Project of the Month: A Waterless Faux Koi Pond
We’d like to introduce our new project of the month, along with highlighting Adrienne Stormer from Stormer Decorative Finishes and Chris Gomez from Quality Touch Home Services. Adrienne Stormer has been working on projects with Dorene Gomez Interiors for over 15 years. You may have seen our clients unique and innovative waterless faux koi pond she helped create for us on our social media over the last few weeks. Adrienne is our go to gal for any wall or ceiling painting needs. She works with venetian plasters, creates mural paintings, French tone on tone grisaille’s, faux finishing, and fine art. She truly is an outstanding and one-of-a-kind artist.
Chris Gomez’s technical know-how got the ball rolling for our waterless faux koi pond project. He can complete a range of repairs and home improvement jobs. From hanging artwork and mounting tv’s, to furniture assembly, painting, along with staining and touching up your furniture. Chris really is an amazing handyman. Did you say odd jobs? He can take your to-do list and make it disappear.
Our most recent project that Adrienne and Chris completed was a unique waterless faux koi pond. A creative and unique project that was designed by Dorene Gomez, owner of Dorene Gomez Interiors. The project started with Chris Gomez laying and sloping the curved concrete pad, which was critical to keep all standing water off the surface at all times. The strength properties of the concrete mixture would determine its performance for our artist Adrienne to start her work. Before the painting of the pond was started, many materials had to be placed to give the artist a sense of its true natural surroundings. Just as a true koi pond needs plants to add splendor and life, the waterless pond would have it too. In order to display one of the mermaid statues, Chris added perfectly placed rocks and tiers of broken slate to create a ledge for the statue to sit on. Adrienne was then ready to start her magic.
The painting process started by Adrienne using a concrete etching compound to roughen the surfaces and open the pores of the concrete. This ensures strong adhesion of the final paint. Two concrete stains were added, and the pond was ready for its mural to be painted. Adrienne used porch and patio paint from Kelly Moore to create the details of the water, rocks, and koi fish. In order to give the mural a feeling of dimension, she used a variety of translucent layers to give the effect of rippling water. If you look closely, the koi actually look like they are swimming to the bottom and top surface of the pond. A strong knowledge of color theory is needed to pick the right colors in order to make the painting look realistic. After the painting was completed, Chris added more plants and sand to enhance the beach entrance of the pond. We still can’t believe it’s only concrete!
Follow this link to our Instagram to see the progress posts:
https://www.instagram.com/dorene_gomez_interiors/
or click on this link to watch our Instagram story highlight of the full project from beginning to end: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17927335381711971/
Here are the before and after photos of the waterless faux koi pond:
Check out Adrienne Stormer on Instagram and Facebook:
Check out Chris Gomez on Instagram:
