Guest Bath and Laundry Room

I thought I would start this post with a picture of my favorite painting stud.  He is standing on the work platform which works great upstairs where we have 8 foot ceilings.  This is just a quick post to show the painting in the  Guest Bathroom and the Laundry room.  We painted both the same color of blue that we had used in our Master bath.  It is a nice middle blue so it isn't so deep that it makes the room dark but it gives it a nice energy.  with the white tub and tile it is a nice crisp look.

Here you can see the sink cabinet and the white tile.  So far we are going with the theme we have had in the guest bathroom for a while which is fish.  Not sure if that will be the theme in the long run or not.

Before we moved our stuff into the house we painted the laundry room.  Wayne didn't think the room need paint, but he doesn't do the laundry either,  I wanted some color so that it would be a bit happier.

Since we have been so busy with the house and decorating and I am behind with my posts so if you wish to see more photos of what we are up to or what I am doing on my 2010 BJP you can go to my Web Gallery.   If you want to read about my BJP project  you can visit my bjp blog.

Studio in Progress

The studio is coming along nicely and we recently ordered the hardwood for the floors.  We had to change the plan since they didn't have purple-heart available.  I will be having Brazilian Koa (also known as Tiger wood) for my studio and the upstairs hallway outside of my studio.  When we picked out the ceiling fan for my studio and found out that our flooring plan might change I decided to change my color scheme a bit so that it would work better with those choices.  The new ceiling fan is a beautiful cobalt blue so I went with the focal wall in the Honorable Blue that we had used for the tray in our Master suite,  I loved the color so thought it would be a nice contrast.  That wall will have my Ikea bookshelves in white (they are open back) and the TV/stereo.  The other 3 walls have Wood Violet around the bottom and Tassel on the top.  I need to pick some trim to go at chair rail height.

 From this view you can see my 3 windows which face south.  When the sun is out their is a lot of nice sunshine.  I have four overhead lights and a ceiling fan with lights so even without task lighting I should be good.  We switched out the regular bulbs the builder had put in with daylight fluorescent bulbs.  Eight bulbs later the difference is huge.  We still need to see about better bulbs for the ceiling fan.

This view lets you see the sink,  at this point it is just a stand for the little stereo so we have something to listen to while working in there.

Here you can see the first step in my first decorative painting project.  Since this is my studio and a creative space I wanted something to make it feel happy and something I would enjoy and make it more mine.  After going through quite a few different ideas I decided that I wanted to paint vines around the top on the 3 sides that were gold near the top.  The first step was to free hand the vines with a watercolor pencil (if I made any mistakes I could erase them with a sponge).  I will probably be adding flowers to the vine later but I didn't draw them in.

This is the second go around this time with paint.  I was going to do the shading the first time and realized that the paint wasn't going to cover enough so I switched to just the main color and plan on a second go around with more colors to add the shading.  This will take some time do but should be worth it in the end.

Since we have been so busy with the house and decorating and I am behind with my posts so if you wish to see more photos of what we are up to or what I am doing on my 2010 BJP you can go to my Web Gallery.   If you want to read about my BJP project  you can visit my bjp blog.

Hardwood Floors

We have continued to be busy with projects for the house.  The most recent BIG project that we tackled was putting in our first hardwood floor.  We started with the Master suite for the same reason we painted their first because we wanted to have the room usable as much as possible.  We will also be putting in hardwood floors in the upstairs hallway, my studio, the great room, the kitchen/breakfast room and the dining room.  That's a lot of wood and a lot of work but once we are all done it will be really nice.

We learned a lot this time around and hopefully it will go slightly more quickly and smoothly.  There is a lot of prep work needed to get the floor ready.  The photo above shows the floor with the underlayment laid down.

