The Historic Mercer Building in downtown Prosser, WA was built in 1909 and is still owned by the great-granddaughter of the original builder. The upstairs rooms were recently renovated into a series of guest suites and apartments and in order to bring the building to code an elevator was added. To bring interest to the lower hallway elevator access a chalkboard style mural depicting the local area wine AVA's* was commissioned.
*AVA stands for American Viticultural Area and defines a distinct wine growing region
Due to the narrowness of the hallway a projector could not be used so a chalk grid was created to aid in the transfer of the design, which needed to be fairly accurate to represent the locations depicted.
White paint was brushed on in an outline effect and colored paint was 'rubbed' onto the AVA's to create distinctions. Freehand painting of the lettering, locations, wine varietals and agricultural products add fun features around the map.