The Wayback Machine

Whatever you may think of the various things I've done to my living room over the years since I started this blog, you can't deny that it changes frequently.  I'm still plugging away on my light fixtures and a couple other projects I'll have to show you in March; but for now, I dug out some old photos of the living room from 2004 that I thought I'd share:

Guys, this is the original almost-everything.   I hung the ceiling fan I wanted immediately, and moved the [really ugly] one that came with the house into a spare bedroom.

But the paint, doors, hardware, fireplace mantel and tile - even the original carpet is still in these pics.

No, the houseplants thing is not new, hehe.   And no, I don't know why there are pillows on top of the entertainment center.

Looking the other direction.    LOOK at that awful pendant lamp.   The original floorplan of the house had this area under the light designated as a "dining room", and was supposed to be tiled.  Thankfully, I had the option to just carpet the entire thing.  I've never wanted to do the whole dining room/living room thing.  

The area that I use as my dining room was originally tagged as a "breakfast nook."  I've never understood the idea of eating different meals in different rooms.  That's for people in Jane Austen novels.  I pretty much eat in front of the tv on the couch, because I'm a 37-year-old frat boy. 

All the king's arches and all the king's beige.  

The original kitchen and dining room light fixtures.  Actually, the dining room light is still the same, I just painted it black, long ago.  It was one of the first projects in the house, aside from the ceiling fan in the living room - painting everything  that was shiny brass, to black.  

(And because someone asked, that's a dog harness on the bar in the foreground, not something naughty).  

And that's that, folks.  Crazy, yeah?  I found these pics while looking for some others, and I was like  whoa.  And my BFF was like whoa.  And the cat was like,  are you eating that pizza crust?  

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Heehee. Like I said.

Insurance Adjustor:  "Yep.  I'd say that door is pretty well shot."  

Heh.  Yeah, I kinda knew that.  The whole door needs to be replaced, though thankfully the tracks are fine.   I should get an estimate sometime this week;  then I can start shopping around for overhead door companies - and probably also paints, just in case whomever replaces my door can't match the color exactly.

I had a dream about it, the morning the guy came out to scope out the damage.  In my dream, the guy was fantastic - a tall, flamboyant, lovely gay man, built like a wrestler and bedecked in all sorts of crystal jewelry, and pink Elton John sunglasses.  Except he got to work right away, instead of providing an estimate:  he started building a new door from all the scrap lumber in my garage, and messed up all my tools, and accidentally let my cats out and they got lost, and he built this GORGEOUS door but the HOA hated it and I got fined, and so on.  GACK.  Stress dreams are so annoying.

Is it silly that I'm excited about getting a new garage door that will look and function exactly like the old one?  Hehe.


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Lampity Lampness

S l o wwww updating on the lamps; but, they're all coming along.

Chandelier #1 (Lily chandelier) is coming along nicely.  The re-finishing is all done, it's been re-wired (the original wire wasn't long enough to swag the way I'm going to when I hang it), and it's ready to go up - as soon as I get a good, sturdy, pretty hook for it.

The three-arm chandelier (#2) with all the glass is cleaned, stripped, re-painted, and lying in a heap inside a box in my garage, awaiting more work.  Meanwhile, I cleaned allllll that glass:

ooh, shinyyyy...

Meanwhile, the table lamp I forgot to take a "before" picture of is looking kinda awesome, and I'll have after pics for you next week as soon as I take some that don't suck (because that's all I have right now and I'm not sharing); 

 

(before) 

I also have a candelabra-style floor lamp in the works.  Actually, it's done - I cleaned it, painted it, and put a shade on it, and threw it into the living room.  It's gorgeous, and perfect for the spot I put it in.  Show you next week, when the table lamp is done, since they're going to end up being kind of a set.  :)



Weekend, here we come!  I have a lot to do - two chandeliers to finish/hang, lots of photos to take, a chair and a table to start refinishing, three outfits to start sewing, and I'm about halfway through with a HUGE commission painting that I can't wait to show you when it's finished. WHEW!  Busy girl is busy.


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Spammity Spammmm!

Sorry folks, for the time being I've had to turn off anonymous comments.  Been getting flooded with spam/advert comments lately - twelve so far today, in fact, and it's not even noon yet.

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Lampy Success!

So I painted both of those chandeliers last night, and they look WONDERFUL.  Both are a new, bright, pale gold, instead of the tarnished brass and ancient gold leaf finish they were before.  The lily chandelier will, in fact, be ready to hang as soon as I put the finial pieces back on it and dig a new chain out of my stash.  The glass chandelier still needs, well, the glass.  I'm nowhere near ready to re-dress the thing; I have a vague idea of how I want it to look, but nothing more than that.

Since I had the spray paint out anyway, I also sprayed a pretty new coat on an old, salvaged table lamp.  Did I remember to take a "before" pic?  Hell no!  Not until I was nearly finished with it, anyway.  Oops. That one only needs a shade, which I have, and as soon as it's painted, I'll show it to you.  I'm excited about it. :)

And since I have no pics to show you, I leave you with this:

Google "ugly lamp".  Go on.  I dare you.

