Inspired!

Two and a half years later.

INSPIRATION!

Just a sneak peek...

At a few of my new inspirational friends.

Back to that much needed interior decorating!

Changes In The Hallway

Maybe it is just me...

I will confess to having an advanced case of Feng Shui Disorder.
But I think even people without the disorder would find all these different door knobs in one hallway disturbing.
I need every design detail of my house to be "right".
It just bugged the heck out of me every time I had to walk through the hallway and see a different style door knob on each door that I passed.

I mean serious...what were the previous owners thinking?

Did they decide that the house would be more interesting if the door knobs didn't match?

You know...so when they had people come over they could show them the latest style door knob that they had bought?  

Enter my handy hubby hero, who has now installed matching door knobs.
Soon the hinges will be installed that will match the oil rubbed bronzed knobs.

I will feel so much better when everything is perfectly matched.

But wait!

There's more hallway changes to report!

Two years ago when we were remodeling our house, we purchased wide oak wood work, custom milled, because we had to replace the old white painted wood trim in the living room.
We purchased enough wood to also do the hallway, but as the remodel dragged on and on and on...we frankly ran out of nerves due to people messing up our house all the time, and also out of budget for that final bit of work.
The last of the wood trim has been up in the garage rafters waiting for a time when our nerves were steady and our dollars had been restored.

Finish carpenter Brent was called in to make a bid on the job.
He didn't expect that he would also need to have an official Orange Cat interview while he was taking measurements for the bid.
The dollars came in right, and Brent also got a tail flagged up from Tate.
 We awarded him the job without any further hesitations.
Above picture is in the hallway while it still had the white trim...

White trim off...looking back into living room.

Trim off looking into the kitchen.

Trim off, looking down the hall into the guest room.
(Am I boring you? Hang in there...it gets better.)

Looking into our bedroom and around the hallway cabinet.

Tate snoopervising....

And gives his approval of the deconstruction part of the project.

(You can see that the shiny brass hinges are still in place.  I am breathing deeply and trying not to let that bother me...)

Bernie actually took these construction pictures. I don't quite understand why this view was significant enough to warrant a picture, but then again, I have never worked in the construction industry.
Maybe it has something to do with the shim? 
Shim: the little piece of wood jammed in to make something level.
See?  I have picked up a little bit of woodworking lingo over the years. 

Notice how wide the white stripes are at the floor level?
The new woodwork had to be wider than the old wood work because with years of paint there had become a small ledge formed above the old wood work.
It actually was more cost effective to get wider wood than attempt to delete the paint layers evenly.

There was quite a bit of plaster dust in the air, but Tate stayed on the job snoopervising despite that hardship.

It was really exciting when the new wood started to go up!

View to guest room with door casing installed.

Bathroom door and hall closet doors done.

Our bedroom...

The hallway looking back to living room.
(I wish the floors had been vacuumed before these pictures with taken, seeing the construction dust on the floors is stirring up my Feng Shui disorder again.)

Top of the stairs.  The white trim just narrow enough that there was a gap between the top of the stairs moulding and the living room door moulding.

And a look up from down stairs.

The whole job only took two days, one man and one cat to complete.
On time and under budget too!

(Thanks to everyone who was involved with making this project happen!)

Project: Three Quarters Done

Bob Marley was a vibrant presence in my work room at one point.

The other three walls were painted the shade of gray in the line above Bob.

It was such a dark and dreary room to be in, even with Bob's infectious grin.

When we were looking at houses to buy, we called this entire house "The Marley House" as it was the easiest way to distinguish it from all the other houses we looked at.

(Thank heaven there WAS only one house with such a unique identifier. I would have been seriously troubled if there had been several houses with laughing Bobs on the wall.)

After we acquired the house we used the room to stack moving boxes. For several months the room was stacked to the ceiling with boxes; small passages allowed for precarious movement through the room.

This picture was taken on the glorious day that there was at last no boxes towering above our heads, and the orange floor tiles could be seen again at last.

Bob still chuckled at us each time we entered the room.

The other gray walls still dispelled any cheer from the space.

The one tiny north facing window did little to shed light in the basement room.

Shutting the door allowed us to live by the motto "Out of sight, out of mind" for a few more month.

At last Bernie could no longer handle sharing a house with Bob.

While I was away, he painted the room a pale off white, wincing and feeling a bit sick as he rolled the paint over Bob's eyes.

