The End of the Great Living Room Extravaganza

The last piece of the living room arrived last week - this gorgeous rug from Target.  It looks like someone took a bland but attractive damask-print rug and dumped brightly-colored paint all over it just to see what would happen. It's GORGEOUS, and I adore it.  The colors are all my favorite greens and blues and teals, which coordinate with the new peacock fabric and the painted table top, and liven up the plain grey and brown furniture.

A short pano of the whole room, with fireplace and bad lighting.  Every photo makes this rug look tiny; but it's a little over 5x7 (it comes in strange sizes, for whatever reason). In such a small space - the entire duplex is 900-some square feet - I hesitated covering up any floor space; but the rug grounds the furniture and actually makes the living room area feel bigger, because it kind of accentuates the open space around the seating area, which I wasn't expecting.  

Mr. Rory Williams approves. 

Peacocks, For Some Reason

The living room is finally *nearly* complete!  I didn't really set out to re-do the entire thing, but that's almost what ended up happening.  So far I've:

• repaired two broken chairs
• new couch from Ikea
• new "coffee table" trunk from an old trunk  I had in storage
• made over an Ikea cart as a rolling side table/art cart
• Recovered a side chair seat
• Added shelves to the tv console for DVD storage
• Stripped, cleaned, and spray painted Sylvan's Tablemate work table (not blogged) 

Over the weekend I use some peacock calico fabric to make 2 new throw pillows and recover a dining chair that I use as a backpack/purse landing pad in the hallway, and a coordinating wall hanging fabric to make a ...wall hanging.  

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1. Wall hanging over the fireplace
2. Hall chair, an Ikea KAUSTBY
3. Throw pillow and Cat of Approval
4. Peacock fabric and teal cotton backing, on a green towel that serves as an ironing board until I get a new one. 

The fabric isn't exactly upholstery quality - it's just a medium weight cotton calico.  So,  I reinforced it with heavy fusible interfacing and backed it with another medium-weight cotton, so it should be fine.  Not bad for like $40 at Fabric.com (including pillow forms and zippers!).  I started out looking for a botanical on a black ground, but I couldn't find one anywhere that I really loved;  meanwhile, this peacock fabric has all the colors I love and want in the room, and gives about the same look as the black botanical I'd had in mind would have. Score!  

I love the way the wall hanging works on the fireplace, and how the peacock pillows kind of bring everything together. The artwork on the fireplace is all pieces painted by me, by Sylvan, and one by her grandmother. 

While I was removing staples from the chair seat, my hand slipped and
I carved a pretty good chunk out of my knuckle on a broken staple. 
Done. For. The. Night. 

What's Next:

IS IT HERE YET?? IS IT HERE YET?? IS IT HERE YET?? 

A Pair of Chairs

Meet my side chairs, which were given to me by a friend a few years ago, and which lost all their feet. They each had two feet in the back, and two extremely crappy little plastic ball casters in the front, which cracked and broke off their stems.  For a while, my cool chairs were on the floor:

This is not a terrible-looking chair;  in fact, I think they're really pretty. They're super comfy, and while there are some cat scratches in a couple of places, the microfiber fabric is in really good shape.

But sitting on the floor? No way. Too hard to get out of, when your butt's below your knees. Plus, it made them look like I got them out of a dumpster.

Here's the underside.  Scrim removed, and wooden support blocks for the feet removed.

Here are the support blocks that I removed.
It wasn't difficult.

I also removed the rear blocks (you can see them in the previous pic), and copied all four blocks onto a scrap of 2x4 I picked up for a dollar at Home Dope's scrap bin.

Here are the new front and rear blocks; along with four flat plates I made to affix to the bottom of the chair.


They're screwed and glued into the frame, the support blocks, and the frame strut in the rear of the chair that each rear block is affixed to.  In other words, these chairs are now freaking SOLID.

Here's the first finished chair. The wooden support plates barely even show; I finished the edges to match the feet (and the TV console, it's the same stain) so where they do show, it looks like it belongs there.

Here's the other chair, with the coffee table chest I put together over the weekend. They're about 3" higher than they were originally, before they ended up on the floor, so they're quite tall.  As a woman of some height, myself (5'10"), I think they're perfect.



