This photo shows the room with some of the wood laid on the floor.  We chose Brazilian Cherry for our master bedroom and had lots of very heavy boxes of wood to use.  Laying a hard wood floor is sort of like putting a puzzle together.  You don't want all of the short pieces together,  all the light pieces in one area or any thing like that and you need to make sure that your joints from one row aren't too close to the next row or that your joints from the previous row are the same as your upcoming row.

The photo above show the next rows ready to be laid down.  My job was to lay down the up coming rows and to cut the end pieces.  Wayne put it all together and used the big pneumatic nail gun that we had rented.  Between Saturday and Sunday we got most of the flooring down and everything that required the big nail gun.  The last few rows of the bedroom and the closets got done later.  It is funny that the last few rows took longer than the whole rest of the floor.

Besides the beginning and ending rows the closets had some challenges as well.  I guess the good news is that we learned a lot with this floor.  This last weekend Wayne put in the shoe moulding so that we have the floor finished except for adding some quarter round in the closets, possibly getting new air vent covers  and putting in some threshold pieces which Wayne needs the rest of his tools for.

We have the bed and some of the furniture back in the bedroom and I have ordered curtain rods.  There will still be project to do in here the biggest being turning the walk in closets to much more efficient spaces.  I also need to sew the roman shades for the room and we will have some furniture decisions to make once we get the rest of our stuff out of storage but we shouldn't have to take everything out again.

Since we have been so busy with the house and decorating and I am behind with my posts so if you wish to see more photos of what we are up to or what I am doing on my 2010 BJP you can go to my Web Gallery.   If you want to read about my BJP project  you can visit my bjp blog.

Master Suite Painted

I am way behind on posting to my blogs which seems to be more of the norm than I would like lately. It seems to be way more challenging to paint a new house, move into said house and do all of the  normal Christmas stuff  than just do the regular holiday stuff (go figure).  It doesn't help that we have been without internet since the line to our house was no good and they need to put in a new line before we can get internet to the house.  Hard to write blogs without a home internet service.  These photos are a bit behind where we currently are in decorating but since I know that some people don't go to the web gallery to see the newest photos, I thought I might include some here.  All of these photos are of the master suite.  There are 2 colors of purple, 2 of blue, 2 of gold and the whites that we left.  I really love how it has turned out and the colors make me feel very happy.  I lucked out and had curtains that would work from our house in Rhode Island that work perfectly for our bathroom, one less space that I will need new curtains for.

The 2 pictures below show the master bedroom.  The first one is before we painted the crown moulding the darker gold.  Makes a huge difference.  The colors in the second photo are more accurate.  I like the first one cause it has my "painting stud" in it, doesn't he look proud?  We are trying to get some photos here and there that include us in them.  Not our forte I am afraid.

The last photo is of me in front of my Concord grape wall.  It is a beautiful dark purple and I was acting silly.  My favorite pain outfit is slowly getting more paint on it especially the pants which I wipe my fingers on.   I will try to get more posts up about the house but it will depend on how much time I can get  to the internet.  I want to thank all of of our Family and Friends for all of the good wishes and Christmas notes.  Wayne and I would also like to wish all of you a wondrous New Year.

The Painting Has Started

This first photo shows the cooktop side of the kitchen with the backsplash that was missing. It will be interesting to see how the kitchen looks once we add the hardwood floors and paint the walls and eventually when we get around to adding the tile back splashes. I am looking forward to lots of cooking in this wonderful kitchen.

We have started in on the painting for the house. Starting with our master suite since we will want to be able to use the new bathroom once we move in. We probably won't move our stuff into the master bedroom until we add the hardwood floors which will probably happen in January. My color scheme is not going to be subtle anywhere in the house with lots of mid to dark value colors, no pastels for us. The master-suite is the only place that I am planning on painting the ceiling. The color palette is blues, purples and golds with white left at the doors and windows.
The bathroom is mostly finished being painted (one more coat on the trim needed) and is just waiting to be put back together, have the grout sealed and towel bars etc hung. To see more photos of the house as it progresses please check out our web gallery where you can see photos from the beginning of construction to where we are currently at with projects to make it uniquely ours.