The orange red floor tiles: We debated re-tiling the room. We just couldn't decide what we would like to do differently. It was to be a work room; carpeting was out as I am well known for my ability to strategically drop pins and needles into carpeting to await opportunities to assault Bernie's bare feet. Tile would give him a fighting chance of avoiding both pins and bloodshed.

(With this patterned tile, even if he did get stabbed by a wayward pin, you would hardly see any bloodstains on the tile anyway!)

Lately I have been noticing how many television sets, movie scenes and houses have been sporting orange walls to good effect. My drug of choice, IKEA, had room walls painted orange.

My favorite television show NCIS is shot in a room with orange on every wall. I just love how it looks on the show.

(I'm still laughing that one dear friend, who is totally addicted to the show, said that she hadn't noticed the shows color scheme when I mentioned it as an inspiration for my room. Bet she notices it when she watches the show now!)

A trip to the paint store for several orange paint samples, and I set about pondering the perfect orange shade. (Painting/decorating tip: Grab several paint chips of each color, and tape them up together as a larger square. Much easier than buying the paint and painting up a sample square big enough to imagine the paint color on an entire wall.)

A deeper red orange drew me emotionally, but in the end the brighter orange that contrasted a bit with the floor allowed the floor to become a secondary feature instead of a floor-to-ceiling color element.

(Update: How about this little factoid: The color orange is associated with joy, according to the internets. And it also stimulates mental activity and increases the oxygen supply to the brain. Isn't that just perfect for a work room space?)

Three walls got painted orange, and one of those walls was covered with an IKEA fabric (above) curtain that sported just a tiny touch of orange. It took me an hour to dither about my selection at the store, going from yellow striped to navy stripes to solid white to finally this curtain.

What on earth took me so long? Of course this was the perfect choice!

There now...isn't that much nicer than looking a wall of art/sewing/crafts/games etc etc?

Everything is still at my fingertips; the curtains are light and panels open every three feet for easy access to the shelving.

I found a tension wire drapery hanger at IKEA; it is really functional as the wire is just slightly bigger than a pencil lead, and the fabric slides on it easily. Bernie was impressed; no middle support feature is necessary to keep the drapery header even.

The closet has a wire drawer unit inside and seasonal clothing storage.

The white storage unit is just there for now.

Shelving still needs to be installed. I have some framing yet to do, and a black rolling desk chair to purchase.

The brightly colored storage boxes will hold miscellaneous items on the open shelves.

Bernie will be sharing the space for fly-tying and odd projects now and then.

I imagine we will have a lot of fun being creative in the room in the future.

As I declared in the post title, the room is about three quarters of the way done.

When it is completely finished I plan to have a launch party, just like I did for the grand opening of my pink painted hat room in Houston.

For that event I served pink champagne.

For this one, I'm thinking of a blood orange sparkling cocktail, with a blackberry speared on thyme for a swizzle stick.

Various orange colored treats will be served.

And I'll invite guests with a suggestion to wear orange trimmed black cocktail hats with a modern vibe.

I'll be sure to post a "Save the Date" as the time draws near.

I do hope you will plan to attend, either in person or via a virtual appearance!

Columbus Day: Homemaker's Edition

Well, Picassa/Blogger FINALLY got its act together and I can post picture again!
It was so frustrating to be in the midst of serious re-decorating energy and not be able to share the process with anyone.
Obviously a girlfriend right there with me with a fresh eye would have been the best thing, but I'm patching along using the blogdom sisterhood instead.

So first...let me post the sequence of the great glass fireplace adventure:

Try one: not enough fill, too even of texture. B. doesn't care for the red "jelly beans."

Try two: Too bland, too icy for our room. Gorgeous when the flames are lit however!

Try three: Better mix, still needs more texture and contrast.

Try four: Texture and contrast is right now, although I wouldn't mind a few more black and deep teal pieces. The teal looks really great in the flames.

(FYI: the glass comes in like 200 colors on line...)

Another little detail: I've photo shopped out most of the stains on the floor of the fireplace, plus there is an ash sweep out door set into the concrete too. That bothered me...

Try five: Added grey black volcanic rock under the burner pan. The floor of the fire place has stains the I couldn't get out...and this was an easy natural looking fix. I'd like to add about 3% of a shiny black lava rock to the mix on the floor, and a bit of black glass with mirroring into the mix in the pan so the glass would reflect light and sparkle even when the fire wasn't lit.

