Befores and Afters, for Real This Time

In a fit of "I-can't concentrate-until-I-get-things-organized" I cleaned the studio yesterday and had the good sense to take photos of it before I let it get all messy again. I'd still like to improve the storage setup, so more of my supplies can be tucked out of sight, and coordinate the furniture some more, but for now, you can consider these the Official Befores and Afters (more renovation pictures way back in these posts and here and here).

BEFORE

AFTER

My new, lovingly hand-oiled oak desk and hutch. It's red oak, and, unfinished, had this dusky rose color, but unfortunately, finishing the desk meant getting rid of that color, and I had no choice, because I am always spilling things. A shame.

The funniest thing about this picture, in my opinion, is the Diet Mountain Dew, because I swear I hadn't had a Mountain Dew in ten years before this week. I'm a Diet Dr. Pepper girl myself, but when I run out, I need something carbonated, anything, as long as it doesn't have sugar. I just don't like the aftertaste of sugary sodas, which is also funny, since most people say the opposite. But at least Splenda doesn't ferment in your mouth.

The thing that is characteristic of me is that there are three beverages right next to each other. I've been known to have up to four at one time, and I will drink periodically from each one. You never know what you might have a taste for at any given second. And those beverages are also right above the computer. Also characteristic. I like living dangerously.

(That's, clockwise from the bottom left: a drawing from when I was five that my mom framed and recently gave to me (but I broke the glass), in which Cinderella apparently has a baseball glove on her right hand, which I think is just so cool; my college graduation gift from my grandmother, which really should also have glass over it; a beautiful art heart from Tinker with a golden Gypsy singing to the stars; a cool ceramic hanging that I bought from the local high school kids at a craft fair; and a 50 cent Paddington Bear print I found at a thrift store. You know, now that I think about it, maybe it was Paddington Bear who inspired my love of travel. Hmmmm.)

As you can see, we have yet to put outlet/switch/open-hole-in-the-wall covers over anything.

My work surface, complete with freshly stretched watercolor paper (which is why I had time to clean). By the time I realized the first shot I took was blurry and came back to take a second, it was getting dark, but this is usually a nicely lit place to work. It's my new drafting table, which is cheap and flimsy and handles the abuse of spilled ink and my elbows very well without complaining, too much, although every once in a while it shifts suddenly, as if there were a small earthquake, which is quite nerve-wracking when I have a freshly-dipped loaded pen in my hand. But hey, life is meant to be an adventure.

The treasure chest holds my good pen nibs. Appropriate, I'd say.

The mousepad I designed and the monthly calendar that does its collateral duty beautifully: soaking up the coffee I spill.

The magnets I unceremoniously stole from the fridge.

I've fixed the links on the last post. Have a good Wednesday, my friends.

I Can Fly!

Not really, although it is one of my dreams.

Actually, what I can do is spread my arms all the way out and not touch the table on the left or the bookcases on the right. That's a big deal in a room that's only nine feet wide. I'm 5'9", so that's almost six feet of furniture-less space (Did you know, your fingertip-to-fingertip distance is the same as your height? You're square, or circular, according to that Leonardo guy).

So here's a before picture:

As you can see, it was a bit of a mess. Now, I've tidied and left all the junk that wouldn't fit on the dining room table. Where it belongs.

And now:

In the process, I spent some good quality time with my books and made more fun discoveries. Like this:

I have no idea where that came from. That's my spare change tin. Usually I open it and find quarters, dimes, nickels. You know. American money. Since I live here, that's what's I find to be most practical. But yesterday, I opened up the tin, and that's what I saw. Five shillings.

Very strange.

It is fitting, however, since this is the outside of the coin tin:

Maybe it's a magic coin. Which would explain why I can't find my coin tin today, at all. It's not even in the pile on the dining room table. Clearly, it's been spirited away by whoever left the five shilling coin.

Yeah. I read a lot of fantasy novels.

Speaking of coins, Montana, Montana, where are you? I'm waiting...

Weaving Our Home Back Together

You know how you never really notice how things were until they've changed?

I had no idea exactly how far-reaching the chaos caused by our renovations stretched. But we do live in a small house and removing all the furniture from one room meant the rest of the house had to be almost entirely rearranged. Not only that, but the armoire that I had been using as an art supply cabinet is taking back its place as a "china/tablecloth" cabinet in the dining room (only I would use a china cabinet in an office, an armoire in a dining room and a dresser in the living room. Although the last one is just temporary.).

Now we are slowly putting the house back together. And what surprises me the most is how good this makes me feel. Just to be able to put the placemats in one place, and the tablecloths in that same place... that's serenity. I feel so much calmer already. And I didn't even realize how un-calm I really was.

It will take us a week or so to get it all back, but I'll post a few "corners of my home" pictures then.

Teapots

Carolyn's post on teapots prompted me to take this picture of the two teapots my grandmother gave me a few years ago, sort of off-handedly, out of her own collection. They're sort of an odd couple, wouldn't you say? But especially precious to me now, since Nana died in June.

