Lists!

I love lists.  I have about a thousand of them, each detailing a loooong list of things I won't ever get around to, either because I can't afford to, I've changed my mind since I jotted down an idea, or I spend 99% of my time at home doing exactly what I've been doing all week this week: sitting on my ass playing video games.

(In my own defense, it's because my PoS2, which stopped working on me about two months ago, is magically working again.  I'm celebrating.)

I may or may not get off my butt and DO something tonight. In the meantime, here are some more lists:

5 Decorating Trends I'm Sick of Already

1. Fur (or faux fur) bedding.  Fur is evil. End of story.  It's also hot, and ugly, no matter how you slice it. 
2. Animal skin rugs.  WHY, everyone, why?  
3. Those little ceramic Chinoiserie stools you see everywhere these days (Target has an affordable version for $65, if you really, really need one).   I've never really loved those; and I'm tired of seeing them on every. single. blog. 
4. Wallpaper.  I've seen some nice ones, but honestly, just because it's popular again doesn't mean it's any less a pain in the ass to remove in ten years, or any less likely to be seen as dated and fugly in the future.  Remember the flowered walls in grandma's kitchen that you joke about when talking about decor to your friends?  Your kids are going to be talking about your house that way one day. 
5. Mirrored furniture.  Breakable, and always, always covered with fingerprints and weird smudges from pets and kids and who knows whatall.  Just no. 

5 Things Spell-Checker Thinks I Meant To Type Instead of "Chinoiserie"

1. Trichinosis
2. Chimera
3. Miniseries
4. Echinoderm
5. Chiffonier

Hee.

5 Decor Trends I'm Really, Really Loving and Wish I Could Have In My House

1. Wallpaper-like painted wall motifs and/or stencils...done in pearlescent glaze for a subtle, light-catching effect.
2. Blue + brown.  Lots of folks say it's old, tired, used - but I adore the color combination, and will have it in my home as much as I can.  (Disclaimer:  where brown = wood, that is.  Except for my couch, which is soon to be covered in brown microfiber faux suede). 
3. Big fluffy white sheer curtains over windows flooded with sunlight.  I'm SO happy this is "back."  
4. Painted/stenciled wood flooring.  My floors are laminate picture-of-wood; but if I had, say, an old farmhouse with aged wood floors beyond refinishing, I would TOTALLY paint them. 
5. Pink.  SIKE!  I fucking hate pink. 

 5 Things On My Radar This Week That May Or May Not Actually Get Done

1. Starting on the trim painting in my living room, in preparation for The Big Paint Job (I have a 3" band of white paint all around the top of my walls and the edge of my ceilings, a kind of painted "crown molding".  It doesn't fool anyone, but it's a decent look.  I'm planning on expanding it and trimming it out with real molding). 
2. Starting on the mural I plan to do on an accent wall in the living room.  I know, I know, accent walls are "out" - this wall will look just like all the others when I'm done, just with a hint of maybe something was painted underneath it once upon a time.  It'll make sense when you see the "after" picture in a few weeks. 
3. An actual painting.  Like, artwork and stuff.  If it comes off the way I want it to, I'll probably do a large version to hang over my fireplace.  
4. Priming the small hallway between my living room and bedroom.  It's a gorgeous deep eggplant color that would look just awesome in a spooky old Victorian, but while it's been fun, it goes with *nothing*.  Plus I have a faboo idea for in there.  
5. Weeding the vegetable gardens in my backyard, which has exactly squat to do with decorating, since my backyard has no "outdoor room" or anything nifty - it's basically a collection of weeds - but I'm sick of looking at it, and it HAS to be done. 

So...that was pointless.  Ta!

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I can't imagine...

"I can't imagine somebody decorating my house. 

It would be like someone dressing me every morning, telling me what to wear."  

~ Anon.

This quote makes me happy.  :)

This quote, plus all the design/decor blog-perusing I do all day long in my free time, makes me think...

 

I Can't Imagine: 

• Someone else decorating my house 
  
• Not changing my mind about my decor whenever the hell I please, or leaving something for more than a year.
• my house without fifty-frazillion houseplants perched and hanging all over the place
• living somewhere without HUGE windows
• not being able to open the windows on cool, rainy days
• creating space in my house not inspired by  the way I want to feel while I'm in it
• building a decor that doesn't include at least one altar or household shrine
• decorating for a living, lol (many people tell me I should, but, the last thing I ever want is for this beloved hobby to become just a job.  Also, non-friend clients are mostly a-holes). 
• pink, anywhere in my house. Or yellow.  Except in flower form, and cat noses. 
• that I'll ever be "done" with anything

What about you?

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Sadface.

No sofa fabric for me this month, sale or no sale.  Stupid money. :( 
I am, however, in the next six months, going to be winning:

• $5K shopping spree from Target 
• $5K shopping spree from Home Depot 
• $10K World Market/HGTV "Antonio Treatment" sweepstakes 

;)

*    *    *    *    * 

OTOH, I'm ready to get going on the paint job in the living room.  I hope I have enough paint left to do what I want to do - I'll take a look at it all this week, and hopefully get painting over the weekend.

And I'm feeling good about my house, having received a few shining compliments this week from friends.  One woman recently told me that my house is exciting - everywhere you look, there's layer upon layer, and little surprises hidden behind things, and that it's fun to just sit and look around, discovering things that don't show on first look.  Yay!  Best compliment ever. :)

I've also recently realized that I have too much freaking furniture!  I think that's the first time in my entire life I've ever caught myself saying that!  I've currently got that desk I was talking about posted on craigslist;  there's a set of nesting tables and a pair of old P-Barn end tables that I think I'm going to post tonight.  Both sets of tables I purchased on the cheap (garage sales) about ten years ago, and have been carting around since, and I'm kind of tired of the style.  They're lovely - nice wood tops and metal legs - but that's just not the style I'm into anymore.

(It might surprise you to know that ten years ago I was VERY into everything modern and contemporary, but with a softer, natural feel - lots of simple shapes and angles, metal accents, warm wood and plants.  Kind of greenhouse-y. But ME?  MODERN?  I know, right?)

So, I'm hoping to pick up some cash this week on craigslist;  and meanwhile, there are a couple of cute side tables taking up floor space in my living room that will become nightstands as soon as the old P-Barn end tables are out of the bedroom.  I love my layers, but there can  be too many, you know?

So here's to simplifying, and shedding unneeded extras.  And here's to that being FREE.  :)

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Be Careful What You Wish For?!

So, they got me a new scanner at work to replace the POS I had before, right? 

The new one won't scan my pencil sketches.  I mean, it will, but the image comes out harsh in some places, faded in others, and it just looks AWFUL.   I suppose I'll have to go back to trying to photograph the drawings with my fickle camera. 

So, no living room accent wall mural sketch for you today, sorry.   :(


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Wildebeests: Coffee Table

Promised you this yesterday:  the coffee table that I "made" (not really) for my living room:

Around the time I decided not to use my old table anymore (it was enormous, because I'd had an enormous sofa, but I was down-sizing all my furniture a piece at a time), one of my neighbors had a garage sale, but for some reason, nobody bought his old coffee table...

...which was understandable.  I mean, look at it.  BUH.  It was missing the drawer on the front, and the finish was horribly marred and scratched.  There was kiddie graffiti all over it, gum stuck underneath it, and places where the wood had been cut into purposely with a fork some strange sort of child's furni-torture device; and the stain...I believe this particular color is Minwax's "Agent Orange."   I caught up with my neighbor after the garage sale, and he said, "No, please, it's yours if you want it.  Just get it out of my driveway, I hate this thing."

Free furniture to refinish?  Brilliant!  

So the first task was to disassemble the whole thing, and strip down the parts to the bare wood so it could be completely re-stained from the ground up.  I split the top and cut a foot of wood out of the center(and the end aprons) to make the table narrower:  24x42" instead of a nearly-square 36x42".

Here you can see the various stages of refinishing the piece:  the first leg is in the middle of being sanded down - most of it is still the original orange-y "oak" color.  After the bare wood was smoothed and cleaned, I hit it with two coats of Minwax's "Bombay Mahogany", a very deep browny-red (second and third leg in the picture).  Over that went a coat of "Jacobean" (a deep neutral brown, one of my favorite stains), and then about fifty million coats of clear "Polycrylic" to give the piece a deep, deep shine.

On the table's surface, after the Mahogany but before the Jacobean, I stenciled a design that I adapted from a wallpaper motif that I saw online, with plain old 99-cent acrylic craft paints.  The Jacobean coat went over that, and various random rubbings and wipings occurred, to give the painted motif an aged, halfway-worn-off look.  I wanted the piece to look old, worn, faded - but well cared for...

And I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.  It was a pain in the BUTT trying to get the stain to do what I wanted to over the paint - but a fun pain in the butt, if that makes any sense.  The Mahogany on the top of the table came out lighter than on the legs, so the top ended up getting another coat of that before the Jacobean went on.   I went over it with the aforementioned fifty bajillion coats of Polycrylic, and then attached a  bead trim to the edges of the apron, and slider-feet to the legs to keep it from marring the floors.

Tr-drrr!

About a year and a half after I finished this, I was given a pair of wonderful, fuzzy, black kittens, who, it turns out, LOVE BEADS LIKE WHOA.  I have to staple them back on about once a month, lol.  Whatever.  :)  It remains one of my very favorites of the pieces I've refinished and/or built.

Laura's Living Room Gets Colorful

Once upon a time, this was my dream:
Clean, simple, comfortable.  Mainly monochromatic, but deep and rich with varied textures and deep cushions to sink into with a book and a mug of [spiked!] coffee.

But as much as I loved - still love - looking at pictures of rooms like this, I found myself bored with the reality very quickly.  It's restful...but a little too restful.  It's simple...but a little too simple.  More and more, I find myself wanting color - bright and shiny, deep and dark, glittering and bejeweled COLOR.

