slowly but surely...

i haven't been posting the last couple of days cause there is nothing exciting to really say. and no exciting pics to show you :(
but i have been organizing and moving things around SOME MORE. and getting rid of stuff...donate donate donate!

i did put stuff in my cubbies but i won't show you till later when i'm finished moving stuff around :P

and i painted that same part of the floor. second coat. on monday i'll tape it out and faux finish it. after varnishing that, i have to wait at least a week to put furniture on it. then i can do the other side :(
it's much easier to paint floors when there is nothing ON the floor!

oh, and i patched up holes with concrete mix today.
that stuff is deadly. and you have to work really REALLY fast!

we have been getting a bit of water in one spot of the basement and i'm hoping this will fix it!

only when it rains LOADS though. like it just did :P

i'm feeling a little bit more organized though. at least i know what's what and what is going where...

both of the galleries i had paintings in end their shows this weekend so i'll be running around picking stuff up and maybe having lunch at fadó again ;)

cheers!

cubbies!!!!

they're up!
and DONE!
:D

presses and pulls (and stain stain and more stain...)

presses. that's what the irish folk call em. i don't know why cause they really don't press anything, but it is shorter to say than cabinet or cupboard :P

anyway, i have some! :D



you can't tell in the pics, but i bought those pulls. they are dark brown (not black) and have little bits of copper showing thru.
i got a doorknob for my door like that too.
matches the stain kinda sorta...

my husband is putting the doorknob on right now! :D

we didn't pick up the bottom presses yet. and the sink. but hopefully that will happen soon...

i was on staining duty again.
i woke up at 5am to get another coat of stain on the big cubbie thing from yesterday. i was hoping to get to varnish it too so they could hang them.
but...everything takes way longer than you think it will.

so i varnished the thing after going back to sleep for a few more hours ;)

this morning, my kidlet and i stained these shelves:



these were ikea shelves that i recently cut down. they were really tall. they are much easier to deal with at this height.

even shorter, it was a pain in the arse to stain. and now that i look at the photograph, all those little holes bug me. i guess a little brush might get in there...
i guess i'll stain the other ones tomorrow.

the husband finished while i was typing this, so here's the new doorknob! :D


still hard to tell the color, but you get the idea..
it looks better, dontcha think?




anyway.
wrecked tired...
hope i am more organized tomorrow...

helloooo!!!!

i am still alive!

i have been a little grumpy lately, cause i have nothing i can do.
i can't work cause my studio is all wrapped up in plastic.
and i haven't had use of my car for a while (troubles)
so i have been sorta stuck here.
useless.


BUT!!!!

today!

we got to work.
the boys went out this morning and bought lots of wood.
they built this:



they took it down again so i could stain it.
this is the first coat. so it still needs another coat of stain and 2 coats of varnish...




i think it's fantastic!!! there will be a workbench under it for woodworking stuffs (so i had better get better at it!)

they also put my door to the laundry room on:



that i had to paint. that doorknob (i hope) is only temporary. i want to get one of those dark brown-bronzey ones...

i also got a nice windowsill....eventually we will get new windows there, so the wood will go all the way back to the window, but there is no sense in doing that now with those stupid old windows...



this is the fun stuff! it's so exciting to see it all coming together.
tomorrow, we are supposed to pick up cupboards and i'll be getting a sink! :D
i am a happy painter-girl :D
x

happy valentines day :)

what a great day!!!!

i started my morning by trying to finish staining all the wood for the baseboards and
trim for the studio.

then off to the plastic club for the opening of their "small worlds" show.
i submitted 2 pieces. the opening was supposed to be last weekend, but was postponed because of all the snow :/



i'll just show you some pics cause, well, they say it better...







after the opening, we went over to fadó, which is an irish restaurant at the corner of 15th and locust in philadelphia...


we had an amazing meal, and a few cocktails ;)

perfect.

tomorrow it's back to work with a big tin full of polyurethane :P
i hope i have some new studio progress pics to show you soon!
ciao!

concrete basement floor

a few years ago (maybe many) when we bought this house, there were those green (probably asbestos) tiles (with the little colored chips)
on the basement floor. my husband and my neighbor started chipping them up when the neighbor suddenly suggested that they may be asbestos.
so they stopped.

