iseecerulean

day three

The wood is cut for the shelves, and has been primed...and the window and door trim has two coats of white paint.

day two

Primer is everywhere...in my hair, under my fingernails...

day one

My feet hurt, my back hurts...thank goodness I'm not doing this all by myself. 

The picture isn't much to look at...we got a lot done...the walls are floors are ready to be finished.

I'm tired...will type more later...I've got to go sit down.

ohhh...ahhh...

Eye candy

More eye candy

beautiful...

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  I killed the aphids, my roses are thanking me.

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Catmint...which is apparently very tasty. 

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  An untagged annual I bought on my last trip to the nursery.

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The turk's cap lilies are blooming.

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  The cherries are starting to ripen.

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It was a slow walk around the gardens this morning..everywhere I went Wakefield was right under my feet.

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  He almost squashed these before I could get a picture.

one more picture before I put the house away

I've got all the window trim done, the hearthstones in and the bedroom floor glued down.  Remember what a pain I said it was to cut the kitchen floor from linoleum?  It turns out that it's really easy to cut with scissors...who knew...

The rest of the floors are just lying there...I cut the rest of the pieces to finish the living and dining room floors, I'm going to put a piece of masking tape over them so they don't get lost before I get back to them. 

I ruined the fauxquet floor for the foyer...I forgot to cut the floor around where the door trim would go, and I was paying so much attention to getting the floor under the bottom stair tread without breaking the tread that I split the floor where it wouldn't go around the door trim.  I still have the second fauxquet floor that I made to see if I'd like a different pattern better, so I put that in instead...after I cut out space for the door trim.  It sits flat on the floor, so I don't think I'm going to  to glue it down...I'm just going to leave it alone so I don't mess this one up too.  Stupid door trim.

I'm looking forward to working on it in my new studio in a couple of weeks.  I cleaned off the dining room table after I got done taking pictures and am going to start clearing out the studio after I get done monkeying around here.  Matt said he could pop the cable connection through the other side of the wall into our bedroom, so that I could set up my Mac on my dresser next week...now you can get daily progress reports on the remodel...provided I'm not too tired at the end of the day to post them.

Los Fabulosos Cadillacs - El Genio Del Dub

I am totally digging this group...I can't understand a word they're singing, but that's okay.

blah

I made too long of a to-do list...knowing I'm not going to get it all done no matter how hard I work has given me the freedom to not work on it at all.  I do want to get the loose pieces glued into the house before I have to clean everything up, so I'm going to have to put some time in the next couple of nights instead of watching TV.  I'm seriously lacking in self-discipline.

I've got your box packed, Melinda, and am taking it to the post office today.  Only one frog jumped in...actually, it's a frog from Susan, it was in the last box that she sent me.  I love boxes of goodies.   

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Susan...because you were curious...

16 Absolute Unique Visitors

Saturday, June 20, 2009	6.45% (2)
Sunday, June 21, 2009	9.68% (3)
Monday, June 22, 2009	25.81% (8)
Tuesday, June 23, 2009	35.48% (11)
Wednesday, June 24, 2009	22.58% (7)

new colors

'green glass' and 'southern belle'

odds and ends

A teaser picture for Melinda...if I can find the right size box I'll mail it today.

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The Decorated Dollhouse:  How to Design and Create Miniature Interiors is a great book!  I bought it to read next week while I'm going to be without my morning Mac time...I started to flip through it last night to sneak a glance at the pictures but ended up reading it from cover to cover.

I also got Making Miniature Gardens..I peeked at the pictures in this one too, but haven't read it yet...just at a glance it looks like the instructions are lacking enough pictures...we'll see...

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My chandelier broke...sob.  I was gluing the light in the bottom when I dropped it on the table.  I think I can fix it, but I might have to tear it apart to make a new one.

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I picked out new colors for my room...a lighter green and a purple...Matt doesn't like them.  It's my room, so I get final say, but I'm going to pick up some more sample cards today to see if I can find something we both like.  He wants an even lighter green, practically a 'that white wall looks like it has a green hue'  green, which he's not going to get...I want color.  The purple is negotiable though.

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I spilled half a cup of coffee in my keyboard and the delete (backspace) key doesn't work now.  I don't think these come apart for cleaning, but I'm going to take it to the local Apple store during the remodel to see if they can fix it...if not, I'll have to buy a new one.

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I made a little progress with window trim in the dollhouse.  I'm not going to post any more pictures until the rooms are done...unless a problem crops up that I need help with.

