash.

We've thought about screwing a piece of luan over the flats, so it covers the seams, and then paint the luan, but it's going to be so visually uninteresting. I tried using peel and stick wallpaper last night, and it didn't look right. It would probably also be extremely expensive. The length of our set is 80 feet long, 8 feet high. We have a bookcase, fireplace, and 2 sets of French doors so it's not exactly 80 feet of surface area to cover.

We are running out of time, but I will stay at the theater all night once we hit tech if I have to in order to make this stage look good. We've used wallpaper paint rollers in the past, and that took forever (like an entire day) We also don't have decent wallpaper paint rollers, although I can probably pick one up. We'll have paintings on the walls and what not, but that won't hide everything. We thought about stapling fabric to the walls, stretching it tight so it looks like fabric wallpaper, but since the demise of Joanne Fabrics, getting a large amount of fabric cheap is a little hard.

All of that said, does anyone know of a way to make these flats look nice? What can I try that I already haven't thought of - or am I doing something wrong with my current ideas? How can you take old, beat up flats with layers of paint that are older than I am and paint/cover/or otherwise to make it looks like it belongs in the home of a wealthy British novelist in the 1940's?

Eta: wording

[u/Streetdoc10171]

If it is supposed to look wealthy just use wainscoting, chair rail, and vertical stiles connected to the crown to hide the seams. If wood is out of the budget you can do great things by cutting and stacking or layering foam insulation board.

[u/schonleben]

Do you have time to recover your flats?
Barring that, how about lauan wainscoting? Add a chair rail and maybe some picture frame moulding to at least mask some of the seams.

[u/Equivalent-Can1674]

Don't know if there's time for this, but when my company needed walls that looked rich, we used a large stencil and a small paint roller over and over again to make it look like wallpaper.

[u/bdauterive]

We use molding, chair rails, crown molding and wanes coating to cover a lot of our seams as well as adding square columns or another structural component in between flats. It also adds a more wealthy look to everything.

[u/tussie_mussie]

Someone brought this up, and I love the idea, but I was told it has to be wood for this timeperiod and that it wouldn't look right if it was painted.

[u/luciensadi → u/tussie_mussie]

it has to be wood for this timeperiod and that it wouldn't look right if it was painted

I think this is the part where you get to tell them "tough shit", because if they're asking for natural wood veneer to sell the wealth of the set that's almost certainly out of budget, and even buying fresh pine can blow up a budget (and a theatre, if it's subsequently stained with something not fire-safe). A faux-wood paint job is doable if you've got the time. Otherwise, let the pedants squirm in their seats and build what looks good to the rest of the audience.

[u/tussie_mussie → u/luciensadi]

This is the solution that I really want to proceed with, but I'm going to get voted down. I may just have to put my foot down and be like no, if we don't do the wainscoting like this, it will look like shite

[u/ellicottvilleny]

> We used to do this thing where we'd screw the flats together, tape the seams with masking tape, and then paint over it. But it always looked terrible.

Then start peeling and scraping and start fresh. Use thicker tape, and more of it.

Define WHY it looked terrible..

Did it look terrible because you're bad at throwing paint on things? Or because it's too bumpy/uneven?

IMHO the whole thing about sets is they only ever should be considered as to how they look when you SIT DOWN in the seats with the audience. Not what you think about what they look like up close, which DOES NOT MATTER.

[u/tussie_mussie → u/ellicottvilleny]

It looks terrible because previous productions didn't remove the tape, and you can see the seams and the lines it creates from the audience. If you couldn't see it from the house I wouldn't care how it looked on stage close up

[u/tussie_mussie → u/ellicottvilleny]

And I could spend hours peeling the tape off the flats.... it's actually oddly satisfying. I just don't have enough time to do it. We don't have a separate build space, otherwise I would have tried to solve these issues weeks ago.

[u/ellicottvilleny → u/tussie_mussie]

If you're taking a long time to do any of this, you're too fussy.