Vintage Hawaiian Dining Room

The Solution

A classy Hawaiiana look is created in the lackluster dining room. Here's how the design team gets it done:

• The white walls above the chair rail are painted a tropical green hue to set the tone for the new look. Below the chair rail, seagrass thatching is attached to the wall for texture and stained a dark brown color to coordinate with the homeowners' dining set.

• To give the walls below the chair rail even more interest, Snijders decides to create a pineapple relief to further the Hawaiiana theme. First, he sketches a pineapple outline on a rectangular wood board. Next, he sculpts a pineapple shape out of a moldable clay called Super Sculpy. He frames it with pieces of foam core and seals the edges with glue. He sprays the clay pineapple with a releasing agent, pours a silicone mold mixture over the top and allows it to cure. He then removes the clay from the silicone mold in order to make eight identical pineapple shapes using a 50-50 mix of castable urethane. The faux pineapples are painted to look like wood using a mixture of dark red and black paint. To make the backplates for each pineapple, he frames out pieces of wood with split rattan and stains them dark brown to coordinate with the rest of the pieces in the dining room. He uses a staple gun to attach the pineapples to the wooden backplates, then to the wall. To finish the entire project, split rattan pieces are used in between each relief to hide the rough edges where the grasscloth and chair rail meet.