 <- http://www.housetohome.co.uk

I've been adding and replacing little things here and there over the last couple of years.  I'm keeping the foundations of the room as it has been:  sand-colored walls, dark wood floors, dark wood furniture.  I'm going to be re-covering my new sofa (Ikea's Ektorp) in July, and bringing in a lot of new color via fabrics, throw pillows and blankets, floor cushions, etc. 

Here's an example of the color scheme I'm leaning towards at the moment (subject to change for no reason and with no notice, because it's me):

(fabric photos/color examples  from Fabric.comfabric.com, JoAnnFabrics.com and FabricResource.com) 

The body of the sofa will very soon be covered with the brown microfiber faux-suede that you see in the background above;  cushions to be done in a similar fabric, same color, but I'm hoping to find a pretty patterned fabric to contrast in feel.  Ikea has a pair of fairly heavy matelassé drapes that I think might do nicely.  I stopped at Interior Fabrics yesterday on my way home to scout materials that might be on super-awesome-sale during their July 4th event, and found exactly the microfiber I was looking for, for $10/yard.  If that'll go down to 30% off (here's hoping), it'll be the same price as similar stuff at my local JoAnn's when it's half-off, but better quality and a nicer shade of brown.    

I plan to create toss pillows and lap blankets out of various velvets and brocades from JoAnn's, in primarily teals and browns, but with some bright magenta and pimpin'-purple accents (the glasses and lantern in the picture above).   The fabric samples above are pretty much color ideas only; I have no idea what exact fabrics I'll end up going with.

In addition to re-covering and dressing up the Ektorp sofa with new fabrics, I'm planning to replace the plastic feet that came with the sofa with turned wooden bun feet to tie the piece in with other footed pieces in the room;  they'll be a little taller than the original feet, too, for a leaner look and more negative visual space under the sofa. I'm also thinking of accenting the bottom edge with an interesting little trim, for a bit of bling and some cat toys movement; though I'm not sure what kind yet.

Here's the Ektorp with the plain slipcover that Ikea wants you to buy (I didn't.  Mine's completely uncovered, and protected by old blankets. Ewww).  The brown chair in the lower left corner is World Market's Ravenna chair - this is more or less what the sofa will look like when I'm done with it.

I do love me some World Market.  Not much of my current furniture collection actually came from World Market; but there's a definite World Market-y flair to most of it, and a bit of an Indian feel in some places as well, which is something I'm trying to learn to cultivate without going overboard and theme-y.  It's all fairly eclectic, though the pieces are tied together by color:  I've done almost all of it in the same or very similar stains (a couple of pieces are a touch darker or lighter or redder), which picks up on colors in the flooring.

It all sounds a bit dark and heavy, but the effect is broken up by lots of natural light from large windows, lots of shiny/sparkly metal and glass bits and mirrors to move light around the space,  and light sand-colored walls which form a great backdrop for the color scheme I'm working into the room.

 I do need to do something about the lighting in there, though - so far all I've got going for me is windows during the day, and a single ceiling-fan light at night.  It's not completely terrible, but I'd really love to have some pretty pendants and lantern-y table lamps in the main seating area. .

I'm very much pro-ceiling fan, in case you were wondering.  It's Texas up in here, which = HOT.

Mine looks almost exactly like this one, but with four small lights instead of a single large globe in the center. 

My coffee table, which I'll feature on a Wildebeest post at some point in the near future, which I created in 2008 to serve as a foundation and inspiration piece for the entire room.

The standing screen I mentioned yesterday, which I'm bringing into the room to help divide the space and add sparkle and color;  and which matches the sheer curtain over the doorway from the main hall, and the tufted chair pad that I made for my desk chair yesterday.

First step, though:  sofa fabric.  More news as the situation develops. 

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Photographic Succes!

I have conquered the stupid camera battery!  YUSS!

Here's the chair pad I made using the leftover "Sarita" curtain panel from Ikea.

An interestingly-lit shot of part of my office area in the living room. 

And a quick shot of the sari quilt that my friend Nadia gave to me over the weekend.  Isn't it GORGEOUS?!  I'm almost afraid to touch it.  And I waaaaant it on my bed.  Maybe I could just wrap all the cats in bubble wrap, and tape the dogs' mouths closed...

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Ikea Finds + Old Curtain Panels + Past Wildebeests

 

Ye olde home office got a a couple of shiny new touches this week, starting Sunday when The Boyfriend and I happened into a black Kaustby ladder-back dining chair in Ikea's as-is section for $20.  It'd been a floor model;  one of the rungs in the back needs to be tightened a tiny bit, but it's in great shape otherwise.

I've always loved these dining chair pads from World Market, and had a bit of a sheer curtain in a lovely teal color (Ikea's Sarita) leftover from an old project (below), so I made one for the Kaustby. 


