Brilliant Whitewash.

Scientific American 27, 24.3.1849

Many have heard of the brilliant stucco whitewash on the east end of the President's house at Washington. The following is a receipt, for making it, as gleaned from the National Intelligencer, with some additional improvements learned by experiment:

Take a half bushel of nice unslacked lime, slake it with boiling water and cover it during the process to keep in the steam. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve or strainer, and add to it a peck of clean salt, previously well dissolved in warm water: three pounds ground rice, boiled to thin paste, and stirred in boiling hot; half a pound of powdered Spanish whiting, and a pound of clean glue, which has been previously dissolved by first soaking it well, and then hanging it over a close fire in a small kettle within a large one filled with water. Add five gallons of hot water to the whole mixture; stir it well and let it stand a few days covered from the dirt. It should be put on right hot; for this purpose, it can be kept in a kettle on a portable furnace. It is said that about one pint of this mixture will cover square yard upon the outside of a house if properly applied.

Brushes more or less small may be used according to the neatness of the job required. - It answers as well as oil paint for wood, brick, or stone, and is cheaper. It retains its brillianly for many years. There is nothing of the kind, that will compare with it, either for inside or out side walls.

Spanish-brown stirred in will make red or pink more or less deep according to the quantity. A delicate tinge of this is very pretty for inside walls. Finely pulverised common clay, well mixed with Spanish-brown before it is stir[r]ed into the ixture, makes a lilac color, very suitable for the outside of the buildings. Lamp-black and Spanish-brown mixed together make a reddish stone color. Yellow ochre stirred in makes a yellow wash; but chrome goes farther, and makes a color generally esteemed prettier. In all these cases, the darkness of the shade of course is determined by the quantity of coloring used.

When walls have been badly smoked, and you wish to have them a clean white, it will do to squeeze indigo plentifully through a bag into the water you use, before it is stirred in the whole mixture.

If a larger quantity than five gallons is wanted the same proportion should be observed.

[The above receipt we have noticed before (last year) but as the season is approaching when walls, fences, &c., will look and feel all the better of a new coat, we must recommend some of its features to the attention of housewives and husbands. But first we must say, that those who use hot lime will find that it soon destroys brushes. The rice paste is the best that can be used. Don't use much glue, as it is apt to make the lime scale off. No person need expect any lime wash to be as good as oil paint - that is all nonsense. There are but few coloring matters that look well mixed with lime. Chrome certainly does not. It loses its yellow color and becomes a dirty orange. A litter of the sulphate of iron, mixed with lime, makes a very good cream color - the iron scales around a blacksmith's forge answer the same purpose. We prefer to use the lime without any coloring matter in it except a little indigo. Those who use whiting for the ceilings of papered rooms whould mix a little indigo with it.