In keeping with the theme..
.. started earlier this summer, I spent my holiday weekend once again painting, this time in the bedroom.
Before painting (all pictures are clickable thumbnails):
You may or may not have noticed that the walls in the room were actually two colors - not in an accent wall kind of way, but in a two walls are pale aqua and two walls are yellowish white kind of way. The ceiling is, of course, different from both former wall colors (the second picture shows all three the best), but fortunately it’s white so I opted not to paint it. I did, however, decide that it needed to be primed:
I loved that they tinted the primer to match the paint - it really made it a lot easier, especially because you could tell that a single coat of the paint wouldn’t have covered the lighter paint underneath - as you can see if you look closely at the primed walls. I still ended up doing two coats of paint because I must not have mixed as thoroughly as I should have at some point and the brushwork was noticeably different from the stuff done with the roller. In the end, though, it looks pretty good:
I still need to go back and do some touch up in spots where the tape pulled a little bit of the paint away, as well as some spots on the ceiling that I didn’t notice got smudged, but that is pretty quick work once I get around to it.
The reason for painting *right now* arrived today:
Evolution
From this..
(Clickable thumbnails, as always.)
..to this:
..to this:
And finally.. this:
Apologies for how blurry this one is..
I couldn’t match the original stain - partially because it’s a color that appears to no longer be made, but also because the original trim is no longer uniform, as you can see by looking at the right trim board. At some point, I will likely strip the original trim down to bare wood and stain it to match the top piece and doors - both of which are new wood - but for now, it’s at least no more mismatched than much of the rest of the house. *shrug*
Sometime tonight or tomorrow, I’ll patch the couple small chunks of wall that didn’t get covered (there’s a small one where you can see the grey of the original wall above the original door and another toward the bottom of the right side) with drywall compound so I can sand it and have it ready to paint Saturday. Everything I’ve read about painting walls read tells me that I need to first do a coat of dark primer, followed by at least two coats of paint and that I must wait at least 24 hours between coats. I’m not quite sure I trust that, but if it’s actually what’s needed, I at least have the long weekend in which to get it finished.
Victory is mine!
One of the reasons I fell in love with my house when we bought it is that it has hardwood floors throughout most of the rooms. Even though the upstairs bedrooms had carpeting pieced in and nailed down, we knew that the original floors were under the carpeting. The carpet in what’s now the master bedroom got ripped out before we even moved in - it didn’t even cover the whole floor and looked yucky, so it went. The carpet in the two smaller bedrooms, though, has stayed.
I was disheartened a few weeks ago to learn that the maroonish carpet in the guest bedroom is covering, at least in one spot in what is now the shelved half of the closet space, a place where someone at some point cut a rectangle of floor out and replaced it with plywood. I’m hoping that’s the only spot in that room where they did it because at some point I want to cut the carpet at the closet and pull it out of the rest of the room.
The discovery of the damage in the guest room made me a little nervous about ripping out the carpet in the den - we’ve found some pretty amazingly messed up “home repair” in this house, so it’s always a bit of a surprise when we uncover something new - but it seems the carpet in the den was just for comfort and not to cover some abomination:
(Clickable thumbnails, as usual.)
Don’t mind the bit of mess on the floor - I’d swept but not yet mopped when I took it; I assure you it’s much cleaner now! There is a bit of damage to the floor boards from what appears to have been a bed that sat in the same spot for quite some time:
But.. all things considered, I’m extraordinarily pleased to find the floor mostly intact - or at least as intact as the flooring in the rest of the upstairs!
Just dipping a toe in..
Things I’ve done since returning from a week’s vacation in Colorado*:
1. Attended my 15-year high school class reunion. Remembered that sometimes just having been in the same place at the same time, even for an extended period of time, doesn’t mean you actually have anything in common with people**.
2. Bought a Select Comfort, aka Sleep Number, bed. Technically, I did this the afternoon before the class reunion, but I figured the reunion was more likely to amuse people. Still, dropping a couple grand on a new bed and bedding still deserves a mention. I don’t have it yet - they’re s’posed to call this week to arrange a time to deliver it and set it up - but I have the bedding, which is good because this afternoon I..
3. Tried to pick out paint colors for the bedroom. Yeah, I’m sort of seriously thinking I need to coordinate the color of the *walls* in my bedroom with my bedding.. *sigh*. The new bedding is a caramel/gold with caramel or olive green sheets (depending on which set is clean at the time). I sort of think this means the wall would not look as good in the blues I’d originally been thinking for the bedroom (I’m worried they’ll be too “cool” - if I’d stayed with the forest green theme I’ve had for years it would have been okay, but not so much with the caramel and olive), and am now sort of surprisingly leaning toward a pale pale purplish pink (*cringe*) or a pale purplish blue for three of the walls and a dark, deep burgundy for the fourth***. I have paint samples to bring home tonight to see how they look with the bedding and the bedroom trim, but have hopes of painting *before* the new bed arrives, so a decision is sort of imminent.
