The rabbit trail I've been down lately

I haven't been doing much on the condo front lately; I got side tracked into Christmas gift mode.  I love Christmas gift mode.

First I made a little cake plate for my daughter, the Lady Bidango, using a small crystal vase and a small bone china plate.  Modesty prevailed, and I decided not to take a picture of it.  Who am I kidding... I just forgot.

Then I got working on a bird feeder for my tea drinking friend who lives in the country and has a bazillion birds drop by for a sip and nibble every day.  I glued some cups to their saucers for the feed, and then I tried to figure out how to hang them.  And may I just say I'm waaaay too old to try to drill through a plate to use as a base.  That was Plan A, but after two days with the drill and still no hole, I was pretty sure I was going to need a new plan.

Plan B involved finding a wrought iron candle holder at Goodwill, having His Grace cut off the actual candle holding part, having my tea drinking friend's hubby grind off the resulting sharp edge and spray painting the whole thing gold.  Then I got 'gold' bathtub plug chain and hooked everything together.  Fortunately for me, the clerk in the hardware store mis-read the price.  Anyway... here it is.  The actual making it work is my tdf's problem.

Then I decided to make something for her hubby, who loves his Coke.  Same idea as with the bird feeder, but in this case I found a small candle stand to connect the Coke bottle and the 'chimes.'  And, because the Coke bottle is full and therefore constitutes an emergency supply, the chimes are actually a bunch of church keys that I found at some of my favourite thrift stores.

Now I'm working on decorations for a women's conference I'm going to in early January in Flagstaff.  Have glue gun, will travel!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from craft land.

Hold the Presses!!!!

Way way way back when I mentioned the problem of the master bath floor and how was I going to replace the tacky carpet economically.  Yesterday I was at Sun Bowl Plaza - the thrift store strip mall, and the Lutherans had two full boxes of ceramic tiles - 15 cu.ft. each, pluse 6 single tiles - $18 for the lot.  So I bought them.  I wish I could say 'faster than a speeding bullet' but that doesn't happen there.  It took quite awhile to find a guy who was young enough and strong enough to lift the boxes off the bottom shelf.  But eventually they found Jack, and now I own enough ceramic tile to do the bathroom.

The kitchen and other bathroom are done in a cream with pink ceramic, and I actually wish I could afford to get enough of this pattern to do the whole house.  It's quite gray with bits of copper in it.  It looks like stone.  Love it!

Now the question is... do I watch all those YouTube videos about how to lay ceramic tile, or do I bite the bullet and hire someone?  I will think about it for awhile.  I'm too busy overdoing Christmas decorations right now to consider learning how to lay tile.

Behold! The Garden!

And, as promised, here is the big reveal of our new garden.

Actually, I think it's a rather lovely little corner, even if the biggest plant in it is the basil I planted in May.

You might be wondering what we did with all the pavers that His Grace dug up to make this corner garden.  Check this out!

All the pots and ornaments came from various thrift stores.  I got the blue-green wall plaques for $1 each; the large clay pot was $5 and the other two were $3 each.  The blue butterfly one didn't have a drainage hole, but we discovered a masonry bit in the garage and His Grace used his new drill... presto... functional planter.  And I think the stacks of pavers actually look like we planned this arrangement from the beginning.  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

We did have one garden 'ornament' that came with the condo.  Meet Mac.  His Grace is not a fan, but I think he's so cheesy he's cute.  I plan to fix up his paint job later, but I like him.

His Grace wanted hanging baskets, and I found three empty planters at thrift stores.  The two larger iron ones (There are two of them.) were $5 each, plus the cost of the coconut matting, and the strange gold bullet-shaped one was $3.  Unfortunately, I got this one before His Grace got the drill, so I just put a bunch of rocks in the  bottom.  We might drill a hole after the petunias are finished.  And the little blue on hanging on the wall was only $1.99.  It might be my favourite of all of them; the blue goes so beautifully with the moss green wall.

But the piece de resistance is the bird bath.  I know there's a 'lake' half a block away on the golf course and the birds aren't remotely interested in our little bowl of water.  This was tested and proved this summer when I put a tray of water out every day.  But I don't care!  It's not a garden without a bird bath.  But I get ahead of myself.

