Friday, November 10, 2006

texture

Here's part of the wall I textured using the pink goop that dries to white. It looks quite different from the flat evenly stippled surface you see on most walls made of sheetrock. I'm anxious to see how difficult it will be to paint or colorwash as the surface is quite rough and has a lot of depth. If you look closely at the photo you can see that I wasn't even able to get the entire area in focus while using my macro lens; that's how much variance there is in the surface. It seems to be the ideal solution to covering the cracks that resulted when the foundation was leveled, as well as the numerous patches and holes from picture hangers made throughout the years.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

swatch junkie


I Love Color! Am thinking about painting my living room with pink & orange. Or maybe doing a colorwash of ochre over cream or red over ochre with some dark brown accents. Decisions, decisions. I want some vibrance from color yet I need one wall which will allow the eclectic art on it to pop, too.

I got the idea to use hot pink when I began texturing the walls with the DAP joint compound that goes on pink and dries to white. Putting that stuff on the wall is like trying to spread silly putty - very difficult compared to the stuff I'm used to, but it was the only brand available the day I bought it. The more I saw of that bright magenta or bubble-gum pink, the more I thought it would look good on the particular wall I was texturing. Alas, it has now dried and I can't quite remember what color it was.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

sunday


We're getting a sporadic misting rain today. Another miss calculation by the weather predictors, as we weren't supposed to see moisture until Wednesday. Folks seem to be a little more touchy about rain forecasts since we need it so badly. Yesterday I found a few patches of yellow wood-sorrel blooming under the shelter of the blanket of ragweed that covers about half the back yard. There are some pink oxalis blooming in the front of the house, but those are the domesticated variety. While many consider the yellow type to be a "weed" I think they are just as pretty as the pink ones, especially when they peek through a carpet of green like this.

I think some of my tiredness stems from being in limbo between houses. We're still living at the Dallas house but the majority of our belongings are in McKinney. Yesterday I saw my coffee maker for the first time in many moons and now I'm getting a yen for coffee. Am making my tea extra strong & omitting milk in the meantime.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

overcast


Kind of a gloomy day today. Not cold, but gray. The clouds said "rain" but none ever came. Spent a short 3 hours at the house transferring things from the storage building indoors and getting things in better order. Was busy the whole time but didn't seem to accomplish much. I didn't even start on the tub cleanup I had hoped to finish today. I think the 2 or 3 days a week of driving to and from McKinney and never having a real day "off" is telling on me. I seem to have worn out quickly yesterday and today. So now I'm home (where the outdoors is still gloomy) with my pot of chai tea and a new episode of "Ugly Betty" ready for viewing on abc.com. Later of course there's my tape of this week's episode of "lost" which I haven't seen yet.

Here's a pic of part of the (allegedly) 100-year-old picket fence that extends from our back gate across 15 or so feet to the neighbor's fence. When we first saw it we didn't know it was old and the historical preservation officer gave us a permit for a chain link fence without batting an eyelid, so we only thought someone had gone to a LOT of trouble to make a fence this way. My neighbor told us a previous owner had been refused a permit for a privacy fence by the historical society because they wanted to remove the pickets. I had planned to save as much of the fence as I could because it was odd - now I have to research it and find out if it really is as old as my neighbor says. Apparently baling wire was the duct tape of the 1800's. Everything that could be repaired or held together with it was.

Friday, November 03, 2006

baby roses



Behind the house is a rose bush almost as tall as the house itself. Just over a month ago it started producing a few tiny but very aromatic pink roses. Each weekend there are more of them and these are coming from a shrub which hasn't been watered regularly through more than a year of drought! I found out this rose bush was given to a previous owner by her daughter, who told me it was one of the "old" roses. Maybe I can find out what variety it is.

It's frustrating that things take so long for me to do. I had estimated a 2-3 week time frame to complete the bathroom, but that's not gonna happen. I originally estimated 1 day for demolition, 1 day for insulating, 1 day for the plumber, 1 day to install the backerboard, 1 day to lay the tile, and 1 day for grouting. Well, it took 3 days for the demo, so right away I was off schedule. I was able to install the insulation in one day but I didn't allow time to scrape off the old caulk from the tub and time to kill the mildew, so that's the next step. I finally finished assembling all the drawers for the kitchen cabinets and got about half of the cabinet doors installed. I'm having problems with the hinges: they're not all made the same, just as the cabinets were not all made the same. Maybe that's why Home Depot is discontinuing their Mill's Pride brand of ready-to-assemble cabinets. The Ikea shelving that I assembled was of much more uniform quality than the Home Depot stuff, which incidentally, was "made in the u.s.a." Have we sunk so low we haven't the skill to make simple furniture for the common folk?