Oh, No, They Didn't.

The people down the street from my house are constantly outdoors, working on their yard and gardens, which are, of course, *gorgeous*.  I admit, when the two-story next to them came up for sale, I went to the open house just so I could get on the top floor and look out the window down into their backyard to see what it looks like.  Gorgeous!

So, when I saw them doing Something Very Serious in the yard over the holiday weekend, I was mightily intrigued.  A huge area of ground in front of the porch and front garden had been de-sodded, raked and pounded flat, and was marked out with  twine - what was going on??

Yesterday morning on my way to work I saw what they did there -  they'd made a little extension to their front porch with a Quikcrete Walkmaker.  Same thing I used to make the stones on my back patio:

laying down the "stones" for the first time, with the Walkmaker, in 2006

new arrangement of the same "stones", in 2010

I'm a huge fan of the Walkmaker;  but not such a huge fan of how my "stones" came out.  Sure, they look nifty, but when I poured them, I used concrete in the molds instead of cement.  The difference being that concrete is cement with aggregate -  gravel - mixed in, which makes the material stronger, but also makes it extremly rough underfoot.  My patio is NOT for walking on with bare feet, and it makes me sad to have made this mistake.

And sure enough, as slowed down to get a better look at my neighbors' project, being the Nosy Nancy that I am, they'd done the exact same thing - I could see the bumply, rumply concrete texture even from my car window.  Oh no!  I hope they don't plan to walk on that patio with bare feet!

Looks great, though. :)


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Mo' Plans, Flo' Plans

The other thing I did over the weekend was re-arrange the living room...again.  The new floorplan we were trying out in April did NOT work AT ALL.  I kind of knew it wouldn't, but I had to try something new, you know?

Way Before

This is the way the living room sat as of June 2011.   The "living room" area (seating area/tv area/etc.) was crammed into the center of this big football field of a room.  Too small, too cramped.  Lots of available seating, though, since I added the minicouch (on the wall in this pic).

The little meditation corner behind the couch (top of picture) was pretty, but used less and less frequently until it was basically just in the way.

The "office" at the other end of the room (bottom) was GREAT right there under the window.  I actually really liked it there.

Only Shortly Before
In April I did this.  The living room area moved to the north end of the room, the office and wide-open music/work space on the large "half."

The large half was great!

The tv/living area was STILL too small and cramped - and this time, with the minicouch in the music/office area (blue), there wasn't even enough seating in the tv/living room area.  Sigh.

And Now...

Something else I did over the long weekend: the living area and office have been sort of swapped back to where they were before.

The living area now spreads out over the entire large half of the room, instead of being cramped into two separate areas.  It's big and open, and it really feels nice.  I love it like this.  It's so comfy and open, and there's room to walk around without tripping over anyone's video game cord, LOL.

 The office/music area is back in the north end of the room, and the computer desk is back under the window.  I really love it there.  :)   



Now if I can just get some decent lighting in the small "half" of the room, and a Big Comfy Chair in the open spot in the BIG living room...

Pics soon.


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Dining Room/Kitchen Ceiling: Slowest Paint Job Ever

With an entire three-day weekend at my disposal, I did not get the dining room/kitchen ceiling painted.  Well, not all of it.  In fact, all I got done was the wide border around the top of the walls.  So now it looks a little something like this:

yes, this is photoshopp'd - REAL pictures when it's done!

I did also buy little round light bulbs for the chandelier, so it really looks like this now.  So cute!

More later this week.

More Dining Room Stuff

Not that I've actually, you know, done anything in the room this week yet; but I was bored and antsy to get started painting the ceiling in there, and decided I'd "try on" the look with some creative photo-editing, hehe.

You saw it the other day, after I changed the curtains:

Here's what photo-shop says the room will look like with the same white ceiling and 8" border that I did in the bedroom last weekend:  

I really like that.  

I did actually change two other things:  I removed the mini-blinds in the pic, since I've actually taken them down; and I altered the bulbs in the chandelier to look like these: 

Awesome. 

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Aziz, Light!

I don't know exactly when I went from "I love the dim, moody aspect of the light in here" to "OMG THIS PLACE IS A TOMB".  The whole ceiling and curtains thing in the bedroom recently was, when you get right down to it, mostly about the bedroom being entirely too dark to live with anymore.

The dining room has been feeling the same way.  Fortunately, that's an easy, fast, and FREE fix:

Much better than the way it was before.  These café length curtains were made from the old full-length sheers in about fifteen minutes.  The tablecloth is just a piece of linen from my fabric stash - not even hemmed (I like the soft ragged edges).

The mini-blinds are still up, because I DO still need a bit more privacy at night;  but then, this is just Phase I. When I get to the next layer of things in this dining room, I'll be dealing with the blinds then.

before:  pretty, but really dark when the light's off  (blinds, long curtains)

More in store for this room: 

• "phase 2" of the whole window treatment thing
• slight wall color adjustment
• ceiling paint, just like I did in the bedroom, for the dining room and kitchen
• chair facelift
• chandelier awesomation 

Stay tuned.