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Rory approves of this chair. 

Next Up: 

Art supplies storage! 

My Hovercraft Is Full of Construction Workers

Well, the move is complete.  Mostly. 95% of our stuff is at the new place, excepting only an empty aquarium and some tools from the garage.

The new house is lovely, albeit packed to the rafters with our stuff, and covered in concrete dust and huge pieces of cardboard taped to the floor.

Wait, what? 

It seems the drain line and P-trap under the bathtub, being 53 years old, rusted through at some point and collapsed, leaking into the ground below the foundation, and into the walls.  This was discovered by the clean-up crew the day before we moved in, who thought it was clogged until they sent a snake-o-scope (whatever it's called) down the drain to check it out and discovered that, well, it was pretty much fucked under there.

Not to worry!  Our new landlady and her awesome crew are ON IT, and it's being repaired as quickly as possible.  Over the weekend as we moved our things in, contractors and crew were demo-ing the old tub and shower enclosure, removing the rusted pipes and trap, removed water-damaged wooden framing, and replaced it with new wood.  The wet and rotting wood attracted termites at some point.  They're gone now, but just in case, there's a termite guy coming in a few days, after which the new plumbing will go in, and then a new tile shower surround.  Sylvan and I've been driving 20 miles south across the city to shower at the old house, which is inconvenient, but it's only for a few more days.

So, for lack of "omg isn't my new house beautiful" pictures, I give you:

My current shower, or rather, some of it.

1.  Termite-eaten wood

2.  Entrance to the World of Og

The original (1965) iron tub.  Such a shame.

Original vanity cabinet and faucet.  The sink I think was replaced sometime in the 80s, and the paper holder...who even knows.

(The dirt is new).

THESE ARE SO CUTE.

I think toothbrushes must've been much smaller 53 years ago.

I haven't seen a towel rack like this since the actual 80s.  SO CUTE.

I have some paste stuff that makes my car's headlights clear and sparkly.  I've been wondering if that stuff would work on these things.  Hm.

















You know what the best part of all this is?  I don't have to fix ANYTHING.  MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!


Well, that's all for now.  Pics of the finished bathroom, and of the rest of the house, will be coming soon.  For now, I leave you with this cat, who is just making himself at home and doesn't seem to care that nothing is unpacked and put away yet:

@_@

You know that moment when you've been working on something big, and you suddenly stop and it finally sinks in that this is real... it's a real thing that's about to happen.  Yeah. That. 

We have a house! A duplex, actually.  Smaller than we're used to, but it's a great place, and the house we've been in for the past year and a half was really far too big for us.  Bulk day is on Monday, so we've been packing like crazy and purging furniture and small items ruthlessly.  Our motto right now is, "That's one less thing to move!"  It feels insane right now. I know everybody goes through this when they move, but it feels insane. I guess you know what I mean.  :)

After the 1st, I'll have pics of the new place for you, and likely a bunch of "hey, look how cute my shit that you've seen 10,000 times looks in this new room" shots, until I get actual projects going.  One of my favorite things in life is unpacking boxes and decorating a new space. 

I'm greatly looking forward to no longer being a live-in handywoman.  It was kinda fun, and interesting, until I broke my foot last year; since then I've just felt like the house was constantly pressing on me, looming over me to get things done and get caught up, and I'm tired of feeling that way.  That whole work-before-play thing has it's place, but it's all too easy to guilt yourself into doing nothing but work and forgetting to do the things that make you happy.  This new place needs nothing but decorating, and I'm SO excited to really get to know the new space without any attached responsibility.   

So, until the 1st, I doubt I'll have anything to post, but rest assured I'll be pretty much continuously covered in dust and tape and cardboard shavings. 

See y'all on the flip-side.

"Don't forget to pack me, Mama!" 

The Craft Room, and Another Big Change

I started this post two months ago, when I began working on the craft room.  I got a little distracted along the way, but we'll deal with why in a minute.   As you can see below, this room is red as fuck.  It's a gorgeous color, but very dark, and there's a whole lot of it in this big master bedroom-turned-craft room.

