I was recently asked to restore a vintage decorative sign in the Society Hill section of Philadelphia, near Independence Hall. Back in the '80s this place had an ice cream shop on the first floor, but now is all apartments. The sign is a neighborhood landmark that people love and tourists stop to photograph.
Above and below: Before any restoration work. One thing I noticed in a number of spots: some places that appear grey must have been shades of brown, so I took that into consideration when I re-painted them. I for one don't much enjoy grey cake or ice cream. At this point the carousel horse was just hanging by a cable, attached by a hook in only one place.
I removed most of the individual pieces to bring back to my studio, sanded them down and primed both sides. I used extra primer around the edges of the plywood, both to seal them thoroughly and in some cases to improve the bond between layers of plywood. Evidently the original pieces were painted with oil base paint, which is now nearly impossible to find for exterior use, so I used high quality exterior latex, mostly satin finish. In art school we are taught that you can paint oil over acrylic but not acrylic (or latex) over oils. However, I used Zinnser exterior oil base primer which can be used over any paint and can be painted over with either latex or oils.
The "parfait" was badly deterioriated so I traced and cut it from a new piece of exterior grade plywood. See below for several individual pieces after repainting.
The lower part would have been very complicated to remove, so I repainted it in place. It had been somewhat sheltered from the weather so was in a bit better shape than the pieces above, but I sanded lightly and primed areas to be re-painted. Above you see the bizarre (creepy?) clown in the process of priming.
Above: I brought the horse back to my studio to repaint and found that it was really falling apart: see where his foot broke off. My client and I agreed that we should totally re-create the horse, so I traced and cut a new horse out of exterior plywood. The new horse appears below. The overall color is a more vibrant shade of blue green, because it appeared that was closer to the color originally intended (much of it had faded and flaked off).
Below: nearly complete! There was a piece missing in the lower right and we couldn't figure out what it had been, so I made the watermelon in my studio and attached it. One final comment/request from my client: "Can you make the clown a little less creepy? I don't want to scare the tenants." So that's what you see in further images below: a somewhat de-creepified clown.
Below: Finally -- the whole piece, with the horse in place and all.