OK...now you are up to speed with the fireplace project!

Then there came the lampshade and area rug project.

We have owned the area rug (pictured above) for years. It has got a very low pile, but I do like the cream, black and green design.
We have been hunting rugs for quite awhile, ordering first a bright orange and lime rug...which is no longer made as we found out later.

Turned out that while you can order it...you just will not ever get it, and will spend a ton of time demanding your money back...like four months worth of time. Grrrr....
But in the end, not getting it turned out to be a blessing!

We also were on the hunt of lamps. Fell in love with a set that we could order from California...and I could see them when I visit there next weekend.

But....for about 1/10 of the price of the "in love" lamps, we could have the lamps pictures above.

They were interesting at night, and awful during the day. So back they went.

Two kinds of beige lampshades were tried next. Our neighbor dropped by and saw them when I had "one of each" on the lamps, and she thought that was very cool. Less "matchy-matchy."

I also had tried an orange velveteen drum lampshade that was really bold.

We settled on the basic whitish colored lampshades...THEN I got this area rug.

Wool, with random green yarns. Oh does it ever feel good on the feet!

It is a bit larger than our old rug. Bernie loves it...I like it...and it was half the price of the other rug we had ordered and not received.
But now I think the lampshades look blah.
I'm considering black lampshades now.
(Christopher Columbus may have thought he was on quite an adventure; he never had the chance to pull a room together with a high energy feng shui disorder woman. Laura named this syndrom: it is what they call it when a patient has to have every little detail in their room just perfect or they just can't stand it!)

Stay tuned for updates on that the lampshade detail!

Another project: When we moved in the drapery was a sheer deep coral. It didn't work...was old and stained, so we needed *something*...and so I shopped till I dropped to find *something* that would would go with our wall color.
I was thinking a green...and weirdly every green drape turned a hideous pea soup color by lamp light. Ewwww....
So I gave up and went with white. It looked better than the nothing we had before.

Who knew the white would turn purple?

There is a chemical brightener that is used on white fabric to keep them from turning yellow. In this case, it turned lavender instead!
We also found that tugging the drapery close and open by hand, and trying to keep the gathers even was a pain in the neck. It took several minutes to arrange the drapery neatly, otherwise it looked like an unmade bed to me (my feng shui disorder thing again...I was tempted to get out a tape measure and adjust the pleats to exact spacing. This is not a good thing.)

So back to the hunt...and I did find pinch pleat drapery at JC Penneys that 1. would allow me to just tug a cord and not fiddle with pleats, and 2. that would blend in with our colors.
Thank you LORD for giving me a husband that can do the necessary math involved in hanging drapery. At one point he asked me what 175 divided by two was.

My eyes got big...my brain locked up...he shook his head and continued working without waiting for my answer.

( I never did figure it out. Scary isn't it?)



A little patching from where the barely used old rods hung.

The up went the new rods.
Tall is good when hanging curtain rods.

My job was to insert the pinch pleat pins. I discovered in talking with the under thirty set that many of them have no idea what is meant by "pinch pleat drapery."

Above it a picture of the "pinch" pleats. They go at the top of the drapery.

A little metal hook is inserted into the pinch, using a small plastic tool.

The hooks have to be inserted at exactly the same place in each pinch or the top of the drapery will look wavy, and drive feng shui disorder people bonkers.

The hooks then get stuck into an eyelet plastic piece on the curtain rod track which allows the drapery to be opened or close with just a tug of a cord!

You can see the drapery hung in the corner behind the chair.

Beige sheer drapes are also on order; when they come in they will be hung up behind the solid drapery so we can open those and still be able to see out through the sheers, while people will not be able to see in.

There is also valance material...I'm still thinking about whether we will use that option.

Whew.

So we are set on the drapery, set on the fireplace rocks, set on the rug, and set on the lamps, but the lampshades are still up for reconsideration.

Oh, and I have three other pillow options that work on the couches if I decide I want to switch out the look.

(I own waaayyy to many pillows....someday I'll blog about that!)

Bernie is heading out for fishing....

And I am tackling my list on this day off .

Columbus: Thank you for exploring.

Thank you work for making it a holiday!

Thank YOU for reading about the exploring going on around here!

Comments and suggestions are welcomed!