i was working down there for a while with this half chipped off floor, and IF it WAS asbestos, i was thinking...
"this is no good, i'm working down here kicking all this stuff around..."
and we couldn't be sure if it was anyway, unless we paid some ridiculous amount of money to have it tested...
so either way, the damage was done and i decided to tear them all out and be done with them forever.
(i know. i could die. but i will someday anyway...)

that was terrible.
i wish they hadn't started chipping away so that we could have just put a new floor on top...but what can you do?

anyway, underneath those disgusting tiles was even more disgusting goop that held the tiles on there forever and ever.

i had to use adhesive remover and scrape and scrape.

then i primed the floor and painted it to make it look like tiles...

this is when it was new (and i actually had some room in there)


we have been working on the floor and banging it up, but it still held up pretty good!



i've been trying to read up and find out if i needed to prime it again, and i asked the "all knowledgeable home depot fella" what he thought...
i eventually decided to just paint a base color on top of what was there. (after sanding and sweeping and mopping of course)



you can't really tell, but it's a "silver grey". i can only do half the room at a time because of all of the stuff. (i think i said that before?)

then i'll tape it out and faux finish it.

i'm going to use a dark brownish grey on top and hopefully they will sorta look like tiles.

faux finishing really helps hide a lot of imperfections and little ews and whosiwhatsits that happen to floors...

this is going to take forever doing half at a time because after each coat, you have to wait DAYS before you can go down there again.
maybe i should clean up the rest of my house that is riddled with spackle dust and snow boots :P

everything is white.

i have been painting the studio.
white.
because i want it to be nice and bright and not so basementy.



it has been snowing and snowing.
and everything outside is white too.


(everything is also blurry. i just want to get a shower and go to bed...)

i think tonight i will dream about colors.

i am finished painting the walls, though i might have to put a little more paint on the ceiling at the end cause i didn't have enough for 2 coats.
but it still looks pretty good...



tomorrow i will move EVERYTHING to the front of the basement and start on the floor...
but it will not be easy because i have so much stuff in there still...
the last time i painted the floor, it was summer, and i put everything outside.
i can't do that in this snow...

i'm really starting to get buggy about not painting anything, so we better move along and get this done...

and did i mention i have lights?

lookit em all!!!! :D

(my apologies if this blog post is incoherent. i am not even going to proofread it...i have got to go away. ciao. xo)

...and now a break from our regularly scheduled program

all day i was wondering...
are they going to cancel the opening because of the snow?
and until i was about to walk out the door, i still wasn't sure if we were going to go or not.

but we did.
and i'm glad we made it down there :)
we beat the storm too! it didn't start sticking to the ground until after we got home.

my painting "capture" was selected to be in highwire gallery's "devotion" show.

highwire gallery is in philadelphia on frankford avenue.
the show will be up until the end of february.

here's some photos from tonight...









in other news, i have the first coat of paint on the walls of the studio!!!! :D

soon comes the fun part...

i have not posted for a couple of days cause i've been working!!!
priming the walls, really...
i am the painting department, so now it'll be mostly me working and the boys can relax a little? maybe.



if you click on this pic, it will take you to my flickr photo page (i hope) where i put notes all over the place so you can see what's going on...

i'm getting so excited because all the fun stuff is coming soon!!!!
tomorrow i will be doing some final sanding on the bulk of the room and painting it. then i have to move all of my stuff to the painted end so we can work on the other side.
luckily, the unfinished side is much smaller than the almost finished side :D

i have an art opening tomorrow night, but they are calling for 6-12 inches of snow!
which is a total bummer, but we are going to have to wait till the afternoon to see what happens.

it may not get too bad till later on at night.

stupid snow.

the snow should stop sometime on saturday though, so hopefully there will be no problem with going to the OTHER opening on sunday.

hopefully.

busy.

this has been a really busy week.
besides schlepping art to galleries, and dog to vets, and domestic duties, the studio is still being worked on...

it doesn't look too much different from the last pics because it's mainly just spackling.
the lights, however, the new ones, have been put in :)
now we just need switches and we're sunshine!

i'll be sanding today, because i was told that i might be able to start priming the walls for paint on thursday.

that would be great!

i have paintings in two galleries that open this weekend, so it will be a little crazy around here, working on the studio between.

friday opens highwire gallery's "devotion" show. they are showing my painting "capture".

and sunday, the plastic club has my "mine" and "the letter".

i hope there will be no more snow for the weekend.
*crosses fingers*