4. Repotted the hugely overgrown aloe in my office. It was in serious need of being split so while I was out at Home Despot this afternoon to get paint samples, I picked up a bag of potting soil and split the aloe into six sections, five of which I had pots for. The sixth had grown almost horizontally due to the overcrowding of the original plant, so I pitched it rather than try to repot it.
* Yup, a week. Nope, I didn’t take a single picture. It was beautiful and exactly what I needed, though, just as a vacation should be.
** I s’pose in theory this could be said about family, too. *shrug*
*** Is there any particular “right” way to choose which wall is the accent wall? I’m sort of thinking it should be one of the two closet walls because they’re shorter..
Closets
Right then.. this post is mostly for my mother, who wanted to see pictures of the progress on the new closets in the bedrooms.
This is the main bedroom new closet:
(All pictures are clickable thumbnails.)
The doors still need to be stained, but I did the top trim board this morning. The stain is a smidge darker than the original varnish (and the trim board on the right is considerably lighter than the rest for some reason - will eventually have to strip it down and stain it to match), but I think once it’s dry and has a coat of poly on it, it will be close enough. The doors might get done this week, but more likely they’ll wait until later in August when I have another free weekend.
The guest bedroom closet, I have to admit, is sort of my favorite. Maybe because it makes that room really a bedroom now:
*
Not the greatest pictures - it’s a small room and we still need to figure out what to do with the bed and desk that were in there because we gave up some floor space to create the closet - and the trim wasn’t fully finished yet when I took them, but at the moment they’re the only ones I have with the doors on. Previously there was a truly horrid clearly slapped together for the sole purpose of being able to sell the house as a 3-bedroom box that was supposed to be a closet; it’s gone now:
Dad did the work to frame the closet and trim the wall out, but I still need to stain it all. He used reclaimed trim from the house - some from the bathroom (the uprights), which he had to sand down to remove all the nasty, icky, yucky green paint, and some from the other bedroom closet.
He also framed in a wall behind the center support - which we turned into a small bookshelf and is the perfect size for trade paperbacks:
And finally, I started staining the closet doors for this one last night:
I’m working on filling some gouges in the recovered trim, but hope to sand and get that trim stained this weekend so that at least the guest bedroom is finished. Except for the fact that we need to paint now since they apparently painted the room *after* putting in the excuse for a closet.. *sigh*
* Yes, that would be a home for my stash.. Exciting, no?!
PSA and more to come..
From The F-Word:
We are a team of researchers from the Counseling Psychology program at The University of Memphis who are studying the effects of client secret keeping on therapy… If you have used at least 1 session of psychotherapy/counseling services in the past we would appreciate your help with this project. We have placed the research questionnaire online. The survey should take no more than 10 minutes to complete. There is no identifying information on the survey and all responses are anonymous.
We are very excited about this project, are looking forward to the results of this study, and hope you will be part of it. Thank you for your assistance with our project.
Sincerely,
Frank Fedde, M.A., Dipl. Soz. Paed (FH)
Suzanne H. Lease, Ph.D.
Counseling Psychology homepage: http://cpsy.memphis.edu
In other news, dad finished the guest bedroom closets this week. They look *awesome*. I have pictures of them mostly complete and will post them tonight or tomorrow. This weekend, assuming the weather cooperates, I’ll be staining the trim and doors for all the new closets, so there may be more pictures of them finally done-done soon too.
KnittyOtters Getting to Know You Contest
I’ve a bit of a weakness for otters, so I couldn’t resist KnittyOtter’s Getting to Know You Contest in honor of her 200th post! Congrats!
(For pictures of recent knitting, skip below the questionnaire..)
1.)How long have you been knitting?
Hrm.. really, pr’bly around 8 or 9 years. I learned pr’bly 10-11 years ago but didn’t really start knitting regularly until I went to grad school.
2.) How long have you been knitting socks?
About as long as I’ve been knitting.. pr’bly a year or so less. I was a bit ambitious and decided that I wanted to do my first socks from cotton.. I know better now - both how better to do cotton socks and that wool is generally more forgiving for socks! I also learned *after* making a few pairs where the toes were twisted out of alignment from the heel that I was twisting each and every stitch, which caused the tube of the sock to spiral on itself. Yeah.. not so useful.
3.) What do you do with a problem like Maria?
Let her loose in those hills and lock the doors. She was terribly romantic, and didn’t really strike me as the survivalist type. At most she’d have made it to the first real Alpine snow fall.
4.) What is your all time favorite sock yarn?