And now my little corner office at home is just a bit prettier.  :)

Bit of A Wildebeest

I don't have pictures of the chair pad for you at the moment, but I can show you the fabric I used.  Once upon a time, a friend gave me this fabric-panel screen - her mother, actually, had this sitting around in a closet somewhere and said, "Give this to Laura, maybe she can do something with it."   Which: hell yeah! 

I replaced the curved bits at the top with straight bits, finished the repair job that someone had started on the top bar in the center, removed the stretch-lace (huh?!), and stripped down and re-stained the whole thing.  

Et voila!  

 

This is the teal Sarita curtain panel fabric from Ikea - the stuff I used on my chair pad.  The second panel of this pair of curtains is still a curtain: it hangs in the doorway that leads from my entry hall into my main living area.  I'd really love to place this screen in the living room to bounce more of this wonderful, sparkly color around the room...I just haven't figured out where yet.  

 

(It occurred to me recently that I may have too much furniture, and that I could do more with the room if I'd get rid of some stuff.  As much as I go to Goodwill with my knick-knacks and clothes, I've never actually gotten rid of furniture pieces.  I think, in fact, that me doing that may actually be one of the 66 seals).  

 Anyhoo, there you have it.  Hm...I think as soon as I can get a decent picture of the chair cushion, I'll send it and the screen to Ikea-Hacker. 



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Random Monday Afternoon Post

1.   I'm really hoping to have pics for you tomorrow, camera issues or not.  I just have to remember to take some tonight when I get home, before I lose the light.

2.   Came across my new favorite word today:  "designerati" - TM Decorno, who alas, is no longer writing her blog, but, happily, is still guesting at a couple of other design blogs from time to time.  I spend a LOT of time reading design blogs online while I should be working,   and, to answer the question that I've been asked a few times in person (but not here): NO, I am not one of the online "designerati."  I adore paging through design blogs, but I am not remotely inspired to become one of the people I read. This blog is for my projects, my house, maybe sometimes my gardens - but I'm not here to join an online world or become internet-famous.  I just like to blog, and feel like showing off.  I may link off-site sometimes when I find cool things out there, but I have no plans to create a "design blog" that consists mainly of pictures of other people's work.  I'm not entirely on board with that idea...though it doesn't keep me from looking at re-posted re-posted pictures elsewhere. Heh.

Edited to add:  that's not meant to sound all judgemental.  It's just not what *I* want to do, is all.  No offense to the online designerati intended.  :)
 

3.   The less-fun part of decorating:  maintenance.  *UGH*  Do not want.  What's hanging over my head right now that I'd rather not be doing?  Sprucing up the baseboards in the dining room, for one thing.  I did the entire rest of the house last summer, but somehow I forgot to do the dining room, and it looks that much more horrible next to the rest of the house where all the baseboards have been scrubbed, re-caulked, and re-painted.  It'd take me like an hour if I'd just get off my ass and do it...but I probably won't.  Bleh.


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- 1 for camera, + 5 for Sari quilt!

Well, it seems my camera battery is pretty much out of commission for the forseeable future.  It won't hold a charge for more than a few minutes - not even long enough to take a picture and then get it onto the computer before the battery dies.  Sigh. Luckily, a new one's only about $15, so I'll get one on payday.  ...I just hope the battery is actually the problem.  Everything else seems to work fine, so, here's hoping.  

Add to this the fact that I have about three hours during the day when there's enough natural light in the house to get nice pictures for you, during which I was working and the house was torn apart yesterday, I have no shots of anything I did over the weekend.  So you don't get to see:

1. The little semi-shrine for Ganesh I created in the living room with a little statue I recently got in a raffle, and a side table I painted yesterday. 
2. Any of the "new" houseplants I did yesterday - same plants, actually, but some in new pots, some in freshly painted pots, and most in new places in the house. Or...
3. An astounding, breathtaking gift from a friend which came completely by surprise yesterday:   a queen-sized silk quilt made of sari borders patched together, handmade for my friend in India many years ago while she was there, by a local shop.  This she gave to me yesterday, simply because (a) she wasn't using it anymore and (b) she knows I adore Indian textiles.  I think I'm actually in shock.  It's exactly what I've always wanted on my bed; but with eight four-legged companions, two of which enjoy fucking up fabrics, there's no WAY I'm using it as a bedspread.  I think I'll find a way to mount it on a wall as an art piece.  Have I mentioned, by the way, how much I love tapestries and fabric art on the wall?  <3

So:  camera battery on payday.  Until then...we'll see what happens.  Hopefully that week I'll also find out that I've won the HGTV/World Market Antonio Treatment sweepstakes and have a $10,000 gift card to my favorite store.  :o)


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Furniture Restoration FAIL!

I'm trying to sell a piece of furniture on craigslist this week, and I thought I'd talk about it here.  Record it for posterity, as it were.

It sounded great at the time:  an Art Deco-style dresser/vanity from the 30s, complete with mirror and hardware to attach.  The finish had been "updated", but it still had all the original hardware and woodwork.  And it was free - a gift from a family friend.

