Dear Mike,

I have worked on frescoes in Florence and have worked as an assistant to a muralist. My feeling about your project would be to think why would you paint in fresco as a medium choice. It is an art form that stands the test of time and works best on a brick or lime based substructure. If you are going to paint in this medium and put such effort into a work, I believe you should do it right and make it to last. If you are going to paint in such an old home, make a work that meets the integrity of the surrounding craftsmenship. Scrape off the old plaster and score the old bricks. Clean the wall thuroughly and let it dry for a good amount of time. One wall in Italy we used a very thin, hollow brick tile and cemented them onto an existing wall. The hollow tiles made it hard for chemicals from the older wall to wick into the new fresco. We also included in this new foundation chunks of charred oak. The oak helped absorb any possible moisture and damaging chemicals wishing to push through to the surface of a mural.

Sincerely,

Mozart trazom34@hotmail.com