Fauxology: Studying the Visual Magic of Faux Finishing and Interior Design (brought to you by Garay Artisans)

Today, we continue with the second home in our Street of Dreams tour: Triana.  (To see the first home, click on Chateau d’Usse.)  Triana’s design is Art Deco flavored — though thoroughly modern.  The home has six bedrooms and all are outfitted with iPod docking stations and satellite radio — it also has five plasma televisions (with one cleverly hidden within a cabinet).  Throughout the house is a smart home system that will adjust your room temperature and home lighting, bring up video surveillance and order dinner for you.  (I wonder if we’ll even need our hands in the future…)  Triana was designed by Robb & Stucky Interiors and built by the Irvin Construction Company.

Our whole group really liked this home but our mutual favorite area was the Theatre Room.  It had an amazing sound system (which was only helped by the movie playing: Transformers) and the seating was not your normal theatre seating…it was large, lush sofas you could stretch out in.  (Sadly, none of those pictures came out well.)  It also had a beautiful wine cellar (monitored closely by security — I’m guessing they had advance notice of our arrival, LOL) and was the favorite house of some of our group. 

Here’s the Foyer:

Some of my favorite touches from the Foyer above are the cool chair (you can see it towards the middle in the pic above) and the marble stairs (lower left, above pic).

When you come up those nice marble stairs, you find this nice seating area for you and ten of your closest friends…

My mother walked into the library while I was still one room away.  She came back and told me to “contain myself”.  When I walked in, it was my complete dream room: books and a spiral staircase.  Delicious.

Some views of the top area of this library.  Aren’t those jumbo light fixtures gorgeous?

Here are separate guest rooms with nice touches: beautiful, dimensional pieces of pottery on the wall (left) and a cool ceiling fan with a ceiling that mimics the wall color (right)

Last but not least, the backyard.  So stunning it deserves two pics!

Some pictures courtesy of Street of Dreams.

Well, it has been a busy past few weeks.  In fact, I’ve been meaning to post these pics of Orlando’s Street of Dreams 2008 since our family and friends attended it not this past weekend but last weekend.  It was a fantastic afternoon — we toured each home at a nice pace and then we all headed over to Kata for fantastic sushi and Thai food. 

Street of Dreams is an annual tour of grande homes that draws about 45,000 people.  This year, three homes were showcased: Chateau D’Usse, Triana and Chica Margarita.  I will be posting pics of each home in its own little entry so that each gets a chance to shine on the Fauxology blog.  First up: Chateau d’Usse.  Chateau d’Usse is estimated to be worth about 9.25 million dollars (furnished).  I’m not sure if it was inspired by France’s Chateau d’Usse but this one was built by Hillcrest Homes and designed by CEC Interiors.  Chateau d’Usse was a favorite among many of our group.

Stepping into the home…breathtaking, no?

Love some of the cabinetry touches — different finishes, unusual shapes for doors…

A room with Venetian Plaster stripes

A girl’s room (love the corner ceiling accents) and a boy’s room (love how the clouds are taken from the walls unto the ceiling…

Two of my favorite areas: The Powder Bath with its unusual textured finish and the Guest Room with the painted cornice boards on the window.

Last but not least…the Pool!  It has a lazy river, a secret grotto, a fire pit, waterfalls, etc., etc….but my favorite area?  That hammock on the right — that’s where I’ll be with a fancy pina colada and the latest & greatest book on hand to read…or to shield my eyes from the sun while I’m napping, take your pick. 

This year the design of all the homes seemed to lean towards the more lighthearted and whimsical side of elegance.  This home was no exception, with fun touches to be found throughout – definitely a home to relax and have fun in but still be magnificent enough to show off to Jones’ next door.  If you’d like to see the homes in person, you need to hurry!  The last tour day is June 22nd…

Additional pics supplied by Street of Dreams.