I don’t think I have one, which might be sacrilegious. At the moment, I rather like the Trekking that I started working with.. hrm.. several months ago. Should pr’bly get back around to working on those..
5.) Toe Up or Cuff Down?
Either, both? I like the economy of toe up socks, but there are so many patterns that are cuff down that I can’t be bothered to convert, so I’ll just knit them as written.
6.) What’s your favorite color (this week or for all time)? Do you have a color family/season/palette you prefer? Any colors you just can’t stand?
Blue. (Which brings me back to that lovely Trekking.. really need to pick those up again..) For family or palette or whatnot.. jewel tones, fall colors.. deep, saturated colors. I’m not fond of visually striking combinations in most yarns - the pansy colorway I used for my Jaywalkers still sets my teeth on edge a bit - but I love it in nature. And I really love Ruth’s hand-dyed nature-inspired yarns.. they’re all just so gorgeous!
7.) Do you have a pet(s)?
Yes. One (old) little black dog, Jalapeño, or just Jali for short.
8.) Babies: Oven Roasted or Barbecued?
Grilled, actually, with a little garlic and butter. 
9.) Besides socks what is your favorite type of thing to knit?
Heh. Um, depends on my mood. At the moment, I’ve been stricken with the urge to start sweaters (see below for proof!), but I could just as easily pick up a lace project. *shrug*
10.) What’s your favorite scent?
Mm.. that’s a hard one. There are way too many. Rain. Ocean breezes. Coffee. Campfire smoke. Fajitas. Good wine. Warm skin. Clean sheets dried in the sun. Bacon. Fresh cut grass.
11.) What music are you really loving right now? Like a song or a band?
Went on an Ani kick this weekend while with several friends, but lately I’ve been rather taken with Matt Nathanson, Gaia Consort, and the Paperboys.
12.) How many pairs of socks have you hand knit?
Uh.. Well, I have 8 or 9 in my own sock drawer, and I’ve knit at least that many as gifts, so call it 20ish?
13.) What’s your favorite treat? Salty or Sweet?
Both. There’s a jar of trail mix on my desk that is my ideal snack - peanuts, cashews, almonds, raisins, and M&Ms. As a child, I was inordinately fond of ants on a log and one of my favorite oddities is melted caramel between saltine crackers (think s’mores, but.. different).
14.) What was the most interesting thing you smelled yesterday. Not good or bad necessarily, just the thing that stuck out most so that you actually took notice of it.
Hrm. Shampoo. I’m out of my usual brand so used whatever was handy and I noticed it all day because it wasn’t what I’m used to.
15.) Needles - DPN’s: Wooden, metal or plastic?
Wood or bamboo. Metal is too hard on my hands and plastic just feels wrong. I almost exclusively use Harmony needles these days.
16.) What is your favorite sock pattern that you’ve knit? What do you recommend?
I really liked the 9-to-5 socks, but was also taken enough with Baudelaire to knit it twice.
17.) The last Question: If you were stuck on a deserted island who would you want with you, what knitting would you want with you and would you ever want to leave?
Kim & Tori. And maybe a chef or two. And if the island had good grape stock and clean water, we wouldn’t even need to leave to get more wine.
Right then.. since I’m on the topic, thought I’d post a picture to prove that I actually was knitting this weekend past:
(As usual, all photos are clickable thumbnails.)
That is, in fact, the start of a cabled sweater! Yes, it’s mid-July, but I have hopes of completing it in time to be worn this fall. Given my knitting track record of late, that’s being fairly optimistic, but here’s hoping this is just the little shove I need to get back into the swing of things.
And just because I was out in the garden again last evening, I’ll leave you with a few pictures from there:
These are, again, the Hollyhock from the roses back by the garage, but I don’t remember having all four colors in bloom at the same time in the past, so wanted to be sure to capture it.
This is a blue sea.. something. I never remember the right name.. I just call it the Blue Alien Plant because that’s what it looks like. It’s in the front yard, between a couple balloonflowers which should start blooming any day now.
And it’s a wrap..
If there’s one thing I’ve learned this week it’s that the new color in the dining room is rather difficult to capture correctly in a photo.. All the same, here’s everything more or less put back where it belongs.
(All photos are clickable thumbnails. Yes, that same corner seems to be perpetually in shadow.. it’s not really any darker than the others.)
I promise it really doesn’t look like pumpkin pie.. much.. except in some light.. *sigh* All the same.. I still like it, so even if it does sometimes, I’m okay with that.
Beautiful (and Busy) Saturday
(All photos are clickable thumbnails.)
The sky has been this amazing blue all day. Seemed like a good evening to take some pictures of the gardens..