(image from BetterAfter.com - they have a hilarious
ugly lamp contest every year)

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Soft Lighting, Small Lighting, Little Balls of Flame

Threw a couple of things together for my art studio last week that I'd been thinking about:

• A sheer, cotton, red, paisley curtain panel I've had in my fabric stash forever
• A wee (3") wooden shelf, cut from scrap, fixed in place about 2/3 up the window, with
• A bamboo rod and white muslin café curtain on clip-rings below it, and 
• A couple of glass bottles of Pothos and Philodenron rooting in them
• A trio of brightly-colored, glass, "Moroccan" candle lanterns hung where the sunlight can catch them.  They were a Christmas gift from a friend. :) 

After agonizing over what color to paint the room, I've decided NOT to paint it.  I like the white.  I like the backdrop it gives for ANY color I want.  I've decided that this is going to be my random, riotous, Boho paradise-y art space.  It IS a room for creativity, after all.  

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It's Lighting Time Again!

I believe I mentioned that I have a couple of antique (maybe?  Not sure exactly how old they are, maybe 1960s), homemade light fixtures given to me by a friend last Summer.  In an effort to get some of the project backlog in my garage dealt with (because my garage is starting to look like a junkyard), I decided to tackle cleaning up and refinishing both of them this week.

This is the first.  It's a really lovely little design - I took the candle fixtures out before I took this photo; basically the lights "bloom" from lily flowers springing up from the base of the fixture and "growing" out along the frame.

The whole thing was painted gold and then gilt by hand;  both finish layers were peeling, rust was setting in, there were splotches of ceiling paint on one side where someone painted and didn't bag this thing beforehand.  The candle covers themselves, once white, were yellowed with age and cracked in a couple of places.

There was a LOT of disassembly on this light fixture (it seemed at the time), and cleaning it was rather difficult.  I scrubbed the whole thing down with steel wool and a toothbrush, and sanded the rust off of the worst of the rust spots; the cleaning also removed most of the gold leaf that had degraded and was already flaking off.   You can see in the above picture the difference in  color and tone, between the two round pieces in the foreground of the photo, and the lily flowers and chain in the back, which hadn't been cleaned yet.  Big difference!




The second chandelier was much simpler in basic design, but positively encrusted with glass crystals, all wired together with, I discovered, jewelry headpins.  Points for ingenuity, maker!

Believe it or not, but this photo was AFTER I'd already spent a good fifteen minutes removing crystals.  It may not need to be said, but I don't plan on putting all of them back!

THAT IS A LOT OF GLASS, PEOPLE.

The base underneath all that is pretty simple.  And it's in great shape.  The only thing I'm going to change is the color - I don't like this coppery gold, I want a paler gold, almost a champagne sort of color.  Fewer than half the original glass is going back on this thing (the rest is already earmarked for another lighting project), and what does return to the fixture will be arranged quite differently.

I don't have pictures of exactly where I'm hoping to take these pieces, but for now, here are a few inspiration photos:

(I'm kidding) 

More on these as work progresses!


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@~!#%$%^@E%&@$%^%@#$%&*& !!!!!

So that happened.  

At least I got all my landscaping done. 

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Stuff and Things

I think it's a good sign that

• I'm not knocking jars off my new spice rack every time I grab one of them, and 
• I'm still grinning from ear to ear and sighing, "ahhh" every time I walk into my pink sewing room.  

Right decisions, yay.  :) 

Meanwhile...

I've been puttering, not working on a whole lot of things.  Mostly small stuff.  I decided after the SCA event last week (which I'd been sewing for for weeks), that I would turn my attention to my landscaping...and then we started this freeze/warm cycle all over again.  It was 70º earlier this week, two days after a freeze;  today it's freezing and about to start sleeting and raining; and next week it's supposed to be in the 60s, but then it'll freeze and rain again.  Freaking winter.  

Instead, then, I've been doing some indoor gardening, which has ended up branching out into shelving and lighting.  I've been picking at my art room some, rearranging furniture and getting ready to gut the closet and re-do it so that I can start getting the room together.  (I have my painting space, but it's kind of a clearing in a junk forest at the moment).  

I put up a window shelf in my art room,  upon which now sits some Pothos and Philodendron cuttings in pretty jars, and below which is a simple wooden rod with dark copper rings and a plain, white, bit of muslin fabric as a café curtain.  There's a funky, paisley, linen sheer over one side of the window over it all in reds and browns, and a trio of brightly-colored glass "Moroccan" lanterns hung in the corner over the window as well.  

I'm going to be doing some more work in the room, bit by bit;  I've decided that since I have two big art projects to do for other people and the space isn't really conducive to working comfortably in, that I'll work on the paintings and the room simultaneously.  Mostly it's going to be dealing with the closet, and organizing the whole room better.  I've also decided that since I love Moroccan, Indian, and "boho" design elements, but that they're too much for my main living space, that I'll make my art room my brightly-colored and deeply-layered "boho" space - a little artsy, creative refuge.  

For the time being, though, I'm going to be taking on a second job soon, in order to take care of some debt and get myself a little bit ahead.  I've been struggling lately, and I'm tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I'm not going to have much time to work around the house, or for anything resembling a social life for a few months, so there may not be many new entries here; but I'll keep you guys apprised of what's going on.  

Wish me luck! 

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