I pulled them off their crowded shelf to take this picture, and promptly discovered that the blue and white one is filled with Hershey's kisses and a few Lindt Lindor Truffles, the discovery of which made me feel wonderful. Now, I happen to know that Al gave me that chocolate for Christmas last year, but I don't think it could be bad, do you? I might have to try it and find out.

Does chocolate go bad? Hmmm. Usually I can and will eat anything, but in my weakened state (can you hear Ferris Bueller right now?), I don't know if it is such a good idea. If it made me sick, well, do you think chocolate-induced illnesses are covered by health insurance?

What a debate to be having with myself, when really, I should be making some dinner.

Guess WHAT??!!

I'm back in the studio. WHEW.

HOORAY!

Okay, so there are still a few last details left unfinished. Like outlet covers. But I could. not. wait. another. day. So we moved all the furniture back in, and I am happily ensconced in a room that is visually much warmer and more inviting that I could have dreamed when we began the project, even without outlet covers (and curtain rods). All I really thought we were going to do was raise the foundation and get rid of that nasty paneling. Instead, we created something very special.

Many thanks to the people who helped us along the way, to family and friends who have been so understanding and forgiving while my brain has been dust-clogged, and to all of you have been so encouraging and interested in the goings-on. You all made it much easier and more pleasant to endure.

And of course, a very big thank you to my husband, Al, who, after all, raised a house all by himself.

Finally, a special shout-out to Gus the Cat, who was shut up in various rooms in the house throughout the process, and still manages to purr when I pick him up.

So....

This was my office/studio on Friday, October 13:

(Should have turned the light on for this one. Sorry.)

With the furniture in, it looks exactly the same on camera, but it actually doesn't in person-- this camera with its overbearing flash does not do this room justice -- but Al and I have been discussing getting new furniture, anyway, perhaps a corner ensemble that will work as both computer desk and painting table to go in this corner.


In the meantime, I tried different arrangements to see if I could keep the cat off the painting table on his way to look out the windows, but to no avail. The furniture just wouldn't fit any other way (the room is only 9 feet by 9 feet). So I gave in.


And here's my new storage cabinet where I wanted to put it originally. It is covered in the sheet music for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and I was careful that the very first page in the upper left corner be the beginning of "Ode to Joy," because I think every piece of furniture should bring a little joy:


And where it ended up, across the room (all nine feet of it):


I will post more detailed pictures and different angles, along with before shots of the cabinet, which are worth seeing, in a separate post soon.

The studio...

is pretty much done. At least, I'm back in it.

You can see pictures of the renovation process from beginning to end here.

It's beautiful. I'm very proud of it.

So close...

We finished laying the floor last night and now we have only to cut and paint molding and window trim and put up outlet covers, etc. We'll most likely do this on Friday, and I should be back in the studio before the weekend is over. I am so excited.

The floor looks absolutely gorgeous.

Of course, now I'll need new furniture. I'm refinishing one storage item right now, about which I am very, very excited. I'll post pictures of that when it's in place.

Next, once we have all of the debris out of the garage, I want to build a custom painting table. Since I have no experience building furniture (if you don't count trying to make a prefab desk that didn't work, work), I want to keep it as simple as possible for now, so I think I will start with something like this. I'd like to add another drawer and I'd like to extend the top out further so it is more of a desk than a table. But I like the basics of it very much and it will give me an excuse to use the new miter saw and the table saw I talked Al into buying (as if he needed that much persuading... but he was trying to stick to the budget while I just kept insisting it would pay for itself. I think it already has).

Almost Finished...

Well, the delay in finishing the studio/office renovations has lengthened by weeks thanks to Other Things Happening, but we have been working as hard as we can, and we are so close to being done, I can smell it. Oh, wait, that's the glue I'm smelling.

The last drywall screw goes in. Whew. I'm not saying I wouldn't hang drywall again. But I'm glad this batch is done.


This was before we realized the drywall tape really wasn't staying down.


So we had to come up with a solution. And that was to make stucco! I like stucco. Stucco reminds me of California, which I miss every day. Now I have California inside. This is just the beginning of the finish, before the textured paint was added.


This is after -- and the best shot I have with a realistic depiction of "Honey Moon." Ah, so rich and warm and buttery and honey-like. And it has no lead in it, so if I get hungry, I can lick the walls. Which I might do. I like the paint that much.


There are tremendous benefits to being married to an electrician. One, he can teach me to do cool things, like installing outlets (me being a girl who shocked herself installing an extra phone jack). Two, if I don't feel like risking life and limb playing with wires, he'll do it. Thank you, honey.


The ceiling fan has a remote. Amazing. Of course, our ceilings are so low, I can touch them while barely even reaching, and the chain for the ceiling fan nearly brushes my head. But just in case my arm hurts, there's a remote.

I don't think this looks like me, but I do think I look skinny in this picture, so I'll keep it.

Down goes the first row.


On Day One of floor-laying, we learned that two humongous tubes of glue don't go very far. We had to stop and then buy a CASE of glue tubes the next day.