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Bigger & Brighter Bedroom

Maybe Blogger will get its head out of its @$$ and allow me to make this entry on the third try.  Hmph.

BEDROOM YAY!   I spent my Sunday afternoon correcting some issues in the master bedroom.  It was dark, mismatched, the curtains were fugly (seriously, wth was I thinking??), and there was still an old, queen-sized comforter on my king-sized bed.  Also, I was tired of looking at the blue ceiling:  it looked alright with the blue walls, but it was a different tone, too dark for the room, and, er, I had never bothered to go back and touch up around the edges when I painted it.  Whoops.

σ_σ

Fortunately, last week a sale and a coupon happened to me at the exact moment I was thinking about the bedroom issues, and I ordered a new, white duvet cover and shams in the correct size.

Over the weekend I sorted through all the paint in my garage (I have a lot of paint, you guys), and mixed together all my various whites and off-whites, to produce a soft, creamy off-white to use on the ceiling.  I also picked up a white, king-sized flat sheet, and made it into a pair of curtains;  I teamed those up with a pair of those Ikea LILL sheers that I have a frillion of and hung them hiiiigh on the walls under the the new, wide, ceiling border.

Et voila: 

Muuuch better!  The room is brighter, and feels about twice as big as it was before.

I absolutely adore the big, wide border around the top of the room.

And the off-white looks fantabulous with the wall color.

It's hard to see the curtains against the morning light in the pictures;  the white sheet-curtains are on one half, and the sheers on the other half.

While I like the effect, I do plan to get another sheet and repeat the process so that I have two curtains on each window, with the sheers in the center instead, so that it's a bit more balanced.


I also moved that dumb little rattan chair over to the window.  It feels less crammed-into-the-room in this corner;  the dog crate that was here is now more out of the way, and won't be getting doggy dust and grime all over the new white curtains.








Other things to continue working on:

• That dumb little rattan chair.  It's falling apart, and, well, it's pretty ugly.  I really would rather have something comfy and stuffed, like this.  
• Note the obvious lack of an actual comforter in the new comforter cover.  Oops.  Also - the ivory sheets are getting pretty worn, and need to be replaced.  With white, or blue, or gray.  Not sure yet. 
• The nightstands, which are functional, but boring as hell (as opposed to the old ones which were cute, but not remotely functional).  
• The bed needs a skirt to cover those box springs; and I do eventually plan to adjust the old four-poster frame to fit this bed. 

Anyway - yay!  I love it.  :) 

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Photographic Evidence

Now that the Martian Death Flu (or whatever) has passed, I took a few minutes tonight to do a bit of tidying up and rearranging in the bedroom.  The art on the wall was woefully unbalanced and sparse-looking, and there was a bit of a Stack O' Crap problem building up.  To wit:

wtf. 

And then after:

That's better.  I'm too flighty to stick with the same artwork in my home for long, which is why most of it is just printed out on my color printer at home.  This time it's all green and garden-related;  about half of it is even my own photography.

Still a few naked ladies in there, though.  The big one in the Ikea UNG DRILL frame (which has been turned right-side up) is Evening Mood, by Bougereau, and is one of my favorite paintings in the whole world.  She stays.  My only sticking point is the big white mat on the lower right - that photo was supposed to be bigger.  Need to blow it up and reprint.

And to do something about that godawful dog crate.

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Nope!

I had sooo many plans for this past weekend.  I was going to paint the dining room chairs, and the dining room/kitchen ceiling, and re-cover an ottoman, and...

Nope.  I have a big, monster, butt-kickin' cold.  Bleh.  See you guys in a week.  If I live.  >_<

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Things To Paint: Furniture, Dining Room

My dining room:

This was in 2010 - the walls are now gray to match the rest of the house.  Which I love, but I have more plans...

sketch 2011

I still want to build the window seat in the bay, and string sheer curtains across it.


I'd also like to paint the dining room chairs black to match the table.

sketch May 9, 2012

I've also decided I want to brighten up the room a bit:

1.  Paint the [blue] ceilings in the kitchen and dining room a soft off-white, with an 8" border around the top of the walls to make a sort of "tray ceiling" look.

2.   Paint the walls, also, leaving the gray around the borders/"chair rail".

3.   I'm also going to put white linen café curtains into the bay windows, behind the sheer that will drape over the whole area;  and paint the insides of the window casings a deep charcoal, or maybe even black.


While I don't have the lumber yet to build the window seat, I DO have all the paint, fabric, curtains, and the Ikea DIGNITET curtain wire system to hang the giant sheers...I just haven't gotten around to doing it yet.  

This weekend?  

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Spring Cleaning?