I started by finishing out all the baseboards, as in the rest of the house, and by cleaning, priming, and re-painting all the doors and trim.  The walls themselves are taking 2 coats of primer to cover up the red enough that it can be painted over. 

One wall of the room is textured with sand mixed into the red paint, just like the walls in the master bathroom walls ; except that on this wall, a sort of strié technique has been used to shape the sand texture into vertical  ridges. Just like in the bathroom, I wondered why??

While priming around one of the windows on this wall, I figured it out:  this wall is covered in wallpaper!  At some point, it was painted over (and over, and over - there are at least three different colors on top of it), and textured with the sand and dragging technique.

Hunter Green and burgundy, with gold.  Oh yeah! I thought. This house was built in 1984! Of course it's got plaid wallpaper. LOL.

I found wallpaper under the vanity in the master bath, too (blue with gold fleurs-de-lis)  - I bet it's all over the bathroom, under that sand texture. I can't believe I didn't put two and two together before.












So, I continue to chug along on this room.  It's about half primed now, and all of the trim and doors are finished;  It just needs a wall primed, and then paint on the whole thing. And while I've been working on repainting, I've also been  PACKING.

The Frost Is Off the Ground 

We're moving again.  My landlady-friend is selling the house.  Sylvan and I were supposed to spend 2017 preparing for a move to Oregon, but we both had a horrible year full of injuries and medical issues, and didn't get our shit together.  So we're looking for another rental house here in Austin. that isn't scary and that will accept 2 dogs and 5 cats.  And, of course, we're packing, and getting rid of as much as we can to facilitate a move into a smaller space, and eventually, a long move across the country.


I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of terrified.   But I'm pretty big on the idea of focusing on the tasks and items you can control, instead of worrying about the ones you can't.  We'll find a place; and in the meantime, I'm looking forward to not being anyone's live-in-handywoman anymore.  Projects are fun, right up until they're jobs.  Also, if I never have to repair any plumbing again, it'll be too soon.

So I'll keep you all updated on the usual house projects, the house search, and eventually, the new place!

BONUS CAT:  not supposed to be napping in houseplants

.

Bedroom: Accomplished

My weekend was extremely busy.  I was off work on Friday; I basically woke up, had some coffee, and got to work - and didn't stop until Sunday night.  I painted walls and fixtures, moved furniture, repaired furniture, worked in the yard, cut pieces of wood into smaller pieces, worked on my bicycle, rearranged rooms, hung curtains, knocked out a bunch of boring, regular ol' housework - so many things!  I'm actually sore all over, I worked so hard. 

My biggest (and favorite) accomplishment from the weekend was this:

At last, a bedroom that looks like my actual bedroom!  Literally, actually - like 90% of the things in here came from my room at the old house;  even the paint color is similar (this is Glidden "White Bucks," a very, very pale gray;  the old room was Behr's "White Clay", which was a warm white with yellowy-green undertones). 

All of my old bedroom furniture is here.  I didn't exactly want to throw it all into the same corner, but, that's the way the room works.  Believe me, I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice options for that huge, glorious box window. 

It ends up functioning like a little "work triangle", like you hear about in kitchen design - it definitely makes getting ready for work in the morning fairly hassle-free.

Interior With Woman Reading,
Carl Holsoe, 1863-1935

In case you're wondering - and I'm not sure if I ever mentioned it before - my inspiration in this room (and its predecessor) comes largely from Carl Villhelm Holsøe's paintings of his home.  I like Victorian interior paintings in general; but there's a contented tranquility in Holsøe's work that I really love. 

 I cannot get enough of this amazing, 16"-deep box window. 

 Rabi likes it, too. 

In case you missed it in the pictures above, this is my Aardvarkadile.  It's a crocodile with enormous, floppy, lopsided ears, because...well, why the hell not, right?
Hee.

Just in case you forgot, here's what the room looked like before I moved in - not a terrible blue on the walls; teal and gold inside the window box and all over a decorative shelf that spanned one wall of the room; linoleum tile on the floors. 

There's also a hand-painted ceiling fan;  it's still there, but I flipped the blades so that the plain, pale-wood-look side shows. 

The pink duct tape on the window was actually holding one of the panes in place - about a week ago I removed the tape, the pane, and all the old caulking, and re-set the pane into the frame. 

