Wall To Wall -- This Decorative Painter Turned His Apartment Into A Portfolio

RICHARD S. HEYZA / SEATTLE TIMES: ABOVE - WEIGEL PAINTED FAKE WAINSCOTING AND CROWN MOLDING TO GIVE THE LIVING ROOM ARCHITECTURAL INTEREST. THE SCREEN ($15) AND LAMP ($10) ARE YARD-SALE FINDS, AND THE WALL HANGING CAME FROM A THRIFT SHOP.

RICHARD S. HEYZA / SEATTLE TIMES: BELOW - A GILDED TV IS FESTOONED WITH GOLD LEAVES AND SET ATOP A FAUX MARBLE COLUMN. WEIGEL USED PAINT STRIPPER ON THE WAINSCOTING TO SIMULATE WATER DAMAGE.

RICHARD S. HEYZA / SEATTLE TIMES: LEFT - WEIGEL COVERED HIS FOYER WALLS IN PAINTED SANDSTONE AND ADDED A MOCK STAINED-GLASS WINDOW TO THE FRONT DOOR.

RICHARD S. HEYZA / SEATTLE TIMES: ABOVE - A GOLD PEN WAS USED TO DECORATE THE WALLS AND WOODWORK IN WEIGEL'S BEDROOM, FORMERLY THE DINING ROOM. THE ARTIST MARBLEIZED THE CEILING BEAMS AND DRAPED A TABLECLOTH OVER THE WINDOW AT LEFT. THE TABLE BENEATH IT WAS PURCHASED OUT OF THE BACK OF A STATION WAGON. THE BEDSPREAD IS A VELVET WALL HANGING.

Thomas Weigel makes his living applying decorative finishes to floors, ceilings, walls and furnishings. Using the techniques he's developed over the past seven years, the 34-year-old ``interior artist'' can change a wood mantel into marble or turn plywood doors into mahogany.

At the end of the day, however, Weigel doesn't trade his paintbrush for a remote control. Instead, he turns his singular talents to the one-bedroom apartment he calls home.

In the past six months, Weigel has transformed the all-white interior of his Capitol Hill residence into a showroom of faux finishes. There's hardly a surface in the place that hasn't been daubed, ragged, glazed or gilded. Even the furniture has fallen victim to Weigel's frenzied brushwork.

``White walls are like a blank canvas to me,'' says the artist, explaining his elaborately adorned surroundings.

Although the work he does for clients tends to be elegant and formal, his own home is anything but. Unplanned and guided solely by instinct, Weigel's ultimate creation resembles nothing so much as a Moroccan fantasy sequence out of some Technicolor epic from the '50s.

``I wanted to create something very spiritual and serene and ancient,'' he says. With his landlord's blessing, Weigel started by ragging (applying paint with a rag, not a brush) the living-room walls with ochre paint. By alternating between shiny and matte coatings, he gave the surface added depth and a sense of having achieved its patina over time. Daubs of blue, red and purple pick up the color of the room's upholstery. Where there was no architectural detailing, Weigel added his own, painting blue-green paneled wainscoting around the perimeter of the room and highlighting the treatment with bands of copper paint and rust-colored faux marble.

After completing the wainscoting, Weigel went back and erased some of his work with paint stripper, leaving behind white patches that give the appearance of water damage or lime deposits. ``I like to make things look old,'' he says. ``I don't like things to look brand spanking new - or perfect.''

Weigel often sands down something after he paints it, or rubs a little red paint over an area he's just painted gold, in order to make it look like the gilding has worn away over time. It's layering like this, and the almost-undetectable shadows and borders Weigel places between finishes, that give his work a distinctive, three-dimensional quality.

Billowing clouds dance across the living-room ceiling, their undersides dappled with rays of sunrise yellow. Originally, Weigel wanted to make them storm clouds, but reconsidered after taking Seattle's overcast skies into account. The room's exotic, Moroccan-style windows were made by cutting ogee arches out of cardboard, taping them to the windowpanes, and painting the cardboard and tape gold.

Weigel applied blue-green paint to the door and window trims and then covered that with a Moroccan design drawn in gold marker. Brass chains from the hardware store were hung with bells and draped inside the archway separating the living room from the dining room, which Weigel uses as a bedroom. The walls here are painted a streaky pale yellow and topped with a diamond-shaped grid drawn in gold marker. The corners of the room are festooned with dangling garlands of painted greenery.

The beamed ceiling above is lined with rust faux marble, echoing the diamond-patterned cornice Weigel painted in the living room. Muted light filters through what appears to be a rosette window. The effect is produced by a jigsaw-cut piece of plywood that Weigel salvaged out of a neighbor's yard, stuck inside the window frame and draped with an embroidered tablecloth he bought for $10.

Weigel painted a stained-glass window in the top half of the apartment's front door and covered the hallway walls with painted blocks of sandstone inspired by the exterior of the Seattle Art Museum in Volunteer Park. Then he covered the hallway doors with a wood-grain finish to make them seem less imposing in the narrow space.

Although Weigel figures he's poured about $18,000 worth of decorative painting into his apartment, his out-of-pocket expenses for

both the walls and furnishings total just $1,200.

``It's not necessary to live in a garret if you don't have a lot of money,'' says Weigel. Except for an eight-piece set of wicker furniture he bought for $500 at Fred Meyer, Weigel relied almost entirely on yard-sale discoveries, found objects and gifts from friends to furnish his home.

One of Weigel's favorite pieces, the coffee table, was lifted from an alley dumpster. He painted it gold, blue and red, covered it with a collage of magazine photos, and placed a sheet of glass on top. The sofa behind it is upholstered with fabric found at a secondhand store and embellished with pillows picked up at garage sales. Weigel paid $15 for the standing screen in the corner, which he painted to match the room and illuminated with an orange-and-blue enameled lamp he bought for $10 at a garage sale.

``If you have something that's pretty ugly, rather than just discard it, you can camouflage it or paint it - embellish it in a way that it becomes an entirely different piece,'' Weigel says.

The artist's first brush (so to speak) with decorative painting occurred in 1983, when he was working as a waiter and house painter in New York. An acquaintance asked Weigel to help him paint the ceiling in an Upper West Side apartment. ``I asked him how much he was charging for this ceiling. I think it was something like $3,000. And I thought, `Wow, I'm in the wrong business.' ''

Weigel ventured out on his own, eventually returning to his native Pennsylvania and inventing his own painting techniques as he practiced his craft. A chance visit to Seattle led to his move here last year.

Weigel uses his apartment as a portfolio, to show clients the different kinds of finishes he does. Of course, he cautions visitors that he would never attempt the same kind of look in a customer's home. ``I take my work seriously,'' he says, ``but the apartment is definitely tongue-in-cheek.''

SEATTLE WRITER FRED ALBERT REPORTS REGULARLY ON HOME DESIGN FOR PACIFIC, AND IS CO-AUTHOR OF ``AMERICAN DESIGN: THE NORTHWEST,'' PUBLISHED BY BANTAM. RICHARD S. HEYZA IS A SEATTLE TIMES STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER.