Up against a wall?

Decorating is easy - and inexpensive - when Jonathan Fong shows you how

By Diana McKeon Charkalis, Lifestyle Editor
Los Angeles Daily News
NY Times Wire Service

In designer Jonathan Fong's kitchen, the cover of a made-up magazine hangs on a wall. It's called "Jonathan," and depicts Fong and his adorable mutt, Broadway, sprawled on the cover, Oprah-style.

They're surrounded by headlines like: "Lose Weight While Redecorating" and "Easy Bouquets Your Florist Doesn't Want You to Know About." Fong, who is humble and inquisitive in person, smiles when a visitor notices it. "I made it for myself, and then I started making them for friends to inspire them. I'm visualizing my success."

So far, his tactic seems to be working - and his success growing. Fong's first decorating book, "Walls That Wow: Creative Wall Treatments Without Fancy-Schmancy Painting" (Watson Guptill; $24.95) came out this fall. He's now at work on the second in his three-book deal - this one about floral decorations. He's made numerous TV appearances to demonstrate his decorating projects, and last year he quit his job as an advertising executive to start a new career as a designer.

Not bad for a guy who just a couple of years ago couldn't use a power screwdriver.

In terms of being handy, Fong admits that on a scale of 1 to 10, "I was a 1. That's why I was inspired to write the first book. I knew other people were in the same situation, but they also wanted cool things in their home and didn't want to spend a lot of money."

Fong's premise was simple. "There are certain things I can do: I can cut, I can tape, I can staple, and I can glue."

Using those skills, he began by tackling the walls in his Santa Monica apartment. He experimented with applying a variety of different materials, including everything from colorful string to vinyl lettering and fabric. And the results range in style from playful whimsy to shiny sophistication. Plus, most cost him under $200.

"Walls are great because they're like the largest canvas you have to work with in your home. And you can change the look of your house by changing a wall. If you change your furniture, it can cost thousands; change a wall and it costs a lot less."

Fong wasn't always this driven to decorate. For six of the 12 years he lived in his apartment, the walls were all white. But one day, that "minimalist" approach stopped working. The walls got dingy and he got bored.

"My personality was more fun than that, so I wanted to add more to my walls."

It all started in his media room with aluminum roof flashing purchased at Home Depot. He cut the stuff - basically a roll of aluminum used to waterproof homes - into squares and created a checkerboard pattern on the wall.

"I'm afraid of messing up a whole wall, but this you can just do one square at a time. And it shines up really well with WD-40."

Next, he experimented with paint - stamping letters and designs on the walls of his living room. In his bedroom, he chose textiles. He covered foam squares in four different luxurious, white fabrics, stapling them in the back. Then he needed a way to attach them to the wall so that they could be rearranged or removed for vacuuming.

"That's when I discovered the joy of Velcro. My confidence level grew with each step. After I did this wall it hit me that there's no limit to what you can do. I can try things and then just take them off if I don't like them."

His first big TV appearance came on the heels of this design, when he demonstrated the technique on HGTV's "Kitty Bartholemew: You're Home."

At the same time, one of the show's producers suggested he put up a Web site as a reference for viewers. It now receives about 15,000 hits a week, and he regularly corresponds with advice-seeking fans from around the globe.

"When the show aired, that's when my life changed. People just came to my Web site assuming I was a designer. Up to that point it was always for fun. I was just doing it for myself."

Bartholemew says she bonded with Fong immediately because they share an insatiable curiosity for how things work. That, combined with a fearlessness and knack for innovation, made his wall treatments stand out.

"I think his work is very, very, fresh," she says. "And his naivete is so endearing, because he has absolutely no idea how talented he is."

After she saw his bedroom walls, she also offered Fong a challenge - to revamp his kitchen, which was then the only all-white room left in the house.

He answered her call by decorating the space with Andy Warhol pop-art posters purchased at 40 percent off from the Museum of Contemporary Art gift shop. Inspired by their design, but clueless as to how to use them, he ended up soaking the posters in water and then applying them to cabinets coated in Elmer's glue in a technique known as decoupage. This was all done on the advice of Durwin Rice, the author of "New Decoupage," who Fong found online.

"I researched it on the Internet. Decoupage wasn't even in my vocabulary yet," he says.

More TV appearances followed and he also began helping other people with their homes. One of his biggest "aha!" moments came when a client wanted something really different in his bathroom. "I thought to myself - how hard can it be to decoupage a toilet?. So I brought one home and I did it in my living room. Once you've decoupaged a toilet, you know you can decorate anything."

These days, Fong is hard at work writing his next book, which will be published in fall 2006. And he continues to champion those with big design dreams but few skills.

"It makes me feel so good when I get e-mails from people and they say they were always so afraid to decorate, but now they're not anymore. I'd like to inspire a lot more people."