Neither Wayne or I have painted walls for years and years so we are learning a lot and getting better at it as we get more practice.
The most used "option" or feature for that matter in out new home at this point is our washtub. You can see Wayne cleaning up his painting supplies at our now not quite so new looking washtub.

We have be looking at and buying/ordering bathroom hardware and started looking for ceiling fans to put in the main rooms we will be using. Thanks so much Renee for schlepping us around Philly to look at stuff and for all of your expertise.

Since we will be moving into the house to live just prior to Christmas and our Christmas decorations are in storage with the Navy, we bought a small Christmas tree that we can enjoy. I think it will be quite happy in our sunny breakfast nook although it may need a string of lights to be more festive.

New House

Well it is official the bank owns a new house. Ok really it is ours but the bank owns a lot more of it than we do.

As you can see from the photo we still don't have a yard. Although we have had a warmer than normal fall it has also been really rainy. We have not had more than one sunny day in a row and plenty of rain during the last few weeks or more. They haven't even been able to finish grading it since it is basically one big mud trap.

This photo is of our breakfast nook, of course it is a really big nook and really close to being a sun room with southern exposure. I think we will really enjoy this room especially on nice days in the winter when the sun will be most welcome. Right now the sliding glass doors lead out to a 15+ foot drop but we will eventually put a deck out there. The whole house is currently this boring combination of bone and white which I am looking forward to changing to lots of color.

This photo is the foyer and the stairs that lead up to my studio (the most important room in the house). Currently this is the only hardwood in the house but we will be putting in plenty more in the next months. We will end up with only the 3 upstairs bedrooms with carpet, tile in the full baths and vinyl in the laundry/mud room, the rest will be hardwoods.

The last photo is of the sink side of the kitchen. This photo doesn't have the four inch granite backsplash that it will have. We will be adding a backsplash later but it may take a bit since we have a pretty long list of projects and that can be done at any time. The more painting and flooring we can do before we have the Navy take our stuff out of storage and deliver it the better. The kitchen is nice and big which will be nice since we like to cook together. It will also be good for entertaining since several people could work in there and not get in each others way.

Crystal Jewelry

As I promised here are the projects that I made with the new crystals I got from Artbeads.com. The earrings above used the Topaz Leaf Crystal Pendant that I chose. I added 4 mm crystals and pearls from my collection using head pins to make the dangles and joined them all together with a few different sizes of jump rings and now they are fun pair of fall earrings.
The 3 and 4 mm bi-cones in Crystal Heliotrope and the rivoli button went into this matching set of bracelet and necklace. I combined them with some seed beads and black oxide beads and used them while teaching my Flat Double Spiral and Single Spiral Rope Classes at Bead Boutique. Combining the Crystal Heliotrope with silver and Black Oxide makes for a very elegant set.

The Amethyst and Crystal Vitrail Light rivolis both went into these oh so subtle earrings above. They are loosely based on my new rivoli earring class that I will be teaching at Bead Boutique. With the addition on 6 mm facetted imitation alexandrite stones, a snap fittings and some sterling silver wire these earrings go well with the many purples in my wardrobe and jewelry. This is my first attempt at multi-tier wire wrapping and I really like how it turned out. I think I may have to try doing some wire wrapping that joins multiple cabochons or rivolis of different sizes to make unusual pendants or centers for a necklace.
These earrings are more closely related to the Wire Wrapped Rivoli Earring class although once again they have the addition of 6 mm snap fittings; this time with imitation emeralds. Here I have combined gold-filled wire with the sterling silver wire for a pair of earrings that work with either gold or silver jewelry. the emerald and crystal copper go really well together and give these earrings a very earthy feel.
Once again last but not least are my fishy earrings. Adding 4 mm bi-cones and 6 mm top drilled bi-cones in shades of blues to the fish pendants and I have glistening water for the fish to swim in.

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