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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CLEAN! ALL! THE! THINzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Remember all that junk I said I was going to do, in my last two posts?  Yeah, I didn't do any of it over the weekend.  I was going to, but   NAP ATTACK.

I did manage to get a lot of heavy cleaning done over the weekend, even if I didn't get around to starting any projects.  Vacuuming, mopping, steam-cleaning the tile in the bathrooms and kitchen, cleaning the bejeezus out of the entire kitchen, nuking both bathrooms - I even washed the windows in my car.

It's been raining here, it seems, for like three weeks straight.  I love rain - it doesn't seem gloomy or depressing to me like some people say it is - but it sure does make me sluggish and sleepy, and not remotely motivated to get anything done but eat pie and watch The West Wing (trufax - this is what I did last night).

Actually, I DID get something done Saturday night:  I shuffled some tables and dressers and shelves and things around in the bedroom and in my closet, which resulted in "new" nightstands for the bedroom, and "new" shelving in my closet.  I'm not any happier with the closet than I was before - in fact, I actually like it less, but that's just more incentive to get off my ass and get myself a dresser from Craigslist to use in my closet, finally.  I DO love the nightstand situation, though...and so do the cats.

Sweet Pea chillin' on the new nightstand

Real pics later this week.  :)



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Even More Guest Bath

It's not a major accomplishment or anything, but I did two things on Sunday, after having paint the lower half of the room on Saturday:

Guest Bath Cabinet
The vanity cabinet is litterbox-free, scrubbed, disinfected, and deodorized.  No more litterbox smell in this tiny room, and no more throw rug full of litter overspray in front of the cabinet on the floor!  Ewww!

It's a small thing, but it's a HUGE thing. 

Next for this room: cabinet hardware, and maybe a paint job on the lower cabinets. Haven't decided yet.



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Weekend To-Do List

Weekend??  Well, I'm going to be out of town at an SCA event all day tomorrow, so...

Weekend Sunday To-Do List:

• paint the guest bath, and hang a towel rack (should only be about 2 hours)
• clearcoat the feet from the bulk trash table (10 minutes) and put them onto my couc
• remember when I made cutting boards out of an old wooden countertop? The big one's way too big to be easy to use, so I don't - meanwhile, I always wish I had a little bitty one.  I'm going to cut the big one down into smaller boards.   (1 hr?)
• I may or may not stain and paint a little wooden box to keep some small things in.  Depends on how much time I have. 
• shopping!  Backyard & bathroom stuff! 

Let's see if I do ANY of that, or sit on my butt all day playing video games...

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Weekend!

Yay, I totally fail at getting stuff done this week! :D  Hee.  Actually, not really.  I've been puttering a bit here and there.  I just don't have anything done that I can post about yet. 

This weekend, I'd like to: 

 Finish the second couch cover - I'm almost there! 

Get the rest of the sides and the doors put on the aquarium stand I've been working on.

Paint the guest bath.  I kind of just...stopped...after I painted the wall behind the mirror and hung the new mirror I refinished....in July. 

Start working on some new costume stuff!















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Landscaping?

Wow, what a mind-blowingly busy three-day weekend that was!  I am so tired! I did EVERYTHING!

Not really.  I got some nasty food poisoning Friday night and spent almost the entire weekend either in bed or in the bathroom. And then when I finally came out of it and was able to, you know, move and speak and get on the internet, I found out half of my state is on fire.  Fun times.

I did, however, get the wall support rails for the craft room shelves put up yesterday.  And I bought a little Chasteberry Tree for the backyard.   Also, the weather is gorgeous. 

I'm gonna go worry about my friends some more now, bye.

Not a Chasteberry Tree. Isn't it pretty, though?  I want.

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Happy Friday! Sort of!

It's Friday for me, anyway - I'm outta here for the weekend in just a few short hours.  Whee!

I finished the back door last night...mmm, no, I didn't.  I mean, I kinda did:  I clear-coated the brown parts of the door that I showed you yesterday, so that part IS finished.  I also started painting the bright white mullions on the door, in a deep teal to coordinate with the room.

I'd forgotten how LONG that takes! I'd painted them before, when I swapped out the paned window from another door that I scrounged from a curb in front of a house that was being remodeled;  the new door didn't fit my door frame, but the window was exactly the same size, so I swapped out the windows.  The "new" window trim had never been painted, though, and it was horribly yellowed with age and exposure (plastic) - and cracked, too, so there was cleaning and patching AND painting that day.  At the time, though, I had both doors completely disassembled, so although it was kind of a pain in the butt to paint all those mullions, it wasn't half the pain in the butt that it is doing them with the glass still underneath...with a 1/2" art  brush, no less!*   I painted around 6 out of the 15 panes, and it took me about an hour.  Oy.

But at least I'm painting something!  I've really kind of needed to paint things the last couple of weeks.  I pine and waste away when I'm not painting things.  I've been reading Better After recently, and it's made me just lust for an awesome piece of thrift-store furniture to refinish or restore or repaint! 