Things left to do in this room:  

• baseboards will be installed soon by the tilers, who removed the old ones when they installed the new (gray, ceramic, wood-look) tile throughout the house
• there's no door on the closet.  If I catch that curtain on my face and pull it down onto my own head one. more. time...
• what was left of my bedframe finally collapsed!  Time for a new bed. 
• The windows desperately need blinds, or some other privacy-protecting covering, underneath the sheer, white curtains.  That window film, though lovely - even though it's mismatched - is practically transparent at night when the lights are on indoors. No bueno. 

The Tacky Cat Statue Gets A Starry Makeover

So, I've had this silly ceramic cat since I was like 17.   She guards my house. Hee.  She's been many colors - last year she underwent some serious structural repairs, and went pink and gold:

Today I gave her a new makeover:

It doesn't show well in the picture, but all the stars and highlights are silver, not white, so she's all shimmery and sparkly.  I had every intention of painting the entire cat blue and starry, but then the nighttime-forest thing happened at the bottom, and the clouds, and she became an entire night scene. 

The highlights along her angles would NOT come out with a brush, or a pen (that got painted over like three times, actually), so I ended up just rubbing silver paint onto the edges with my fingers.  When in doubt:  fingerpainting!  LOL.  

Chuggin' Right Along

Things I've gotten done this week:

First I cleaned the sewing room.  

Then I emptied what was my "art space" (read: "storage

 pit"), except for a few items which are staying in the 

room or just couldn't be moved elsewhere. 

Most of what was in the "art space" got moved into

 the sewing room; but the actual ART stuff I moved into the 

"music  room" side of  my looooong living room.  

It's a bit of a clusterfuck.

Then I moved this little white ceiling

fan, which was WAY too small to do 

much good in my 16x18' bedroom...

...into the 10x11' ex-art-space, which 

works MUCH better. 

Then I took this old ceiling fan, which HAD been in

the "art space" (and was originally the living room fan

when the house was built in '04)...

...took it apart and spray-painted the entire thing

(props to Pretty Handy Girl, without whose blog I

wouldn't have been brave enough to try lots of things)

...and put it into the master bedroom, which needed 

more air flow.  The fan is still dated and ugly...

but at least it's not bright brassy gold anymore. Eugh. 

Oh, and I also spray-painted this $1 Ikea clock gold. 

I hate it. But whatever, LOL. 

More soon.

P.S. ...

Have I mentioned how much I HATE the
Ikea flooring I put in the side rooms because
it was cheap?   I dropped this screwdriver from a
height of about 8'.  IT STUCK IN THE FLOOR.
Buy the real flooring, kids.  

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Spice, Spice, Baby*

BEHOLD (sounds better than "before", doesn't it?)

• one dirty-ass kitchen "backsplash" (it's just a wall) (so, I tried to "erase" the oil spatters on the paint with chalk the way I saw on Pinterest?  Now I have an oily, chalky mess. Thanks, Pinterest! FFFF)  
• one 3' length of steel L-shaped bracket thing, the proper name for which escapes me
• screws
• screwdriver
• level
• messy cabinets

VOILA!  

One practically-invisible mini-shelf on the backsplash for all of  my spices (don't worry, I have more - I just put out the ones I use all the time, the rest are in a basket in the cabinet with my extras).  You can't even see the steel bracket.  Which is good. Because it's ugly. But it's invisible, so, whatever.

SO

PRETTY


and it mostly hides the chalk/oil mess.

This is where I had the spices before, on three lousy Susans.  It was cramped, I could barely reach the top...

...and...

...the adjacent cabinet was a goddamned mess.

I have a trick back, and when it goes out (with no warning whatsoever, or any discernable cause, no less), I can NOT reach my lower cabinets, or lift even the lightest item.

Therefore, I have ALL of my regular-use kitchen stuff in my upper cabinets, or in my pantry on the higher shelves.  This cabinet houses my mixing bowls, Pyrex bakeware, and my small collection of pots and pans.

Before the spice rack, everything you see in the picture above was also crammed into this cabinet.  Now both cabinets, and the spice rack, are easier and nicer to use.

Rory helped.






















* I apologize. 



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