In the midst of all the walls and ceilings, sometimes an area that is normally ignored becomes the center of attention.  Staircases fall under that category.  Many don’t realize that they do not have to live with a staircase they dislike — the color can be changed, the wood tones made deeper and richer or just have a little bit of metallic oomph added to the ironwork.  Here are some pics:

This is a light change.  The ironwork was installed in its original format: totally black and lacking warmth.  Our clients just wanted metallic hints added throughout the design.  It was all the change it needed.

This one is more of a medium change.  The designer thought the black was way too heavy for the home’s new stylings and so asked us to make it a lighter and warmer.  Here’s the Before:

…and After.

                                     
           

           
This staircase underwent a big change.  In the smaller Before pic, you can see that the balusters were a stark white and both the handrail and newel posts were a light pine…kinda blah.  In the After pic, we warmed up the balusters with an off-white base and color glaze, darkened the wood tone and created a newel post that was topped off by an aged gilded finish.  (Oh, the walls were glazed also…)

Hope you enjoyed the pics!  Until next time…

This is a ceiling my brother, Jason, and I recently worked on. It was a great day - we were the last trade in the house, we had awesome topics of conversation going and at the end came a ceiling our client loved. What could be better? What I thought I would do is walk you through the steps of this ceiling and show you how the two-overlay Modello was used to create this. You ready?

It started with a meeting between the decorator, Lynne Sylvester, the client and myself. Lynne wanted something to fill up this space and have the design incorporate some of the lines and colorations of the lighting fixture. She also wanted the vent to not be such an eyesore.

Lynne and I kept meeting at the Modello site and after looking at many designs, we both thought OrnCen164 was great — with a few modifications. Here is the original design — Lynne wanted the four double-scrolls between the outside scrolls taken out.

One thing I do stress is that you measure twice, then call Modello. I’m not ashamed to say that I miscalculated and had to have the design re-sized and re-cut at our expense. When we received the new size, we started laying on the first overlay. Since I’m the one taking pics, you’ll only see my brother working — but I assure you, it’s a two-person process. The first layer is extremely important because it sets the tone and direction of the entire design. We also had to make sure the large scrolls would fit perfectly on either side of that air vent (you can see the hole of the vent — we took it down to paint it so it would “disappear”).

We colored in that layer with the wall color so that the entire area looked balanced. Then, we removed the first overlay and installed the second one of the Modello. You always have to keep in mind the registration marks and making sure you’re right on point.

See how the scrolls are right at each side of the vent? Phew!

We had coloration layers and one final overglaze. A red tone is up first and will be the least seen color. It was chosen so that it worked with the incoming fabrics and furniture.

Two layers of metallic next. First Modern Masters Silver, then Platinum. Is your neck hurting yet?

After overglazing the metallic with a nice dark aging glaze, we took off the Modello. Since we were working on a knockdown ceiling, we had a lot of touch-ups (left pic). Time to bring out the tiny artist brushes to make those edges perfect! (Is your neck still hurting?)

Here are some pics in the late afternoon. The two-overlay Modellos weren’t too hard to install but did require some planning. The client’s reaction made the many steps sooo worth it.

Until next time!

Talk Faux

Well, I’ve previously touted how wonderful Talk Faux is.  Talk Faux is one of the largest faux finishing forums in…geez, I guess, the world since it is on the World Wide Web.  (I don’t like being all grandiose and spouting off the word “world-renowned” all easy-breezy but I guess if you are online and have members from various countries, you do have international presence.)  Anyhoo.  It’s a beautiful site where about 1,800 members come to talk about faux recipes, faux issues, faux ideas, ask faux questions, have a faux gallery…in other words, talk faux.  I’ve been active at the site for a bit so imagine my surprise and delight when I was asked to be a forum Moderator.  I think being a Talk Faux Moderator is like being a docent in a beautiful museum showcasing living, breathing artists.  As the docent, you guide everyone around the museum, help answer any questions, make sure everyone feels welcome and comfortable, call security on visitors who become unruly and just generally peek around all corners to make sure all is running smoothly.  I’m in good company — some of the other moderators are some seriously respected faux folk, like Dean Sickler, Kathy Carroll, Kathy Boyd, Donna Phelps and Sweden’s Hakan Engstom, to name a few.  I’m like the Junior Newbie Moderator!  So come on in to Talk Faux — it is seriously the best online faux finishing group I have encountered!  (BTW, it also has a sister site: House of Faux - check it out, too!)