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These came in the mail yesterday...they've been on my Etsy favorites list for almost a year...I finally bought them to congratulate myself on the raise I just got.  Whoo-hoo for me!

busy weekend

I got a lot done over the weekend...it feels good.

I watered gardens and planted flowers...installed the rest of the crown moulding and door trim in the dollhouse...got the rest of the window trim cut and painted...visited my Dad (on clean out the garage day...I came home tired and dirty)...and watched Wakefield chase that poor dumb chipmunk up the gutter downspout again.  I tried to get a picture of Wakefield trying to fit his head and front leg up the downspout, but every time I got close enough he stopped what he was doing and rolled over so I could rub his belly.

And...I'm so excited...bought the lumber and new flooring for my studio remodel.  Matt's car has been in the body shop all week (no accident, just touch up fiddly stuff) so he's been driving one of the work vans.  I figured as long as we had the van we should take advantage of it...Matt said that would be awfully hard on my back and his knees, so I had him take me to Home Depot instead.

color

I've got these 'bird boxes' on a shelf in my studio...I was getting something out of one yesterday and it dawned on me that they wouldn't fit it with the color scheme for my studio remodel.

I really like the new colors I chose...but I really like the bird boxes...

Should I really consider coordinating the colors of the whole room to these boxes...but I don't want the boxes to hide away somewhere because they don't fit in...

Am I being too fussy...probably.

I spent some time on the Behr website this morning, looking at color combinations...pairing the green with  plum or  pumpkin worked out okay...but I kept coming back to the blue I'd already picked out.

Maybe I should keep the green and blue combo, but jut look at different blues.

Do the two blues even clash?  Am I worrying about this for nothing?

Sigh...

mmm...it's bird flavored

hauntingly beautiful

progress is sooooo slow...

...but it's still progress.  I got the crown moulding painted and ready to install last night.  I was going to start on cutting the trim for the windows when I was done, but my honey made me pancakes for dinner because I came home from work grouchy...mmmmm, pancakes...with sausages...mmmmm, sausages...

I need to make a short to-do list of what I want to get accomplished before I have to clear out of the dining room for the remodel.

1. install crown moulding
2. find where the rest of the door trim disappeared to
3. finish trimming doors
4. trim windows
5. hang chandelier
6. finish rest of hearthstones
7. glue down upstairs floors
8. finish and glue down first story floors
9. make and install floor for tower room
10. put in baseboards in all but kitchen
11. put in wainscoting in dining room
12. put in banisters on first floor stairs
13. make bookcase for end of fireplace assembly alcove
14. make china cabinet for alcove under stairs
15. put up crown moulding in kitchen
16. make kitchen cupboards
17. install baseboard in kitchen

Oh my...there is no way I'm getting all that done in the next week.  Hopefully I can get through putting in the baseboards.

dumbass

I figured out how to cut the outside corners of the cove moulding...I felt so smart...but I felt more dumb, because once I figured it out it was sooo easy that I should have come up with the answer a lot sooner.  It is a simple 45 degree miter cut, as it seemed like it should be, I was just holding the trim in the miter box wrong, so the cut was wrong.  Dumbass.

Then...I emailed the ebay seller I bought the rugs from to tell (him? her? I don't know) that I ordered four rugs but only got three...then went to throw the empty envelope away and found the fourth rug...so had to email back that I did get them all.  Dumbass.

Some days I wonder about me...

So, anyway...I've got all the crown molding cut for the living room, library, bedroom and foyer...I've just got to give it coats of primer, paint, paint, and sealer tonight, then I can put it up tomorrow.

I didn't cut the crown molding for the kitchen yet, because first I've got to figure out what I'm doing with the alcove behind the stairs that I want to turn into a china cabinet.

another garden pic

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And speaking of things eating your rosebuds, Susan...what in the world are these on mine?

Ewww!

all kinds of goodies

I got a lot of mail today...the toilet and sink that have been on order forever...kitchen stuff and two cats to love up wiener dog, because miniatures.com was having a sale I couldn't pass up...and three more rugs from the same lady I bought the first from.  The big cream colored rug is the first one I bought, but I didn't think I'd shown it to you yet so I put it in the picture too.
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still trimming...

The crown moulding in the dining room is up...now I've got to tease out the remains of the yellow tack with a toothpick. 

The cove molding has lines running along it...which you might be able to see if you blow up the picture...I was going to glaze the trim to make the details pop before I installed it, but I forgot.  I'm not sure if I'm going to attempt to do anything with it now that it's glued to the wall...we'll see...