This is where we are now. The last few rows have to be mitered to fit in with the strangely angled staircase, so we had to call it quits for the day. And now our plans will be postponed again as we must go out of town this weekend. But we're almost done.

A complete set of photos can be found here. These aren't for the faint-hearted. There are 69 of them.

By the letters S and W

S is for scrapbooking

When I lived in Germany in 1991 and Prague in 1995, I kept scrapbooks, one in each place. They were pretty simple. This was shortly before the explosion of scrapbooking as a serious hobby (or perhaps, the re-explosion), and although I decorated the pages a bit, my focus really was on keeping a visual record of what I did while I was in those places, to supplement my journals, as opposed to making intricate layouts. And I'm glad I have them, because they do help me remember. Maybe one of these days I will post some pictures.

In the meantime, however, you can take a look at the scrapbooks of L.M. Montgomery, one of my two very favorite authors (the other is Madeleine L'Engle).

W is for work, writing and walls

Today I go back to work on a freelance writing job, so my entries may or may not be sporadic.

The office hit another snag this weekend, but one which I believe we solved. We primed the walls and still found that we could see the drywall tape through the walls and it looked awful. So we came up with a solution which I think is beautiful but which took us an extra day to implement. Pictures to come. Now we are on track to prime tonight, paint tomorrow and, I hope, lay the hardwood flooring over the next week, in pieces each evening after we are both finished work. Thank you to everyone for your kind comments and encouragement!

I can't get the dust out of my clothes.

Sometime soon, I will be back in my "honey moon"-painted painting (and everything else) studio, and I hope to bring you REAL befores and afters then, but here's what we've done so far.

The 9 days we had set aside to fix our foundation, gut the office/studio and refinish it, and replace the bathroom floor have passed, and we have accomplished ALMOST everything we intended to do. We would most likely be done -- we were two days ahead at one point -- but I got very sick early on, and missed about two days, and was only at 50 percent for another day or two.

Here's a sample of our progress. The rest of the photos are here.

At the beginning, there was a cart. And then there were five carts.



Who says punching your fist through a wall isn't fun?



This, times five thousand, came out of our ceiling and off our walls.



I thought I would never want to see this avocado green linoleum from the bathroom again, but now I gleefully stare at the photo and shout, "You are GONE! Bye-bye!"



This is the hole Al cut in the floor to ease the pouring of the concrete to support the new foundation posts. Yeah, that bathrug? It didn't survive. That's okay. The bathroom is next on the list to be renovated from top to bottom, and we'll get a nice one, then.


Here's Al with some of his handiwork. Do you SEE how nice that new beam/floor joist/whatever-it's-called is? Do you KNOW how nice it is to have a level floor where once there was a four-inch difference across the room and every time I took a bath, I was certain the tub would crash through the rotted floor in the middle of the bath?

All hail my husband, the lifter of houses.



This is how we intended to tile the floor. And I still think it would have been lovely. But even after all that work and the pouring of leveling compound, the bathroom floor still is a bit wavy, and we decided the tiles would crack too easily.


So we did this instead.


And all that time I was afraid to carry the boxes of tile, for fear I'd drop one and the tiles would crack into a thousand tiny little pieces. (The grout still needs to be cleaned up a bit, but it will be a while before the bathroom is totally renovated, anyway). By the way, that's our new toilet. It flushes with just one finger. Not only that, but the seat is a fancy schmancy seat, and if you tap it ever so lightly, it closes ever so slowly, all by itself. I spent a good 15 minutes tapping it and watching the seat go down with a quiet whisper, whoooooooooooooosh, and I am not ashamed to admit that.

When the ceiling in the office came down, we learned that the attic floorboards above are made of recycled materials:


I left the packing list there for the discovering pleasure of anyone who might someday redo this office again.

This was the first piece of drywall to go up:


Then followed many days of effort -- sweat, tears, frustration and satisfaction -- with a little help from my friends (sorry, it's the only photo I've got, Laurie and Jess):


Here's me, measuring drywall with my 24-year-old big yellow Brownie pencil (I knew I would need it someday), right about where my painting chair used to be:


And yesterday, last night around 7, precisely, Al put the last piece of drywall in (well, not technically, because there's a small piece to put in the closet after all the flooring comes out of there, but it certainly FELT like the last piece to me):


So, what did we accomplish?

We gutted the office, raised the foundation (which involved much concrete pouring and heavy lifting on Al's part), replaced the bathroom floor, leveled the floors (150 square feet?) with leveling compound, tiled the bathroom floor, installed a new toilet (worthy of an entire blog entry in istelf), and put up new drywall in the office.

We still must: tape, mud, prime and paint the drywall in the office, put up the new ceiling fan-light fixture in the office (if, that is, the ceiling isn't too low), and install our new bamboo wood flooring in the office and hallway.

I apologize to anyone who has emailed or called in the last week and is waiting to hear back from me. Please bear with me. We'll be working in the evenings for the rest of this week, too, and probably next weekend, and then, we hope, we can put all the furniture back in place, and get back to a semblance of normal life. Until, that is, we renovate the bathroom.