A few weeks ago I was at a friend’s house and couldn’t come up with the name of this plant. Of course, now that my own are blooming, I remember that they’re Hollyhock. These bloom in the rose bushes by the garage…
..almost done for the year, but still lovely and fragrant. There’s been a slight breeze running all day so the whole yard smells of the roses.
We’ve wanted for awhile to clear out the old raspberry patch and Jack got motivated by our plans to have friends over Friday to get it taken care of. It’s created a really gorgeous spot in the backyard that has shade most of the day.. it’s where we spent a large part of yesterday afternoon with our guests.
And this, the tree behind the apple tree, is apparently a Mulberry Tree. Who knew?! *smile* Jack cleaned up some lower branches on both this and the apple tree and we’ll eventually seed grass in the dirt from the raspberry patch to finish things up.
The phlox are starting to bloom in the side garden, and the lilies - nearly as tall as I am - are out in force.
I love the combination of colors in the side garden, and how they stack up when you look up the walk toward the street.
Unfortunately, that was about all the time I got outside today because we were busy inside painting the dining room. Below is a set of before pictures - not terribly exciting, but nice for comparison:
The second corner was hard to get a shot of with decent light - the dining room, while it gets the most natural light of any room except the bedroom, is on the north side of the house, so the light is all indirect. It seems I only took a couple shots after we’d done the first coat..
.. but got the full set again while the second (and final) coat was drying..
The colors are true (enough) on my monitor, but on the camera’s little screen, some of the pictures looked frighteningly bright orange. In reality, it’s a deepish butterscotch color and neither really too orange nor too brown, nor does it really glow. I was afraid it might look more like mustard once we got it on the walls, but I’m very happy with how it turned out. Once it’s really fully dry (tomorrow) we’ll pull the painter’s tape and put the furniture and such back in, which will be the real test for how we like it. I also have plans to stain the doorway into the laundry room (finally) and if I’m going to have the stain out, I’ll also pr’bly do the two closet doors and the top trim from the closet in the bedroom.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch..
Whee! Destruction is fun (or so I’m told.. I missed all of it *pout*)!
First things first.. As I drove up after work last night, I found Jack and my dad (wielding a chainsaw) finishing up this:
(All photos are clickable thumbnails, as usual.)
That used to look something more like this:
.. but without the snow.. Guess I don’t have a picture of that tree/bush/overgrowntreantcreature from spring or summer.. We’ve been meaning to take it out for awhile, but it wasn’t quite on the list for this week, so it was a bit of a surprise.
Also somewhat of a surprise from last night, but not so much in the whether as the what, were these:
Window at the top of the stairs.
Upstairs bathroom window.
Window at the bottom of the stairs.
Those are essentially really big window clings. We’ve talked about getting them for awhile, especially for the bathroom window since there’s not a shade over that one, and the window at the bottom of the stairs because there was a really nasty, ugly curtain thing on a chintzy little curtain rod that would fall off you if walked by it wrong, but since I had to work I didn’t get to help pick out the pattern. When Jack called to tell me what he’d picked out (”bamboo stalk things”), I couldn’t quite picture it and was nervous, but I really like it. It looks very neat and adds some privacy that we didn’t have before in a prettier way than a blind and a less annoying way than a curtain.
We also put in a cabinet organizer bit in one of the really big and utterly pointless kitchen cabinets that we keep pots and pans in, but I didn’t get a picture of that.
Today they moved onto one of the things that was actually on the docket for this week (the other being the fence in the backyard, which doesn’t look like it will actually get done at this point):
Yeah, that’s about what it looks like. They took out the closet wall in our bedroom. You can see in the top left of the photo where the wood door trim was; everything to the left of that was a wall this morning. Said wall made it nearly impossible to actually use most of that really big closet (it goes back almost 4 feet at the bottom). So in order to get more closet space, we decided to take out the wall and put in sliding doors.
And while they’re in there, they’re going to clean up the last of the plumbing nightmare left from the do-it-yourself-er’s that put the shower in the upstairs bathroom:
Uh, yeah.. that would be the chunk of wall that they took out to run the plumbing for the shower; the plumbing we took out last year when we took out the shower. The chunk that they then never bothered to repair, or even to block off, so that this little guy:
Could let his babies into our house. Yeah.. not very happy about that part.. the squirrels chewed through the fascia behind the gutter and have been running around *inside* the roof. This happened last year, but we didn’t know how they were getting in, just that we had a baby squirrel in the house for a few days. We figure out how they were getting in sometime this spring and are having the fascia repaired, but they had to order the board and it’s not in yet, so they’re up there again.. So dad and Jack are going to block up the wall and cover the hole so they at least can’t get in the house again before they fix the fascia.
That’s all for tonight! I need to go clear the dust off my bed so I’m not washing it out of my hair in the morning..