Our friends Richard and Nancy have these really cool glass whimsies in their garden.  They are essentially glass dishes that have been glued together one on top of the other.  I'm not explaining it well, but trust me, they're really neat.  So I decided to make one for our garden and promptly trotted off to Goodwill.  But I couldn't find the glass I needed to make my vision a reality.  Then I saw some pottery vases, and a big bowl.

I glued everything together using Loctite Glass Glue because I had some left over from making cake stands.  It worked a charm gluing the plate and white container (which is filled with rocks for stability), the middle piece with the leaves and the blue-green vase above it and the vase to the pasta bowl.  But that middle piece with the green leaves isn't a vase; it's a candle platform thing-y, and the bottom (the part glued to the white container) is unglazed.  The Glass Glue didn't hold, so I tried again using Goop plumbers glue, and that seems to be working perfectly.

Voila!  The bird bath.  

His Grace is not as delighted with it as I am; he thinks it looks like some odd bits of pottery that have been stuck together.  Whereas I see it as some really interesting odd bits of pottery that have been stuck together (With a bunch of rocks hidden in the base for stability).  But I really need the birds to back me up in this by actually using it.

Remembrance Day

Not a post about our condo; this is a picture of my father in his WWII Canadian Army uniform, with a the poppy from Flanders Fields he sent my mother.

Wow! Some projects actually get finished!

The painting of the garden wall has been finished, but you can't see any pics yet because His Grace, Gentleman Gardener, has almost finished the digging, planting and decorating the garden.  I'm going to wait until all the white rocks have been put down before the grand garden unveiling.

The second nightstand is finished and back home where it belongs.  I never did find a pseudo-French provincial nightstand, so we stuck with the art deco-ish one I showed you earlier.  It has nothing in common stylistically with the one on the other side of the bed, other than being painted silver.  I also got the headboard painted and put back in the bedroom.

The bookshelf I was struggling with last time is done and in use.  I also got my desk chair painted and recovered.  But the desk itself hasn't been touched yet.  Neither have either dresser, but I did come up with a cool plan for one of them.

And I did find a third frame and painted it pink to go with the other bark paintings from Mexico.  I really rather like this arrangement.

His Grace's dresser has somewhat weird fabric inserts in the drawer pulls.  At the moment they're a dark brown covered with breaking plastic.  But I'm pretty sure I have enough material left over from the two bedroom chairs to use on the dresser.  Remember the fantastical bird print?  The chairs are done!

Is that not the most amazing print!  And if I use little bits on the dresser drawers, it'll look like I planned the whole thing in advance and not like I scored upholstery material at Goodwill for $2.99.

Next project will be to paint the master bath the same blue as the bedroom.  And then to find something to replace the carpet on the floor.  I've noticed that various thrift stores have odd tiles, and I'm wondering about doing a mix/match thing.

I also have another project for the bedroom.  We have some rather boring lamps that were supposed to be the same colour as the furniture, but that changed when I bought the wrong paint.  I think I'm going to try to paint them like some of the gorgeous Navajo and Hopi pottery around here.

This is the lamp.

and this is a general idea of what I'm going to try to do to it.

http://www.kokopellinh.com/files/images/native-american-pottery-119924b.jpg
http://p2.la-img.com/359/37822/16054044_1_l.jpg
http://indulgy.ccio.co/n4/r6/8C/227713324878397585OcReIP6ec.jpg

The vases I've seen are really beautiful, and it will be a challenge to try to get close to the skill the Native American potters have.  But I want to try.

And the progress continues... slowly

As I pointed out last time, everything takes longer than you thought it would.

But we have made some progress.  The first nightstand is done and back home where it belongs.

 Far from perfect, but not too shabby.  It has three coast of paint sprayed on, and then I used Johnson's paste wax to give the colour some depth.   

I also got the picture frames for the Mexican bark paintings done.  Pink.  His Grace really isn't sure that hot pink goes with the blue walls and the lime green bedspread, but according to BHG  it does.  Our bedroom is an adaptation of #3.  Anyway, here's a photo of the frames I've got so far.

I say "so far" because when I was showing my friend Marietta around my favourite thrift store mall, I found another Mexican bark painting and a frame, and I think things look better grouped in odd numbers.  

Another project jumped the queue on our to do list.  His Grace decided he was going to paint the courtyard fence.  The original colour was an institutional beige that matches the house (inside and out!) and every other house in on our street and the next one down.  The manor house is a row house, so we can't paint what can be seen, but we can paint the parts that face in.  We chose a mossy green to go with the brick courtyard tiles.  Our friends had their whole house done in this combination, and it is such a restful look.

