FABULOUS French ANTIQUES! Shopping Discoveries in France! #frenantique; #antique

Good morning from the Chateau de Colombe. Today is the day when it's still really damp outside and foggy so I'm waiting to do some other projects but right now I am going to show you really step by step how to gild a decrepit old item. And it can be pretty much any item because you can gild anything. But we have bought these for the dining room because we have a lot of china and porcelain to display. And as you can see this is really not that great. There is one thing one has to always keep in mind when we put the sizing on which just means glue. You have to step away from the item for at least one hour. I mean depending of course temperature, humidity. But you will see that with this sizing that I'm using which comes from it changes color. It goes from a bright red to a darker red and it turns from shiny to matte. That's when you can put the gold on. And so let me put the sizing on right now and then let's walk away. So this is our sizing and I do this in two steps. So one needs to hold on to something. So I'm not going to put sizing at the bottom here but everything else will be completely covered with it. And the one thing to keep in mind is don't put it on too thick because then it doesn't dry that well. Hi Fitzy! Supervisor is here so what can go wrong? Actually I have three supervisors right now. The rest is guarding the courtyard as always. Very cute. Now for shelves like this you need to make sure that you to think about where they're going to go. Because if they're hung up high, very high, then you basically can see the underside that needs to be gilded then as well. And I have no idea where these are going yet but Stuart will find a place. And I have to say I found gilding, just the thought of it, very intimidating. It's really not difficult. Now we let it sit and you will see the difference. It's very shiny and bright. It will turn a much darker red and it will be matte. So that's when you know you can put on your gold. So here at Cologne we actually make our own room sprays with essential oils. And while my sizing is drying I'm going to make two batches or two bottles for our bathrooms. And the guest rooms have them too. So let me get cracking with that. So in total there will be about 12 drops or so, 14 drops for these two bottles. 12 drops, 14 drops of fragrance. So it's essential oils and perfume oils that we're using. Today I'm going to use Pure Eden. That's a pre-mixed melange of different scents. Rosemary and maybe not lavender. I don't know. We'll see. That's the fun part of it. You can experiment with it. Okay so we know Pure Eden is what we want. That's plenty. I think this is such a lovely scent really. And we're doing rosemary. Let's put this still a bit. Of course this is concentrated now so a bit sweet. So we're going to add a bit more rosemary to cut through it. Then we add water and for these bottles it's 200 milliliters in total. And then we add alcohol. And the alcohol is the emulsion for the oil so that the oil actually does not separate from the water. Okay and that's the room spray. Et voila. Okay so I have a little bit of Vaseline on my hand here. That is what you need to rub on this. What is this called Stuart? Well it's a type of a brush. It is a brush but yes it's a gilding brush. So this will carry the leaf gold to where you want it. And as you can see this is now it's dry. It's very lightly sticky but sticky enough. And you can see the color change. It's not as shiny anymore and it has changed in color. It has darkened. So let's start a bit. This is gold I still have from on here from a different gilding project. And sometimes you just use your fingers. That works too. Don't be overly concerned about how you do this. You do it the way you like it. There we go. Also this is a completely what's that called? A lint-free cloth because you don't want any fibers to get stuck in your gilding. Now burnishing you do later because this now needs to set after you put it in here on here. Look at that I've got another piece. So you roll this out and then we can cut it on this leather pad. This is specifically made for leaf gold because this protects it from drafts. Okay if anyone is wondering what this is. This is agate. It's a semi-precious stone. It's very smooth this tool. And I've been through all the crevices here because this makes sure that everything is nice and smooth. So the same similar is with this cloth when you go over this. I've polished the entire shelf and you can see there's always a little bit of waste going on with the flakes. But what we're doing now that's really exciting because that means we're done is putting on the patina. It's very exciting and so it does not look brand new because right now it's so shiny and it is pretty. Don't get me wrong but it goes into a 17th century dining room. So if it's supposed to fit in there it can't look brand new. So let's go with the patina. This is water-based and it's non-toxic. I like it. If you're seeing this and you're thinking oh my god that's horrible it will be wiped off. So but it will leave a layer on it