Preserving Historical Homes Through Painting
Painter Zach Kenney talks about his passion for preserving historic homes in New England using colors from the Benjamin Moore Williamsburg Collection.
Sponsored by Benjamin Moore
Zach Kenney of ZK Painting finds inspiration in painting historical homes throughout New England. He recognizes that he and his crew are following the efforts of skilled craftspeople from the past and leaving their own mark for future generations. On this project in Cambridge, Mass., the color choices are based around Benjamin Moore’s Williamsburg Collection to reflect the historic nature of the building and to blend perfectly with its character.
Here’s the transcript:
Painting in Boston and New England is amazing because we have a lot of history. My name is Zach Kenney from ZK Painting. We’ve been in business for 12 years now, and we’re based out of Boston.
When we’re on historic projects, we see the pristine and it’s beautiful, and we can just come in and put paint over the top. There are many years of different levels of skilled painters. You see the band-aids, the scars, the nicks, so most of what we do is sanding and prep work, but we are crazy craftspeople. We love it. That passion leaks into the daily work site, and especially as we get toward the end and you get to see what you did, it can be very rewarding.
On this project we’re going to be using the Benjamin Moore Williamsburg Collection in AURA Matte, one of our favorite products. The client was really excited when we brought that color chart to her. Our team is going to be painting the main bedroom today. We’re going to be using Chiswell Blue in Benjamin Moore AURA Interior Matte. It’s the Williamsburg Collection, so a historic color, which is really cool. It fits this historic home. In the study we’re using AURA Matte, and the color is Raleigh Peach, which is also a Williamsburg historic color. And we’re going to be doing the fun part of painting, which is putting paint on walls—super satisfying. It’s like the icing on the cake, right? We’ve done all this work and now we just get to paint walls.
Our process for painting walls is fairly standard. We’re always going to strain our paint. We’re never going to paint out of can, and because we’re using AURA and it has a fast dry time, you have to make sure to keep your wet edge, so it’s going to be a dance.
There’s going to be the guy with the cut brush. He’s going to go ahead, he’s going to start working, and the guy with the roller comes behind him, and they team up and they work together.
We’ve been working with Benjamin Moore my entire career. They make high-quality products. They care about the longevity of stuff. I think it’s a great product to have on historic projects. What we leave behind is paint. So using a high-quality paint is very important.
I feel an immense amount of pride for what we’re doing here. There were decades of skilled craftspeople who came before us. Now we’re working on their work, and there will be people in the future, and it adds a greater meaning to the whole project. It’s not just, I’ll paint some walls in an office and move on. This stuff, it fills your soul, right? It’s so much more than just putting paint on things, because there is history.
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