I love refinishing and restoring old pieces - that's actually how I started out, when I was in my early twenties.  So much history in old furniture, so many stories to tell!  Repaired bits, layers of old finishes, gorgeous wood grain hidden under a grubby patina, children's graffiti, cat scratches and dog chews - this one had burn marks in the back, and the original manufacturer's mark!  It'd also been painted several times through its life...obviously.  I couldn't wait to strip it down and reveal the wood underneath, and put the *perfect* stain on it.

But the various paint jobs it'd received over the years turned out to be a huge problem: as I tried to remove the paint layers, I found that only once had the piece been stripped or scraped or prepared in any way prior to painting - it'd mostly just been covered over and over, and was all full of bumps and smears, bubbles in the finish, hairs and brush bristles painted into the finish!

Most recently, someone had lacquered the CRAP out of the piece- and I mean really lacquered, with layers and layers and sanding and poly-coats and the whole nine yards, not just the "looks like lacquer" spray paint or top-coats you can buy nowadays to achieve the effect easily and quickly.   It looked like whoever did the lacquer job had tried to remove the old paint, but had given up halfway through and just primed then started the lacquer job over a half-painted vanity.  The primer dried really thickly over the painted portions, but soaked almost completely into the bare wood where it'd been sanded. 

That made it impossible to get all of the finish off so that I could restore the wood.  I sanded by hand and with three different machines, I picked and scraped, I used every chemical and natural stripper I could get my hands on, even some new miracle treatment I ordered from TV because I was desperate.  Some areas - one side, the drawer fronts, and most of the top - came completely clean, but only at the cost of the wood veneer that'd originally covered the piece, which, sadly, had to be removed completely from the top, because of this and also because some of it was rotting - and therefore from the drawer fronts, too, so they'd match.  Fortunately, the wood underneath the veneer was pretty decent quality, and sanded up really nicely.   Most of the piece, though, was completely beyond salvage.  I just could not get all the paint off without completely destroying the wood underneath and trashing the entire piece.

So I removed as much as I could, and sanded the rest smooth so that it would take a paint job and still look nice and slick, and painted the whole thing black.  I repaired the joinery on two of the drawers where the dove-tailing had split and separated.  I replaced a scrap of wood on the bottom that'd been used to repair a falling drawer support but which had started to rot, and was failing itself.  I buffed the insides of the drawers smooth again (the grain had warped with age and was very rough), cleaned and oiled the wood to make it nice again and remove an..."interesting" smell in one of them.   The supports that held the mirror onto the vanity, and the mirror frame itself were almost completely rotted through.  I have no idea what happened to them, but at some point they'd suffered some pretty major water damage that the vanity itself hadn't been exposed to.  I threw the mirror frame and supports away, and hung the mirror over the dressing table in my bedroom.

Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of Art Deco, but it's sad, to me, that someone ruined what was once, and could have been again, a gorgeous, quality piece of woodwork.  Sigh.  It looks alright now, and it's in good shape, for all it's been through, but...it could have been so much more.  I never even replaced the missing hardware - there are duct tape flaps on it so you can get the drawers open.  I never had the heart to even look for new hardware, the thing was so screwed up.  

Its only hope is that some nice person on craigslist will fall in love with it - or at least say to him or herself, "Hey, that could work, for now," or, even better, someone will want to paint it and put spectacular new hardware on it, maybe turn it into an art piece.  Of course, there are a crap-ton of these on my local craigslist right now, so who knows.  Here's hoping.

Poor vanity. I hope it finds a good home. 


Update 7-6-10: It did!   It took a while, but I finally found a buyer for it:  a woman who's buying seven of these old vanities, painting them and updating the hardware and feet to match, and using them as work stations in the salon she's opening up this year!  How cool!  Good luck, Salon Woman! 

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Because I Love a Good, Mindless Quiz

House Beautiful's Color Personality Quiz (pictures my own, except where linked elsewhere): 


1. What's the first color you see in the morning?
Blue (sheets, bed curtains)

2. What color are your eyes?
Green.

3. What color do you wear the most?
Black.

4. What color do you never wear?
Yellow.  *HURL*

5. What color do you wear when you want to feel sexy?

Still black, sorry.  Sometimes a deep, shiny red. 


6. What color gets you the most compliments?
Teals and turquoises apparently contrast well with my skin, dark hair, and bring out my eyes.  Or so they tell me.  

7. What color is your lipstick?
Clear, hehe.  Shiny: yes.  Color: no. 

8. What color was your living room when you were growing up?
Unpainted generic white.  Yawn.

9. What color was your bedroom when you were growing up?

A really bright, really atrocious apricot.  Which I picked myself, actually - when I was like 4.  When I was 14, I got to pick out a new color, which was a very pale sky blue.

10. What color are your sheets?
Kind of a muted, dusty aqua-blue.  With a woven-in botanical pattern in the same color.   I bought them from Linens-N-Shit before they shut down a couple of years ago.  That makes me sad.  I loved that store.