that makes it look aged but not uh well aged and hideous. So there are other options of course. There's uh the bitum de judea which is a tar product I think petroleum uh which is also very popular with antique dealers. It's great great look as well uh but I have to to say it's great but it stinks and um it's a whole different technique. This is much much easier and I'm unfortunately but uh have to admit that but I'm more for oh this is lovely and it's easy. Let's do that um but having said all that and by the way I'm holding on to the bottom part of again here so that I'm I don't have to wear gloves. Now uh this is not real gold but the current gold prices it's completely cost prohibitive to do anything with real gold unless you have unlimited amounts of money then congratulations um we don't. So this is uh what the Germans called Schlagmetall means literally translated battered metals. So it's a it's a mix of different metals that looks like gold and so when you have that this these kinds of metals will um over time tarnish. What this does the the bitum sorry the the patina what this does it actually seals it all in and it will not tarnish and we had one frame picture picture frame that I did in the United States a long time ago there's no tarnishing on it it's great so but because otherwise if you use other methods you have to put a clear lacquer on top of it and it's not your run-of-the-mill lacquer it's called zapponi lacquer it's very expensive and it's yet another step that I don't have to do and I would say hurrah. Okay let's wipe this part off and because we are just we have finished with the other console table because it's a mini console however you want to call that we can have immediately the comparison it looks pretty good you don't want to wipe everything off so here in the crevices for example it's normal that it's darker so that is very nice and you can of course go a bit in it and you of course want it shiny that's not the point but it is just a hint duller and once you see this in comparison within the next minute or two it's amazing and it truly is quite a difference okay so that's all done let's sit for a minute one more time over everything so if this is not when you do this if this is not quite to your liking you can put patina on again and just to show you what's happening here I'm gonna scoop up all these gold flakes in a moment so I don't know if the camera really picks that up but you can see this is extremely shiny here and this is a bit duller because over the centuries there would have been a layer of layer of dust and grime and such things it's the top on this one that is the top on this one see I think this shows this really well how incredibly shiny the new gold is and this one since I just finished the gilding needs to dry and this yes it's shiny but it's much duller and that will work with all the other things we have in the dining room so one is with patina one is without and I really don't know if this shows up on the camera but it's quite a difference maybe it shows up in the end result anyways having said all that these are handed means they are not they're they're not identical and you can see that here at the bottom they both face inwards so that's great and I'm going to use this as an example because I'm missing about two arms otherwise to do this so if we would to put them up high which is of course possible and I talked about this then you have to pay to gild the underside as well because now you can see the shelf underneath and that's just really bad so you can save yourself the work of gilding the top but you have to gild the underside now our plan is to have them once the wall is done here so we can always park a chair here which is fantastic to have as an option now give me one minute I'll be back I promise so we just got these fantastic Delft vases now I'm a bit nervous because none of this is stable neither am I so this would be an option for us as decoration again this is 17th century 18th century everything is about symmetry and I think this looks quite nice so it would of course come out a bit more like this and we could actually even put some tulips in it for a formal dinner at the chateau well this is a Saturday and we're doing something that we normally don't do on Saturday we go to an antiques fair here in Chateauroux where last weekend we were and this is actually staged in an old convent and it's really interesting and they also do Christmas markets and other things let me turn around and show you what we're going into so that is the church former church of the convent and which is now a secular building so we're really excited our friend and antiques dealer Sylvain is there so very exciting and we're going to meet Jane and Tony so let's get going and hopefully we don't find too many expensive things if you enjoyed this video please use the like feature to let us know also don't forget to subscribe to our journey to the chateau youtube channel if you would like to see more once you subscribe you can tap the notification bell in order to ring it which will allow you to receive all notifications from our channel thank you