from House Beautiful, October 2007
#1. Forget the blue "accent" wall and paint the entire room one colour. This, for me, is huge. It saves not only the cost of a can of paint ($50) but also two days painting time.
Psychologically, though, it's freeing. In the back of my mind has been a plan to revert my rooms to "neutrals" so that I can spend a bit of money a couple of times a year and totally change "the look" of my room. A couple of comments in the article on "Blues" from the latest issue of House Beautiful actually convinced me.
Be careful about blue in a north-facing room--it can get chilly. And it's hard to mix more than two blues together. They start to fight.--Thomas Jayne
and
"Blue is tricky, it can go gray and sad." Elissa Cullman. pp. 28, 30.(ahem, did I mention I fell in love with the "Belgium" look? Did you notice all the wood is unfinished? I can't help but wonder if I'll be sanding off all this work in the Cure Fall 08! We'll see if it grows on me.)
#2. I'm going to stain the drawer support units to match the desk. It can't match exactly: I'm working with different woods (plywood for the drawers and oak for the computer desk) so both the colour and the grain will be different. But I'm hoping that by mixing different coloured water based stains I can get close. And, I'll throw in the pine shelving too. Why not? Then the wall, as a whole, will look like one unit. That's got to be a good thing.
I was spinning my wheels a bit yesterday and today, not sure what to do. But now I can proceed.
--apply second coat of melamine to back of bookcase. This will free up the dining room table so we can move it into the kitchen, so we can move the kitchen table, so we can move the computer down to the basement (the next nearest phone hook-up location). That should all happen Friday.
--apply first coat of varnish to the little round table. (I'll be so HAPPY when I can get this dang thing done and gone. Now, I just have to find the assembly instructions!) Hopefully, that will be done by Friday or Saturday morning at the latest.
--sand drawer supports. (This is a LOT of sanding. Probably take a couple of days. I hope the weather holds!)
--so, Saturday, I should be ready to wash and spackle and sand the walls.
The husband has his days off on Sunday and Monday--so guess what he'll be doing! Yes, applying primer! and paint! (The handy husband has Tuesday off too, for Thanksgiving.) Dare I hope? One coat in the morning and one in the evening.
--pick up professionally framed needlepoint and deliver to Mom. She'll be so thrilled. I don't think either of us has ever had anything "professionally framed" before--and I went for the non-glare archival glass, double matting and everything!
--get "orangy" stain and more "chocolate" to stain the drawer units and pine shelving. I can work on this while the primer/paint dries.
So, that's that. I was even looking at new curtains while I was out running errands this afternoon. I can do orange! I can do green! I can do blue! I can do anything I want too!
4 comments :
Good for you on making the paint decision. That'll give you more flexibility, for sure. And if it feels "freeing" then that underscores that it's a good decision. (Interesting quotes on "blue"... just occured to me -- is there a good reason we talk about being sad as "being blue"?? Just wondering...)
And how wonderful to get the professional framing done! Is it needlework she did? you did? someone else did? (did I miss the explanation sometime earlier?)
No, you didn't miss the explanation earlier. The needlkepoint is actually by my Mom's sister and depicts three llittle girls, roughly similiar in shape and size and colouring to my Mom and her sisters. It's beautifully done.
Since about March of last year I've been helping my Mom clean out her place. 15 years of depression and pack-rat tendencies that go all the way back to the womb had made her house an extremely unpleasant place to be. So, we decided to stat decluttering. It's funny. I've watched her go from someone who went upstairs to an impassable hallway and say "I cn't find 27 things to get rid of." To someone who looks at a 2'x2' corner filled with ceiling to floor shelving holding books and binders and saying, "I want that bare." And away she goes. Anyway, we came across the needlepoint, glass broken, plastic frame askew...and I noticed that what motivates Mom through the tough spots is a bit of decorating. So, since there's no way she could afford it, I presented it to her today with "This is Happy Mother's Day, Happy Birthday and, oh, Happy Thanksgiving!"
That's wonderful, Alana! What a delightful, thoughtful thing to do. And how good that your Mom is learning to see the beauty and peace of uncluttered spaces. (Depression can cause a feeling of being totally overwhelmed by all that surrounds a person, and it's too easy to just give up and let the stuff accumulate. It's amazing how freeing it can feel to actually get rid of the stuff that's been weighing so heavily. Been there, done that, so glad I've crawled out of the clutter!) I'm so glad for both your Mom and you that you're able to work on this together!
Oh -- and I 'splained my pillows-on-the-rocking-chair idea in a comment on my blog.
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