May Workshop Winner and June Workshop Contest Details

I’m proud to announce that Elsa Dilone of Kissimmee, FL has won May’s Free Workshop Contest.  Congratulations!  I can’t wait to see which workshop she chooses! 

June’s contest is really easy:

E-mail a faux design question you’ve been meaning to ask (i.e, What colors are good for a dining room?, Can I glaze my 12-foot walls by myself?, What base paint do you recommend for a faux finish?) and I’ll pick the most intriguing question.  Not only will I answer it and post it on our blog’s Mailbag – it will win you a FREE class.  Be sure to use the Contact Us page at our website to send them in — I look forward to hearing from you!

Good Luck…and I hope to see you on Talk Faux (I’ll be the one called FauxGirl)!  

I would truly be bummed if I were to lose this book from my library.  I don’t remember where or when I bought it but I do know I thought it was a great idea to do a book on exterior finishes — there’s not many of those.  So, my June Book-of-the-Month is Outdoor Painting Techniques & Faux Finishes by Marina Niven and Louise Hennigs.  The authors both have decorative businesses based out of South Africa. 

Published in 2002, the book has beautiful photographs of true outdoor patinas and gives you clear and concise directions on how to achieve various looks.  The finishes are not just relegated to walls, either.  They also touch upon pottery, doors & windows, trellis work, flooring, statues and garden furniture, among others.  Some of the techniques include limewashing, cutting stencils, using pigmented plaster, distressing wood, verdigris and faux metal finishes.  I think they did a great job researching this subject and found fantastic examples of true patinas.  Here are a few pics — and this book is chock-full of them:

Those who truly enjoy having an outdoor garden or just a beautiful home exterior would benefit from the recipes and instructions found in this book.  The photographs are terrific and inspirational and you can tell the authors really took their time in perfecting and presenting their recipes.  I hope you enjoy it!

I hope everyone’s weekend was great!  I wish mine had been a bit more productive but that may be almost everyone’s gripe, right?  I keep writing to the government about a 3-day weekend but I don’t think I’m getting anywhere with them.  C’est la vie.

Well, I wanted to show you a bit of what we call Smoky Ceilings.  It’s when we apply glaze and make it darker around the perimeter (”smoking” the edges) and then lighten it up when coming towards the middle.  We’ve done quite a few of them and my brother and I finally have a system down but the first one we ever did was a doozy.  Lots of tweaking and fixing to make it a seamless flow.

This is the before pic of a groin ceiling.  At least it had been painted and not left white but it did need a bit of oomph.  I think when the ceiling saw us it said “Yes!  I get to be special now!”  (…I know, I have an overactive imagination.)  The client did not really want this area to go over-the-top, which you can easily do with a ceiling shaped like this one.  She just wanted us to put ”a nice glaze on it and that’s it”.

Well, nothing said we couldn’t start with a different base coat.  I loved the metallic color on the light fixture (a sorta champagne-silver color) and I tried out a few metallic colors from a few manufacturers but nothing seemed just right.  I spent about half an hour playing mad scientist, mixing a bit of this and a bit of that and finally had the color down perfectly.  It took three coats for opaque coverage.

Using the light fixture colorations, we mixed a reddish-brown glaze and started glazing the ceiling.  As you can see, we kept the edges darker and swooped it into the four groin edges.  The client loooooooooooooooooooooved it.

Here’s a shot from underneath where you can see the dark edges better.  Pardon the view askew and my thumb on the upper right…   

There’s more you can do with groin ceilings…i.e., add a design along the edges, add a design on each of the four quadrants, do a multi-color glaze or plaster finish…but in the end, it comes down to what is right for the space and what is right for the client.  We have some more cool ceilings and rooms coming up this week so stay tuned…