Faux Aficionado Adrienne van Dooren
Who she is: The queen of faux painting, and author of “The House That Faux Built: Transform Your Home with Paint, Plasters and Creativity”
What she does: Determined to prove that, for only a little money, the average person could use faux techniques (such as crackling and aging or sponging paint) to transform a home, Adrienne purchased a dilapidated three-bedroom 1940s colonial in a modest Arlington, Virginia neighborhood in the fall of 2005.
Why she does it: If you know what you are doing, you can spend a fraction of what you would on an expensive wood floor or granite countertop and get the same effect with paint, plaster and some useful tools,” Adrienne says.
THE HOUSE THAT FAUX BUILT
By Hope Katz Gibbs
When Adrienne van Dooren went to check out a model home a few years a she noticed some extraordinary faux painting throughout the house. But when she asked the designer who had done the work, the woman wouldn’t tell.
“It made me angry because I’m a faux painter, and it didn’t seem fair that she would not give the artist any credit,” explains Adrienne, who decided the only way to liberate faux artists was to showcase them. She also wanted to prove that, for only a little money, the average person could use faux techniques (such as crackling and aging or sponging paint) to transform a home.
With the goal of creating a how-to book, Adrienne purchased a dilapidated three-bedroom 1940s colonial in a modest Arlington, Virginia neighborhood in the fall of 2005.
Then she asked 100 of her favorite faux artists from across the country to create a masterpiece. “If you know what you are doing, you can spend a fraction of what you would on an expensive wood floor or granite countertop and get the same effect with paint, plaster and some useful tools,” Adrienne says.
Visual trickery? Perhaps, but consider the results: Artist Tania Scabock transformed the cement floor of the house’s side porch so it now looks like inlaid marble and walnut. The project has been successful. About $45,000 from house tours, book sales and other fund-raisers has been donated to Habitat for Humanity so far.
The art of creation
Here’s what she did. In the dining room, Tania Seabock of Sterling took the lead by transforming a dilapidated side porch into an elegant formal dining room. On the cement floor, she used a high-end finishing technique that transformed it into what appears to be an inlaid marble and walnut masterpiece. And a simple pine bay window, donated by Thomson Creek Windows, was faux-painted to match.
The most breathtaking part of the room, though, is a faux 7-by-11-foot ceiling mural in which Tania meticulously hand-painted scrolls, gold mosaics and a faux wood-grain trim.
“It’s not easy to paint a mural on a ceiling,” admits the painter who has been commissioned to faux paint a $30 million apartment at Trump Plaza in New York, the McLean home of the prince of the United Arab Emirates and several ceilings of the Treasury building in Washington, D.C. “But it does make me feel a bit like Michelangelo.”
It is hard to believe your eyes as you wander through the 1,500-square-foot home, for nothing is what it seems-and yet, everything is remarkably beautiful.
Sanders and bleach, for instance, helped Ann Bayer of Arlington remove cat urine stains on the living room floor so she could paint the parquet floor to look like pricey oak. In the middle of the room, Melanie Royals of San Diego used an adhesive stencil to create an intricate design resembling an ornate carpet.
In the kitchen, master faux artist Caroline Woldenberg chose a Tuscan theme and painted a wood veneer finish over the refrigerator and dishwasher to match the wood cabinets purchased at Lowe’s. These were painted and glazed to look like custom built-ins. The backsplash was then troweled to look like Italian marble, and the old cream-colored Formica countertop now has the appearance of black granite.
A highlight is the kitchen table. Bought at a yard sale for $ 10, it was transformed by Maryland artist Patti Irwin to match the detail on the embroidered drapes that hang on the windows.
Heading down the stairs into the once water-stained basement, visitors find another treat: a wine cellar featuring a “stained-glass: panel (actually acrylic on Plexiglas) by Kate Nagle. A tiny window lets in enough light to showcase a trompe l’oeil mural of a French vineyard. Against the far wall is a giant wine rack and wine-tasting bar troweled by Wanda Timmons of Warrensburg, Illinois, to look like tumbled marble.
Its tempting to sit down for a glass of cabernet at the cocktail table (which is actually a blue plastic industrial barrel fauxed by Ann Marie of Main Street Art in central Maryland, to look like a wine barrel), but first you’ll want to saunter over to the adjacent gentleman’s room.
Two brown leather recliners and a faux silk rug (donated by the Leesburg company, Oriental Rugs and More) are the only unpainted features of the room. Tania Seabock again worked her magic here, as did Julie Miles, and they applied techniques that gave the drywall the appearance of being covered with rich walnut panels and hand-embossed leather.
Along the primary staircase in the house is another eye-catching element: eloquent quotes from The Color Purple, Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby. Stencils for the pattern were donated by The Mad Stencilist of Lenexa, Kansas, and applied by Maryland artist Andra Held. All around them, Northern Virginia artist Amy Ketterman painted a breathtaking mural that reaches the length of the staircase leading to the second story.
Here we find one of the crowning jewels of the house, the master bedroom. Using a luxurious red Venedan plaster, this room transports visitors to the heart of Bombay with the help of a giant mural that covers an entire wall. Donated by four internationally acclaimed trompe l’oeil painters (Pascal Amblard, Nicola Vigini, Sean Crosby and Pierre Finkelstein) who painted it when they gathered at a salon in Europe last year, it features a magnificent sari-clad Indian woman sitting on a balcony above the city.
“If someone were to pay for a house to be fauxed like this, I estimate it would cost them more than $250,000,” says Adrienne.
Through June 15, she’s inviting all Washingtonians to come in for a tour the magical abode at 1457 North Longfellow Street in Arlington. Tickets are $20 in advance and $22 at the door, and proceeds go entirely to benefit Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans.
“Just as I was getting the project underway, Hurricane Katrina struck and I wanted to do something to help those people who were suffering,” explains Adrienne.
Also, because so many faux artists wanted to participate in the project, Adrienne launched a Bird House contest last winter, and more than 100 artists sent entries. Those intricate works will be auctioned off later this summer, and proceeds will benefit Noah’s Wish, a California-based nonprofit that rescues and shelters animals during natural disasters.
If she hadn’t accomplished enough in only 10 months, Adrienne also sent a team of faux artists into the Church of the Atonement, in Chicago, where her brother John David van Dooren is the pastor. They worked their magic on six rooms, including the rectory and chapel. The results of that restoration will also be open to visitors this summer.
For those who didn’t make the show, the book is for sale here: www.fauxhouse.com.