Except I DO have an awesome thrift find - a huge framed mirror that I picked up a couple of months ago for $8 and still haven't gotten around to fixing it up (mostly because I can't seem to decide on exactly what to do with it.  I was going to put it into the guest bath, but I changed my mind, so now I don't know where to put it, either!)

Door, mirror...re-do the entire craft room design because I've spent so long being a third of the way through the green-white-black thing that I started in there *two years ago* that I'm SICK of looking at it already (ironing board? just recovered it last month, you say? what ironing board?)  And of course, I have fabulous new ideas.

Not that any of them are remotely crystallized in my head yet; but here's a hint, to carry you through the weekend...

Design*Sponge

Everyone have an awesome weekend!  :o)




* No, I didn't tape off the glass panes first. The last time I tried that with a window I ended up scraping goo off the glass with a razor blade, which resulting in cutting myself and ruining my nails..  I'm a great cutter-inner, and I much prefer to just take care to begin with, and wipe off the occasional "oops" with a damp rag as I go.  :B


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Weekend List

I did manage to get a curtain up behind the computer desk to conceal the computer cords, but it needs some adjustment, and the cords themselves still need wrangling, so I don't have "after" pictures yet.  I'll do that tonight, though.

I also did a bit of de-cluttering around the living room and dining room, moved some art around and added a new piece, and re-arranged some of the musical instrument storage. 

So that's what's up next in here for this week - stay tuned.  Hope you're having a better Monday than I am! ;)

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Coming Attractions

Things I've Done In the Past Few Days About Which I Have Not Yet Blogged: 

• moved the sari quilt from the wall in the bedroom to a wall in the living room (much, much better there!)
• hung something up on the bedroom wall in its place that I don't like there, which will be coming back down any day now
• [Kress] purchased a *beaufitul*  hand-painted Kali+Shiva fabric wall hanging at the little Indian shop at the renaissance festival on Saturday (called Kala Gurjari, but alas, they don't have a website)  
• (Also purchased:  shoulder bag made from wool hand-woven tapestry from here, pair of green wrap-pants and a deep blue embroidered kurta from here, and some new incense from my favorite incense maker, here (it's pure incense - no stick, so, no burning-stick smell when you get to the end!)  ...None of which has anything to do with decor, but...squee!! :) 
• got off my butt finally and sewed covers for the seat cushions of the couch!  Now all I have left is to make the back cushions! 

More, and pictures, to come, later this week.  Today I'm dealing with MONDAY.  Boooo!  ;)

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I-I-Ikea

Weekend To-Do List:

1.   Halloween party:  check (also awesome!)
2.   Friend's wedding: check
3.   Garage cleanup: check!  (not completely finished; update & pics later this week)
4.   Conversion of office file cart to awesome red rolling tool cart:  check! (ditto on the pics)
5.   Ikea shopping trip with birthday gift card: check!

Actually, the first half of the Ikea trip was kinda frustrating.  I'd planned on picking up a cute new set of dishes to replace the old, beat-up, mismatched ones I currently use, only to find that they only had one color left in the store, and it was ugggg-lee.  My second choice? More expensive and less cute than advertised on the website.  I'd also thought about getting a new chair for my sewing table, but once again: more expensive and not as cute.  There was another chair that was on clearance for what I wanted to pay...but it was baby-pink.  Bleh.
 
I did, however, pick up:

The UNG DRILL mirror I've been lusting after for what seems like a million years.  I threw a poster into it and worked it into the art arrangement on my bedroom wall; but I'm really unhappy with the results.  I'll be playing with that later in the week.

This plastic cutlery tray which I'll be using in the newly-painted file tool cart in my workshop.

This cute little microwave dish cover , since I melted my last one several months ago by leaving it on a still-warm stove burner (oops).

A PRESSA ironing board cover in the black/white pattern at the top right of this picture.  I love the fabric, but had only seen it at Ikea in the form of bedroom textiles, which were too expensive to justify buying only to tear up and make into an ironing board cover.  I never could find anything similar in fabric stores, either - but there this was yesterday, already an ironing board cover, and for only five bucks! Awesome!

And, last but not least, another set of brown RITVA curtains so I can finish the couch cover!  The first part, if you're keeping score, happened in July.  Hi, my name is Laura, and I'm a chronic procrastinator...).









These are the weekends where I feel like I need to go back to work Monday, so I can rest.  Whew!


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B&A: Guest Bath Yay!

So, the office is moved, I spent my entire Saturday at the office busting my butt and then sleeping all day Sunday recuperating from really, really, REALLY over-doing it...but then I got back to work at home. SO...

Hey, look, it's a room I haven't posted about before!  That's because I haven't been happy with it.  I loved pretty much everything about the room except the shower curtain.  But yesterday I fixed that. :)

First, though, let me show you where the room has been:

 <-- once upon a time, I thought the only way to make my tiny guest bath feel bigger was to paint the entire thing white and add a tiny bit of color here and there.