11. What color was your favorite crayon as a child?

"Periwinkle"

12. What color is your car?
Navy blue.

13. What color was your prom dress?
Tomato red.  Organza.  With huge boofy Barbie-doll sleeves and a mermaid hemline.  WHAT?  It was 1994! 

14. What's your favorite gemstone?
Amber.   Ooh, and garnet.  And pretty much all the blue ones.

15. What is your favorite flower?
 Lavender!  Peonies! Columbines!  Tiny messy herb flowers! All of them!

16. What color makes you happiest?
Lately, turquoise/teal.  Can't know why, except that it's the latest shade of blue I'm into.  I love blue.  All of them. 

17. What color depresses you?
 I don't think any actually "depress" me.  There are some that bore me, but any color - even the ones I hate to wear or use in my home - can be done to fantastic effect. 

18. What color calms you?
Blues.  Soft, post-rain-in-the-garden greens.  Really, anything relating to rain, especially a particular shade of pre-storm sky...

19. What color makes you grind your teeth?
Yellow.  I detest yellow.    

20. What color would you like to try, but are scared to?
Bright! Freaking! Magenta!   More on this one at a later date, actually.



I'm out until next Tuesday.  Ta! 

Wildebeests: Planters

Every time I look at the "new post" button, I think "newel post" in my head.  *shakes mental Etch-A-Sketch*

Happy Monday! Or something.  I hope it's happy.  Mine sure is:  I work today and tomorrow, and then I'm on vacation until next Tuesday.  Whee!  After the packing whirlwind that was yesterday afternoon, I found myself looking at the surface of my new dining room table (I'd had all my stuff piled up on it to be packed).  It needs...? 

I put a plant on it, for the time being, and to see how I'd feel about a fairly large-scale centerpiece on the table.  I had a big Zamioculcas on top of my fridge that was (a) too big for the space and (b) not getting enough light.  It's in a lovely cement/tan ceramic urn with a big round belly and a small foot; the plant itself is about two feet tall.  It looks okay, but I'm not done with it.  I'm also not worrying about that until after I come back to town next week.

But it reminded me that I wanted to share this with you: I paint pots.  About seven years ago I started playing around with painting terra cotta pottery, having gotten bored with the color they are naturally; and it occurred to me to try to make them look like glazed ceramic.  I've done six or seven of them around the house (well, more, but I've broken some over the years).  They come out pretty well, I think:

 This is my favorite one. :)   It's a half-urn that hangs on the wall on my back porch (and in my head it has lots of lovely, fluffy, small-leaved trailing things spilling over the edges, but really, I've never actually planted anything in it.  Whoops).   This particular pot took about eight hours to do, start to finish, but since I use a LOT of water in the process, about half of that time was allowing the pot to dry between stages.


I do this with acrylic craft paints - sometimes latex wall paint - a LOT of water for the smudge-y, drippy effect, and my hands.  For some reason, I get much better results with these things when I finger-paint.  I use a brush for priming the clay and for applying most of the base coats; but for color layers and designs I use my hands to wipe paint onto the clay under running water.

Which is why my kitchen sink is permanently stained kind of bluish in places.  0:)   But I have to say, even with the cleanup afterward, this is one of my favorite things to paint, precisely because I get all messy and stained while I'm doing it.  I love that feeling, and I love to get my hands all gross and really into my work.  Hee. 

I use 50-cent acrylic craft paints for most of these, although sometimes I use leftover latex and acrylic interior wall paint.   I always prime the pots and then seal them with Minwax's Polycrylic, a water-based clear coat, before continuing with the process.  This helps to keep the finish from bubbling and cracking when exposed to water and moist soil after it's done;  so does sealing the pot very heavily once the color finish is completed (the glossy "ceramic" shine on the piece pictured above came from, I kid you not, like twelve coats of Polycrylic).

Not matter what I do, some of the finishes DO crack and peel after having been exposed to water for several years.  Most of the pots I've done, I've used as cachepots, for exactly that reason - the plant they house is planted in a plastic container set inside the painted clay pot; this helps them weather and last a LOT longer.

Here are a couple more, from 2008:  the purple one on the far right, and the tall lavender with the ferny-thing in it, near the center.  (For comparison, the small grayish one on the left, between the vine and the purple tulips is actually a ceramic pot).

Heh.  I was just wondering yesterday how much that ferny-thing had grown (it's a variety of Asparagus Fern).  It was fairly new in the shot;  it's about five times that wide now, about two feet across.  :)

Here's another one, one of the first ones I did, in 2007.  This is a 2'-tall strawberry jar that I grow mints in in the Spring and Summer, in my herb garden:

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Oh, the Projects I Could Project!

Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to my camping trip next week.  I'm planning and making lists and pre-packing and un-packing and re-packing like crazy.  I've been shopping for supplies and replacement supplies, and painting artwork like a madwoman the past two weeks (the camping trip is a kind of women's festival, and I sell my artwork there). 