I keep seeing these pop up on blogs this week, so I thought I'd do my own slightly-snarkier and personalized version.  Not to give YOU advice, just to mutter to myself "out loud" (as it were) and in public.

1.  Wash the dog.   I have three 50lb dogs.  YOU wash them if you want them clean.

Actually, Raven's on my to-do list for the back half of this month:  he's a hair farm, and I'm *done* trying to keep this dog clipped myself.  He's up for his shots, so as soon as he's got them all up-to-date, he's going to the store for a professional cut, I don't care how much I have to pay for it.  I'm sick of pulling burrs and dreadlocks out of this dog's fur.

2.  Clean the windows.  I DO actually "do windows", and usually I do it this time of year.  I didn't last year, though...or the year before.  Whoops.  They're a bit manky.  Someone gave me a really nifty car washing brush tool once that hooks up with the end of a garden hose - you can put soap or liquid wax into it if you want to, and the handle extends to like six feet.  Really nifty tool.  Do I wash my car, like, ever?  Nope.  But it's awesome on windows!

3.  Cobweb patrol!  Yeah, I admit it:  my house is crawling with cobs.

*ba-dump-CSH!* 

And I DO run the long-handled duster around the ceiling and doorways more than once a year, but MAN that crap builds up, with all the hairy animals that bring dust and other junk in from the backyard all day long.

4.  Deal with built-up piles of clutter.  Also something I actually do more than once a year - otherwise I'd live in a dumpster.  But I did just recently tidy up and re-organize the laundry room that I spent all that time and effort to sort-of re-model two years ago. (Yeesh, has it been that long?)

I'm also in the middle of cleaning up and re-organizing the garage, and dealing with half-finished projects out there.  The next step (a new wall o' shelves) is going to be a doozy, though. Stay tuned.

not my actual house,
thank goodness

5.  Wipe up built-up fingerprints on wall switches, hallway corners, and around doorknobs.

Yeah, it's probably time to do that, actually.  Just because most of my walls are painted gray doesn't mean that manky crap doesn't show.  Bleh.








Also on my Spring Cleaning list:

• take down all the draperies in the house and run them all through the washer.  I do this about twice a year, actually, for my allergies.  I don't use curtains I can't put into the washing machine for exactly this reason. 
• fireplace cleanup - already done, actually. 
• Bleach and re-seal the grout in the tiled areas of the house.  I used to do this every Spring, but I haven't in about three years.  It needs it, though.  

And some maintenance items that need to be dealt with soon, or else: 

• the deadbolt on the nifty new storm door I installed a few weeks ago is suddenly not working, for some reason.  I needed to take the cylinder out and take it to the hardware store to have it re-keyed anyway;  I'll have them look at it while I'm there.  
• Another door issue: the "temporary" gate I put up over a hallway door to keep the dogs out of "Catland" (where the food, water, and litterboxes live) has now been in place for nearly FOUR YEARS.  And it's falling apart, of course, because it was never meant to last this long or put up with the abuse it's gotten over the years.  It's time to get off my ass and put the real solution that I've always meant to get around to, into place.  
• Two years ago, I scrubbed, patched, and re-painted all of the baseboard trim in the entire house...except for the dining room.  Sigh.  
• Oh, and the guest bathroom, too, and the paint on the trim in there is yellowed and chipped.  It needs to be re-done, especially since I re-painted the room not long ago, which just made the old trim look even worse than it did. 

And the garden...oh, don't even get me started. 

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YAY!

I do not, as previously feared, have a roof leak!  WHEW!   We had some pretty hefty storms in the forecast for tonight, and the closer it got to the end of my work day, the more it looked like it was going to rain frogs the second I got home from work. So, I raced home, and Kress and I climbed up into the attic armed with flashlights, buckets, and tarps...

...And found nothing.  No drip from the roof.  No evidence whatsoever that the inside of the roof had ever been wet, or the ceiling joists, or the sheetrock over the garage ceiling. Dry as a bone, no staining or warping or wetness at all.  From the outside of the house, the roof was just fine.  On closer inspection, the ceiling in the garage where I thought I'd been painting over wet sheetrock was also A-ok, and showed no signs of ever having been soaking wet.  Once I got my face up there where I could really see it, I realized that it'd just been the paint - it must not have been mixed completely.

I feel a bit silly, but that's overshadowed by how incredibly grateful I feel that I don't have a leak in my roof!  That could have been a nightmare!  Especially since, although my part of town hasn't gotten the pounding that the rest of Austin has been getting this evening, we've gotten some good rain, and lots of it, and there's a bunch more on the way for the next 24 hours or so.  WHEW.

P.S. - while we were up there I did, however, find my two nine-foot wooden flagpoles that I'd given up on ever seeing again.  As soon as I saw them up there, I remembered that I had taken them up there two years ago to poke a clog out of the dryer duct - apparently I just never brought them back down.  Now if I could only remember what I'd wanted to do with them when I realized they were missing... .

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