Instead of figuring out how to cut the outside corners of the cove moulding, I surrounded the top of the fireplace with straight trim.  I'm going to do the same in the living room, and connect the two across the top of the bookcase that's in the end.  I'm going to have to figure out the cuts when I move upstairs though, because I don't want to do the same thing in the library and bedroom...those rooms are less formal so it would look dorky.

I started the crown moulding in the living room...the flat pieces on the wall and ceiling are up, I have to finish with the cove piece.

It doesn't seem like it should take that long to cut a few pieces of wood, paint them, then glue them to a wall, but it takes forfreakingever.  I'm continually astounded at how time consuming this work is.

whew

Remember this major screw up?

This is how it looks now.

playing around with my camera

dilemma...

The fireplace assembly is crooked.  The fronts of the fireplaces are square to the side of the house, but the side of the assembly isn't.  I have to decide if I want to build up the wall on the left side to even them out, trim it out with thicker trim on the left, or just leave it alone, put a plant stand there and hope nobody notices. 

If I do play around with the wall I'm going to have to take up and re-do a couple of boards in the living room floor (the trim ones that run in front of the fireplace), but that shouldn't be a big deal.

You know I'm going to fix the wall, don't you...you know I can't leave things alone...and you're wondering why I'm even pondering what to do...

I did something!

I sealed the bookcase...then I cut, primed, painted, sealed and installed most of the crown moulding in the dining room.

I want the living and dining rooms to have big moulding, so I'm putting up a strip of trim on the wall, another strip of trim on the ceiling, then cove trim on top of those.  It's three times the work, but it should look really good when I'm done.

I'm not sure about cutting the cove trim...I know how to do it on inside corners, but I don't know how on outside corners...I'll have to think it through.

plans

It's official...provided any complications don't crop up...June 27-July 6 is Remodel Week. 

That gives me 17 days to get the dining room cleaned up, since all the stuff in the den is going to have to be stacked there while we work (the dining room is where I'm working on the dollhouse).  I'd like to get the rest of the dollhouse interior done before I clean...I don't see why I can't as long as I actually work on it...instead of sitting on the couch, watching TV, looking at the house on commercials, and thinking about working on it.

I'm so excited!

We're going to remodel my studio! 

Matt had the brilliant idea of making an L-shaped, wall mounted (because there are radiators along the base of the wall) work surface for me in the corner of the den, instead of having to use the too small card table....and putting shelves up in the bedroom, above the dressers, to move some of the books and stuff in there, to give me more room.

I loved the idea...I pulled out pencil and paper, started sketching, and promptly turned it into a work surface and three custom shelving units...and not planks on a wall, like the shelving I've got now, but units with sides, headers, footers, and trimmed with molding.  And...a new floor, new light fixtures, new window treatments, and freshly painted walls.

I've never felt like this is my room, despite the fact that this is where all my stuff is...I've always felt like I'm working on a card table in the spare bedroom we use as a den.  Soon it will be my room...

You guys have seen my workspace...just think, soon there will be no more harvest gold 1970s carpet and jaundice yellow walls!

I spent quite a bit of time at Lowe's and Home Depot yesterday looking at flooring and paint options.  I'm going to put down a medium dark colored engineered wood for the floor, paint the walls Aloe Essence, the trim white, and the shelving Atlantic Gray (which is really blue).

The anticipation is killing me!  We're both going to see about taking a week of vacation at the end of this month or the beginning of next month.

Melinda, this one's for you!

Melinda, you're probably too young to fully appreciate this, but Susan, you'll love it

work canceled on account of Piratism

sweet!

I was going to make it the full length of the wall, but the floor's not level...when I glue the floor in I'm going to have to float the back corner under the bookcase.  I got it a little longer than I wanted because I didn't account for the bottom trim in my initial measurement, so it's going to stick up off the floor a bit in the front, and I can't float the front of the floor...if you look closely you'll see that the floor isn't sitting on the subfloor, so imagine that it is and you'll see what I mean.  I'm not sure yet whether I'm going to sand part of the bottom or shim it to make it sit flush...I'll have to see how bad it looks when the floor is glued down.  

I haven't finished my coffee yet and I feel like I'm rambling...did any of that make any sense?

working away

  I used the leftover crystals to make a ceiling fixture for the upstairs hallway, and installed a can light in the bathroom....I have to order more LEDs now.  I also finished building the bookcase...it's ready to finish.  Then I got a bad tummy-ache, so took some Pepto and relaxed in bed while watching a CSI Miami marathon.

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