But I kinda wish this upcoming weekend wasn't Crunch Weekend.  I have sooooo much to do, for my trip and around the house (bathtub scrubbing = DO NOT WANT). 

There are just SO many fun little project-y things I'd rather do instead.  I have a new dining table to play with, chairs to fix up to go with, and a china cabinet to re-arrange. 

I have a dresser in the bedroom patiently awaiting new knobs and an updated finish.  Overstuffed kitchen cabinets to re-organize.  Bits of sewing that need to be either completed or thrown the hell away because I'm sick of looking at them.  Forty frillion houseplants that need to be watered or pruned or repaired after having been destroyed by the pride of Very Small Panthers that roams my house and eats the greenery while I'm asleep.

It's time for a Knick Knack Paddywhack, which is what I call fidgeting with all my little tabletop doodads and bits and pieces of hanging and leaning things.  When I get sick of them, I pull them ALL together onto the coffee table, from all over the house, redistribute the ones I adore and can't live without, and usually put together a big box of the ones I don't and can, to be taken to Goodwill on my next run.  I'm a sucker for cute little odds and ends and have zero impulse control when it comes to shopping - which is at odds with my philosophy of only owning little tchotchkes that mean something to me and make me swell with joy when I look at them. 

Inspiration struck last night (while I was trying to get to sleep, argh) concerning this window seat/bench thing in the dining room.  I have an old table leaf and some legs that don't go to anything sitting in the garage - I'm going to cobble them all into a little bench to throw under the bay window!  If I like it, great.  If I like the idea, but not that particular bench, I could get/build a nicer one and move the cobbled-y one out to the front porch and put plants on it.  If I hate it altogether, I'll bust out the power tools and build an honest-to-gawd window seat into the bay. 

But no.  This weekend I will be packing and cleaning and painting (well, the painting part is fun) instead.  At least tomorrow night I get a break to go to my monthly drum circle.  Yay, that.  :)

I just..I wanna paint things BLUE.  Like you would not believe.

And since posts need pictures, here's a shot of some of the junk on my computer desk, for no reason at all:

Have a good weekend.  :)

The Best Part of Redecorating

...that would be the planning stages, in case you're wondering.  Don't get me wrong, the shopping and the execution are pretty freakin' awesome - but I'm a die-hard list-maker.  I write instructions for myself when I build things, I draw pictures for weeks, even months before I actually begin to work on a room, and I can't function without a to-do list to work from, most of the time.


Yeah, I'm a big dork.  But I'm an organized dork, so :P 

Dining Room Redesign, Part the First: The Table

After hemming and hawing and trying to figure out what to do with my dining room for a couple of years, I finally realized that the main problem was the table.   It was the Wexford table from The Roomstore, which you see here on the right (although mine wasn't counter-height, it was standard dining table height).


I had two of them, actually - the second was used for a while as a coffee table, after I'd taken the legs to Home Depot and had them cut them in half for me (this was years ago, before my adventures with Serious Power Tools began).  Both tables were 2x4' and open up to 4' square, with a built-in leaf that slides under the tabletop when not in use.  Pretty nifty.

And don't get me wrong, I loved my dining room table.  But it was WAY too big for the space that I have now, which is only about 10x11'.  Last week I sold both tables on Craigslist to make room - and money -  for a new one.

 The original plan was to build a copy of this one, which is the "Hemnes" side table from Ikea.  Clean and simple, with a nod to and twist on the traditional - and easy to make out of plywood.  I figured I'd double the thickness of the base pieces for stability, and enlarge the top (the original Ikea piece is only about 27" across). 






Paging through Craigslist ads, however, I managed to find a little round table that was perfect.  It's almost identical to this one (which is World Market's "Charlotte"), but it's black.  It's solid wood, 40" across, which fits my space better.  It's also practically brand-new, as the woman who sold it to me had never actually used it.  Best part?  Fifty bucks!






 

Part the Second:  The Plan

So where does this fit in?

This is what my dining room, up until this week, has looked like:

 
Made with Icovia's Space Planner, found on the website of Lane Furniture.  

I love playing with this thing. 

You can see here what that large, rectangular table was doing to the dining room space:  there's barely enough room to walk around it, to say nothing of actually seating people at it  Almost nothing else fits into the room except for my china hutch (the cabinet-y looking thing at the top next to the dog food bin). 

(Part of the reason the dining room is so small is that it isn't actually a dining room.  According to the people who built my house, this is supposed to be a "breakfast nook", and they intended for me to put my dining room table in my very long living room.  I've never liked that idea, and since I usually eat in the living room in front of a movie or with a craft project spread out on the coffee table, I decided to use the "breakfast nook" as a dining space, since it wouldn't get used much.  I use the "dining room" portion of my living room as an office).

Here it is with the round table I've just purchased - as well as another new addition that I plan to begin working on in the next few weeks: a window seat.  I haven't decided yet whether I'll build one in permanently, or if I'd rather just stick a pretty bench under the bay window.

