Happy Thanksgiving! This year I am thankful that I beat my neighbor to the finish in the great ground floor renovation: New kitchen; redone floors; moldings; windows; paint; bathroom for her, laundry room for me - the same upheavals and stress. She started long after me, but her crew is bigger. We were both behind schedule but the last coat of paint dried on our back stairs while her guys were still going strong. November 11 2010 at 4 PM was the exact moment I closed the garage door on the last contractor, which marks the official end of the project. Unless, of course, you count that missing baseboard in the closet...
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Giving Thanks
Monday, March 01, 2010
Miracles do happen...
The painter called at 8:00 AM to ask if he could come and touch up his not-so-handiwork. He surveyed, sighed and said "I didn't know you wanted the surface prepped, some people just want to paint over the drips and gashes - they don't care". My reply was of course to wonder if he only worked for patrons of the Helen Keller Institute and to suppose he had no pride in his work. He did sort of passive-aggressively suggest he might have to charge me extra but I guess he thought better of that... So we have smooth walls, fewer drips and the entrance to the bath is taped, spackled and painted to a smooth finish that looks a lot better than the gap he suggested we ask the tiler to FILL WITH GROUT!
The electrician came early and installed all the light trims, sconces, medicine cabinet and heated towel rack. Toasty towels on a timer will make a huge difference to our old morning shower and shiver routine. The new ventilation fan is whisper quiet - you can actually hear the sound of running water - or you will be able to once the plumber turns it on. But that's for another day.
Tomorrow the countertop guy will take measurements and we will be one stop closer to a final finish date.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Homes for the Holidays
I couldn't leave the whiney, moaning post up front any longer - on to brighter, more positive topics. The wonderfully creative author and painter Nadine Bouler of Bouler Design Group dropped in to The Cool House yesterday bringing an invitation to the opening of her latest show Homes for the Holidays at The Ripe Gallery on December 5th.
Her last show explored houses as emotions and the new works are also house-themed. The paintings are intricate, atmospheric, whimsical in a good way, with just a hint of danger. Almost as soon as I saw the butterfly landing the aqua villa I said "I should ask you to paint this house", and as simply as that a project was born. I can't wait to see what Nadine has in mind for this house - which angle she'll choose to portray, if it will be a night painting and which animal or insect will find it's way into the frame. Whatever she decides I know we'll be able to see in it far more than just a house... which is, perhaps, just a little disconcerting.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Ceci n'est pas un musée
Well not quite yet anyway but in six short weeks the long awaited Magritte Museum will open in Brussels. In somewhat surreal fashion the website is still under construction but there is a link to this fantastic video that shows the stately Beaux-Arts Museum as well as the virtual Magritte Museum.
Visitors to The Cool House may get a clue how much I love Magritte's art, and I've been to many retrospectives that brought together paintings from all over the world but this museum will house the largest single collection of his work - more than 170 paintings - as well as letters, photographs and films.
The Musée Magritte Museum opens June 2 2009 in the former Hotel Altenloh, a neo-classical building on Place Royale, Brussels. Tickets can be reserved now: by email or phone: +32 (0)2/508 33 33.
I'll be there as soon as possible.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Paint Your own Wallpaper
If you think moving flagstones is hard work, just imagine the hours that went into getting the masking tape straight so you could achieve this effect. I came across this idea for a painted striped wallpaper effect by Modern Self. Totally in awe right now.
via Master of Your Domain
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Bear?
Look closely at the Jamie Geller Dutra Original Abstract painting. What do you see? I see a landscape on a rainy day with the sun glinting through the rocks in the background.
What does the Guy see in his birthday painting? A bear, that's what. It took me ages to see what he was on about but eventually I got it.
Anyone else see it?
Saturday, November 24, 2007
We raised the ceiling
Well not really, we just painted it. But it sure feels higher, and cleaner than before too.
This is Steven doing all the work. So far it's been a day to prep, a day to put one coat on the ceiling and all this morning to touch up. He's hoping to put at least one coat on the wall before this evening. We'll see how that pans out.
The animals are all seriously freaked out, including Jefke the cat who is watching from the safety of his perch on the microwave.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Thanksgiving Paint Colors
It seems a shame to paint over these swatches, doesn't it? The first square on its own didn't look right, the next couple were better, but adding the last two colors makes the original one really pop.
Top row from left to right: Sweet Pear; Titanium; Crystalline; Iced Cube Silver. Bottom row: Wind Chime; Titanium. All by Benjamin Moore USA.