 At the point the photo was taken (yesterday) only the one part of the wall had been painted.  As of this afternoon, it is almost finished.  His Grace rocks!  Once the corn crop is in, we can look at landscaping.

The other big news on the decorating front is that I found some of the most amazing fabric at Goodwill for $2.99.  I want to re-cover the two office-type chairs in the master bedroom in this wild pattern - if there's enough fabric.

It's a fairly large piece, but it has two chunks cut out of it - I guess someone was after a particular part of the pattern.  Anyway... it's freaking amazing.  The reason that little pink frame is there is that I'm trying to decide whether His Grace might be right and pink is not the accent pop we want to go with these fantastic birds.  I tried painting the new frame red, and while anyone can tell you that red is by far my favourite colour... I'm not getting rid of the pink just yet.  I just like it.

I also got a small piece of upholstery material in another pattern which I will use to cover the chair I use at my desk.  Not anywhere near as spectacular as the birds, but still... it was $.99.  And it does have red highlights.

So tomorrow it's back to the courtyard to finish the wall and continue working on getting layers and layers of paint off the little bookcase I found in our garage which I need to put on my desk.  Actually, the bookcase may have been free, but the time and money that's gone in to refinishing it probably makes it more expensive that going to Ikea.  But I will conquer.

You might need sunglasses

It's been ages since my last update, but that's because His Grace and I have been busy.  BUSY.  

• The kitchen ceiling is done.
  
• The dirty old oatmeal glop is off the ceiling in the two bedrooms.  We bit the bullet and hired someone to do that for us.  Remember it took me two days to scrape the spackle off the tiny kitchen ceiling?  Chris got it off the two bedrooms in a couple of hours each.

• The ceilings are painted.  His Grace is my hero.  Really, he did all the ceiling painting.

• The kitchen morning glories are gone.  Paint is so neat... you'd never know they'd ever been there.  I painted the walls a pale mossy green, and it looks wonderfully clean.
  
• The vanity and linen cupboard are out of the bedroom.  His Grace and I managed to remove the vanity and to get the cupboard partly away from the wall, but we needed Chris to actually get it out of the room.  We thought of putting the cupboard in the kitchen which is why I moved the kitchen paint job up on the schedule - 'cause those morning glories had to be gone before the cupboard got moved in.  But then we decided it was too difficult to install it there and moved it out to the garage for additional storage there.

And the big news... drum roll please... the master bedroom has been painted and the bedspread has been dyed lime green using the 'recipe' I found on the Rit Dye website  - which is why you may need sunglasses.  'Cause that is one shockingly bright lime, let me tell you.  It doesn't show up that way on my monitor, but wowza!

Now for the lesson(s) learned (the hard way).

1. It's going to take longer than you thought.  No matter how conservatively we tried to estimate the time required, it always took longer.  It actually took us at least a week to paint the two rooms.  If we hadn't been renters for the past 21 years, we probably would have it figured out by now... but where's the adventure in that?
   
2. You're probably supposed to prime the gyprock on the ceiling before you paint it.  We didn't, and unfortunately the paint came off in a couple of places, especially when I taped the ceiling prior to painting the walls in the kitchen.  When it came time to paint the bedroom walls, I used a brush I used for my paintings; it was much smaller and I had much more control over where the bristles went - no need to tape. 

There's also been stuff going on out in the garage/paint shop.  I did some frames and the filing baskets for my desk a hot pink for pops of colour in the bedroom.  This was before the bright, bright, bright bedspread episode.

 

And I've got one night stand 2/3 of the way to silver.  His Grace was really not sure about this plan, but even he said that the night stand looks good.  I need to put one more coat of Krylon Bright Metallic Finish, and then I think I'll use paste wax to give some depth.  

As I said, I was doing this in the garage with the door open.  A neighbour was driving by and saw the headboard propped up against the wall and wondered if I was getting rid of it.  So I told her about my favourite thrift store mall.  Nice way to get to meet neighbours.

We're miles and miles from being finished, but it feels like we're actually making some progress.  There's office work to do for the rest of this week, but then it's finish the night stand and do the other one, paint the headboard, and strip and paint the bookshelf that sits on my desk.  On with the adventure!