This is a sketch I did a few weeks ago when I was just sure I'd be building the Ikea table and a full-on window seat.  Here you can see the idea for the rest of the bay window space - ultra-sheer curtains hung across the entire bay, making the bench a little secret place behind the room.  The curtains can be pulled back to use the bench as seating at the back of the dining room table.

I probably should have drawn several cats on the bench, since that's probably who will likely be sitting there more often than not.  Hee.

I'm not entirely sure what that big rectangular thing on the west (left) wall is - a mirror? Large piece of art? At the moment I have a pretty Indian-looking paisley scarf up there on a carved wooden tapestry hanger.  It may or may not stay. 

I'm not sure how quickly this will all take shape.  I'm busy preparing for a six-day camping trip that I'll be going on next week, so I'm certainly not working on it before then.  I have some tweaking to do with my dining room chairs and that big china cabinet; and then there's the window seat and sheer curtains to deal with.  I'll post photos as I go, though, so you can see the progress and final result.  :)

What's In A Name?

When I was about 8 years old, I discovered (through jumping on my bed, tee-hee) that I could move my bed around the room if I tried really, really hard and put all my weight into it.  Wonder of wonders, I found I could move my big wooden dresser, too!  And so I did.  Every few months I'd switch the two pieces and move the small, modular, plastic shelves that lined the empty corners of my bedroom. 

Those plastic corner shelves were the "house" for my Barbie dolls.  I never played with the dolls themselves;  I was only concerned with where Barbie lived.   I didn't have the mansion or cottage you were supposed to buy for her, just my plastic shelves.  Each level was a separate room in her house.  I rearranged the furniture, hung "curtains" cut from my mother's fabric scraps, wove "rugs" out of my mother's yarn scraps, and "painted" the walls by hanging sheets of colored construction paper on the walls behind the shelving.   Over and over again I organized the dishes in the kitchen and the clothes in the closet;  and when I began learning to sew when I was 9 I immediately set about creating not only clothes for my Barbies, but throw blankets and rugs and pillows for her living room.

When I was in junior high, my mother asked me to pick out colors for my own room, as she was ready to repaint, and I was ecstatic.  I wish I had a picture of the 70s Apricot Atrocity that it had been before - I chose a cool, watery pale blue, and soft, deep blue fabric for the bedding and curtains.  That was the extent of the decor, but it was enough for me that I'd chosen the colors.  I loved it sooo much.  

I didn't really get into furniture and decorating until I was twenty-two, when I got disgusted with my cheap, ugly, salvaged furniture (all I could afford during my "starving student" phase), and decided I'd either have to learn to live with it or figure out how to make it better on my own to save money.   My first project was to spray-paint a small 3-drawer nightstand to cover up its fading, peeling finish;  from there I felt I could do anything if I just learned how, and soon spray-painting became repairing, refinishing, painting and staining, and then finally I took my act to the whole room instead of just a single piece at a time...and fell in love.

Ten years later, my house is one, big, ongoing art project, where the wall color changes once a year and half the furniture was built with my own two hands - and I couldn't be happier with my hobbies.  But it all started with moving my bed around when I was little.  Nearly thirty years later, I'm still Pushing Furniture around.  :)

Wildebeests: Ironing Board

I suppose I should explain the title, since you'll be seeing it a lot.  The short version is, I have a LOT of hobbies, mostly involving building/sewing/painting/decorating - and my friends poke fun sometimes, in a good-natured way.  One of them said, a few years ago, that I could make a Wildebeest out of chicken wire and 2x4s, LOL.  Dunno where in her brain that one came from, but it cracked us up, and the joke stuck;  so nowadays I call my smaller, stand-alone projects "wildebeests".  It's all very silly, but I like silly, so, there you have it.  :o)

Anyway, allow me to show off a simple, quick project that I did over the past Winter - the project, in fact, that in thinking about finally made me give in and start a blog. :)

Mini-Ironing Board

I have a small, table-top ironing board that I use in my sewing room. I bought it at a thrift shop about ten years ago, and it had definitely seen better days.  It was stained and scarred, the fabric was tearing, and the foam padding underneath was worn out and disintegrating.   I give you Exhibit A:

Grosssss.  

However, I just happened to have some cheery damask-print cotton lying around, and some thick felt padding material left over from an older project.  It was a cinch to open out the old cover, press it flat, and use it as a pattern for a new pad and cover.  I made a simple hem casing all the way around and cinched the cover around the board with a drawstring.  

Much better, yes? 

Added bonus:  it coordinates with the "new" color scheme that I've been slowly introducing to my craft room, piece by piece.  I have a full-size ironing board I plan to re-cover sometime soon, as well.

My craft room is probably the slowest redecorating project I've ever taken on - I started it without really intending to redecorate the room at all; and I've continued to work on it one small piece at a time for the past seven (eight??) months.  That'll be its own post, though, in the near future.  If I showed you pictures now without any stunning "after" shots you'd probably think I'm crazy.

You know, just in case the wildebeest thing didn't already lead you to that conclusion.  ;)