We decided that the sagey-grey will work best (although I'm still hankering after the Sweet Pear, especially with the Titanium next to it) and the lighter tone is the one we chose. Which just happens to be? Titanium. Yes, that's right, the color we painted the dining room walls and the powder room, too. The strange thing is that in the dining room it is more grey with an undertone of green and in the powder room, which has no natural light, it's definitely grey. I put two coats on the swatches on all the walls in the kitchen and it registers from sage green to silvery green. Certainly not grey. I really resisted this color because I didn't want the whole house painted the same but it just looks right. I hope we are still happy once the whole room has been painted.
But first we will be tackling that beige ceiling.
Monday, June 12, 2006
More colour
Before putting the house on the market the listing agent made previous owner have the entire house repainted Navajo White. We know that the house was originally painted a bright blue in the dining room and den. The bedrooms were originally funky late 60s oil blue, gold, green and yellow, and pink and purple. We discovered that early on because the painters didn't bother painting the insides of the closets. The mud room, maid's room (now my office) and the hallway and stairs were once wallpapered. We have found some of the original wallpaper behind light switches and when we replaced the thermostat in the foyer. I wish I could have seen the house in all its original glory.
Apart from the Bronzed Beige customised walls, we have decorated the dining room, which we painted with Benjamin Moore Titanium on the walls and Cloud White on the ceiling and baseboards and the master suite with Ralph Lauren Blue Mesa. I also mixed Cabot Wood stains in Ebony and Walnut to get the colour I wanted on the replacement windows. I have touched up around the new windows in the den, Verity's and Fliss' rooms with the Navajo White. Although Navajo White is really not our style I'm not planning to paint there any time soon because the paint is new. The kitchen and foyer have only primer so far, and while it's bright, it's kind of boring, but there doesn't seem much point in painting until the kitchen project gets underway. I'm getting impatient here, can you tell?
Monday, June 05, 2006
Personalizing those custom colors
Checking on my site visitors with StatCounter this morning, I was fascinated to find someone had linked through a Google search on "Bronzed Beige" the Benjamin Moore paint color. I posted a year or so ago that I had bought two gallons of the paint the previous November (2004) and had yet to slap it on the walls. I never did post what happened to them.
Apparently you are supposed to toss paint you haven't used after six months but I abhor waste so that didn't happen. Last October I did open one can, stirred it really well and slapped a coat on the mud room wall that had previously had the wallpaper that looked like mold. Unfortunately on the wall the paint looked like mold too, sandy mold but not something I could live with. I decided something a little brighter would be better and bought a can of BM Yellow Highlighter and mixed a pint of that with a pint of the Bronzed Beige. It was too yellow for the mud room but worked really well on my office walls. I made up another batch of the mix, but this time 75% Bronzed Beige and 25% Yellow Highlighter and used that on the mud room. It's better but eventually I'll repaint it, probably when we do the kitchen. The kitchen project seems to be turning into an entire first floor decorating project!
The remaining gallon or so of Bronzed Beige I mixed with two gallons of Super White and painted the fern bedroom and, after a brief flirtation with an accent wall in Ravishing Red and a replacement from our local dealer who had given me Red Oxide by mistake, Steven's office, too.
Four rooms, three different shades from a couple of gallons of oops paint can't be bad. Of course I still have a gallon of Ravishing Red I need to find a use for before it hardens in the can.
Saturday, July 31, 2004
Overwhelmed
When we bought this house we knew there was a certain amount of work we would have to do before winter set in, First we had some windows that had to be replaced, some of the guttering was shot or missing and the siding over the garage had been damaged. Inside all the carpets would have to go to be replaced by wood floors and, to make more space, because 5000 square feet is just not enough, there were closets to be taken out (I know that it is impossible to believe that a gal can have too many closets but even Imelda Marcos would have trouble buying enough shoes to fit in here) plus there was the decorating stuff to be undertaken: paneling to be ripped off the walls, wallpaper to be stripped from three rooms and a hallway and the "Muenster Cheese" decor in the master suite, which covered every wall, door, architrave and baseboard, would have to be painted over.
We figured we would make the outside waterproof before tackling the interior projects. But of course things never run off a slate roof, as they say in Dutch, so we are working backwards, doing all the stuff we don't need to do while waiting for the windows which at this rate will probably be installed during a three-day snowstorm in January. In July, just before our first houseguests left, the contractors started work tearing out the panelling, taking down the mirrored closet in the bedroom and shortening the hall closet to make a bookcase. Then they painted over the oil-blue interiors of the remaining closets with a fresh coat of clean white matte and left for their vacation.
Koen and Verity stripped wallpaper and pulled up two carpets before they left and we ordered 1500 sq' of pre-finished wood flooring. Sick of the cheese effect, I painted the walls of the master bedroom and dressing room a calm blue shade and the ceiling, trim and doors a brilliant white.