It was okay, for a while...

and I did really love the results when I painted the cabinetry white (a decision I angsted about mightily).

But the aqua and white was...


...well, it was boring the CRAP out of me

So I decided, to hell with it, it's not like anyone's going to be fooled into thinking this bathroom was enormous, so why not just have FUN with it?  It's a little out-of-the-way room that people see for maybe 5 minutes when they come over, so why not go the opposite direction and go WAY over the top with it, to make it a WOW room and give folks something to look at while they're in there? (Even if it's a "wow" of "wow, what is this woman smoking?!"  LOL)

So I sponged over the entire room in an "olive-drab" sort of green I had sitting around from an old project;  then went over the lower half of the room a second time to darken the bottom half.

 I stenciled over the line between the top and bottom halves of the room in a soft gold...


(which I freaking LOVE, by the way)

(and the art in this shot is from Matt Manley's 2008 Rumi-quotes calendar)  -->


(I also did behind the big mirror, so that one day, when I get a smaller, framed mirror, I won't have to go back and make the paint job and the stenciling match - it's already there).

Oh, I also left about 10" down from the ceiling completely unpainted, on the theory that it might lend a dropped-ceiling look and maybe add a bit of visual height to the room since I couldn't magically create more square footage with color schemes...and it mostly works.  I really like the effect, anyway.


This red glass thing is probably my favorite item in the entire room - it was a Christmas ornament that I got on clearance last year at the hobby store in January for like a dollar.  I hung it on a length of jewelry chain from a pin in the ceiling.  :)

<-- but then there was this crazy magenta-and-orange *!~*CONTRAST OMG~*~  that...really didn't work.  It was neat, but a little too over the top.

These are the same magenta sheers that are in my bedroom, by the way (Ikea's SARITA). :)












I really wanted a sari-looking curtain in there, but hadn't been able to find any (or any suitable material) that was remotely affordable - until yesterday morning, when Kress and I hit the fabric store early to get the rest of his Halloween costume together.  There I found:

This GORGEOUS teal taffeta, on sale for $4 a yard!




Which I promptly hemmed...

...put a rod pocket at one end with some fabric leftover from another project (because I didn't want to waste any of the taffeta on a pocket, I wanted the extra couple of inches for curtain length).

...and then painted a border print with the same stencil I used on the bathroom walls.  I dried the paint with my hair dryer as I went along so that I wouldn't have to wait for the paint to dry, so that the process would go faster.







And WALLA! 

(there's supposed to be a brown glass knob on that cabinet door, oops)

whoa, camera, slow down on the flash there!  *is blind*

Ta-da!  :)


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FRIDAY!

Whee!  Weekend!  ...wheekend?  LOL.

On the Agenda...

1.  Sewing Room Shelves
Two to move in, one (possibly two) to move out - one's getting a fresh coat of paint and going into my bedroom closet - and two to hang in the sewing room closet.

"organization" 

2.  Artwork
I have a canvas I'm halfway through, one backgrounded, and several sketches I need to develop - and I think some sketches I want to make fantastic and maybe sell as just...framed sketches. New territory! 

what's this?

3.  Gardening
I'm also in the process (for about two months now) of cleaning up and removing various gardens around my place, to create a clean slate on which to work with new landscaping designs -the end result of which will be a lovely, shady outdoor space in the back to hang out in, and simplified-beautified front gardens that make a better statement than "the woman who lives here doesn't have time to work in the garden" like it does now, LOL. Wish me luck!

ah, if only it still looked like this...

Pics next week!

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Newts & Weekend Plans

I've hardly done anything at all this week! Woe!  Stupid shoulder.  It's healed now, has been for a couple of days, but I didn't want to push it.  Which turns out to have been a good idea, considering that it got mad at me for trying to pick up a tub of cat litter with my left hand yesterday at Target. 

But the weekend brings us more stuff to do.  If all goes well, I'll get the rest of the kitchen painted, and the dining room and entry hall, and have lots of nifty pictures for you. 

I may or may not refinish a small, 2-d dresser from my bedroom this weekend, too.  That sounds like more than it is - all I have to do is clean the surface and paint it, and add a slab of wood to the top so it'll support weight.

See, I keep newts.  They're awesome.  But I lost three of them this Spring - two were very old, and one had a serious infection that was getting better, but took a sudden turn for the worse and killed her before I could do anything about it. 

Steve, my one remaining nooticle, got her own tank last night - I spent about two hours tearing down the old ones and setting up a newer, nicer, but smaller, tank for Steve.  Hence the mini-dresser and reinforced top:  a tank full of water weighs quite a bit! 

So, more on that next week.

Romeo & Lita,  1997-2010

Oregon Newts (Taricha granulosa)

M

Margaret, 2003-2010

a Chinese Warty Newt (Paramesotriton chinensis)

Steve 

an Algerian Ribbed Newt (Pleurodeles nebulosus)

...who I thought was a boy until she started laying eggs, lol. 

Hence the name. 

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