More Adventures in Painting (The Walls)

So a few weeks ago our oldest son finally moved out and into a residential home on the campus of the school that he goes too. Due to a variety of reasons, it took years to get him into a placement (he is 20, mentally disabled and will always need to live in a supervised setting) and by the time he moved, everyone's nerves were frayed from the waiting.

But his small, dark cave of a room turned into a good project to distract us (well me, really, I did most of the work).


My daughters have always shared a room and were pretty happy for the opportunity to each have their own room. Actually, 'over the moon' comes to mind. Heh. It was decided that Ginger, the youngest, would get my son's old room and that Sophie would stay in the old one:

Which usually looked more like this:
Sigh. I know, I know.

For the longest time Ginger wanted her new room to be lime green and so I was envisioning that too. At the last minute, like the day before we bought the paint, she decided on an aqua color. Ok. As I was rolling the aqua over the dark blue walls, I thought it looked great, but after I did the whole room, I thought I was gonna die:
This picture does NOT express the full spectrum of that first color. It was like a hopped up, drug induced, blue light special version of Kmart blue/green. It was SO intense, the room seemed to vibrate. Even though the aqua was lighter than the previous wall color it was still too dark and way too vivid for the small room. I told Ginger that we would have to paint the room the lighter shade of the same color. She went all drama queen on me, but I put my foot down. That crazy color was spilling out of her room and making the whole hallway blue, I couldn't bear to look at it every time I walked up the stairs. So I did the second color and it was just right, even Ginger (eventually) agreed.


So we got her all moved in, a new rug from Pottery Barn, and a lot of shelving for her stuff (we put HER in the small room to help curb her hoarding tendencies;)) and viola! A bright, cute and shiny new bedroom in the house!

And naturally since she got a new room, the old room needed an update too. I loved the soft periwinkle/lavender color that the girls picked out when they were 4 and 6, but Sophie had visions of something different now.

I talked her out of red, then out of black (!) and we settled on orange. She picked out a color card and I ok'd it. After our experience with the first version of aqua, I was a bit concerned that the orange was going to be prison jumpsuit or traffic cone orange once it was on the walls, but it turns out that is was a food kind of orange. White trash food, to be specific. Heh. Depending on the light I was thinking Velveeta, Cheetos, Cheez Whiz, Orange Creamsicles, etc. for the several days that it took to paint this room. And omg, I thought the painting in there would never end; it's a large room, about 17x17 and had four windows plus the doors. Lots of edges! And it turns out that that periwinkle was more intense than I thought. I had to paint three coats of the orange before it finally stopped showing through. Which means three times around all the edges. Gah!!! I guess I should have primed the walls first, but I still would have been painting that room three times so that wouldn't have made much of a difference.

I spent a whole day cleaning and sorting through the rubble that had been left (we are instituting new and very strict 'clean your room' rules), and rearranged the remaining furniture. Found a nifty new rug (at Target online) that reminds us all of the Yellow Submarine animation and viola! A second bright and shiny new room!

I am incredibly glad that this round of painting is over, there were no injuries, only a few pulled muscles, no major paint spills and no footprints or pawprints tracking the splatter throughout the rest of the house.

But now I notice that the kitchen could use a bit of brightening up too.......

And PS. Read here for what happened when I repainted my old studio/new living room. And here is the room all finished.

Show Prep (and neverending orange walls)

Break On Through, 2009, Oil on Birch Panel, 9x9

I am currently working on paintings for a show in January at The Harrison Gallery in Williamstown, MA. This is my fourth solo show at this gallery and I am very grateful to have this exhibition opportunity again. Sales in general have picking up a bit, so that is encouraging too mostly because I am totally running out of storage space.

I have been making good progress in the studio despite constant interruptions and my current obsession with Facebook. Heh. But the plan is to get the landscapes finished by the end of November and then work on six portraits for the show during December. While my landscapes do quite well in this gallery, the director has agreed to include a few portraits this time. I should have been working on those earlier in the fall but for some reason I kept putting them off. I think maybe I just have to breeze in at the last minute and knock them out. Sometimes that works best. And I have decided not to stress if it doesn't. I will have plenty of landscapes ready for the show.

I probably should be painting in the studio today but instead I will be painting the walls in my daughter's room today, which has become a neverending project. Will explain all that in a future post, but just so you know, today it feels like I will be painting orange walls forever.

Painting the Walls (with a lot of buts)

So my old studio/new living room, as we call it around here is finally cleaned out, painted and ready for furniture. It took forever to find a place for the junkiest junk that I had stashed in there and in fact, more than a few things still are piled on the dining room table.

Initially, I had planned to paint the upper walls the same color that I painted the side walls in my studio, a deep neutral color called Peppercorn. I was so sure that this was the right color I added two extra gallons of paint in the order at the paint store.

BUT.

Then I made the final decision on the color of the furniture, and then I found a beautiful rug and of course neither worked very well with the Peppercorn.

So I drove down to Sherwin Williams and picked out a deep brown, because now I was sure that I wanted the walls to be a dark chocolate brown. Normally I am great at picking out wall colors, when I painted the whole rest of the house, every color was right on. So I was pretty confident that the first brown I picked was the right brown.

BUT.

After I rolled it on the walls (twice, just to be sure), I noticed that it looked a bit purple at certain times of the day. I liked how dark it was but the purple/raisin/deep burgundy thing each afternoon really bugged me. So it was back to my collection of paint samples where I picked out a nice warm brown, a bit lighter than I had planned however there would be no mistaking it for burgundy or purple or anything like that.

BUT.

I was a bit concerned after I rolled it on and then even more so after it dried and it still looked disturbingly like the dog's diarrhea. At this point I had bought 6 gallons of paint and even the kids were starting to make fun of me. So I decided that a good option would be to mix the diarrhea and the deep purple color together. Doug scoffed at me, but I reminded him that I certainly know a bit about color for crying out loud! What does he think I do all day, anyway? So I mixed the two colors together until I got what I wanted. Painted the room yet again and it was so close that I even went around and even painted the edges.

BUT.

After a few days of trying to convince myself that it was right I gave it up. It was a good mix but just not quite right for the room or for the sofa, chair and rug that I ordered. Doug was out of town for a few days that week and I took that opportunity to very quietly slink back to the paint store and buy two more gallons of the darker shade of the diarrhea paint, the one we had once discussed but passed on because we thought it was too dark. I rolled paint on the walls of my old studio/new living room for the fifth time, not counting the two coats that I had done five years ago when we moved in. I did a second coat just to be sure (again) and finished up all the edges. Again. This time though:

PERFECT.

I love it. It is a beautiful warm, dark brown, somewhere between milk and dark chocolate and the rug goes perfectly with it. I have some worries about the furniture, as the fabric swatch and rug combo bothers me a bit, but there is no turning back on that one so for now I am just enjoying the wall color.

And I am also appreciating the fact that the walls in this room are only half walls because of the paneling and so one can roll all the walls in just over an hour. My wasted time seems pretty minimal when you look at it that way, don't you think? Coulda been way worse.


Oh and we had planned to replace the hollow core Home Depot style front door this fall, but that project is on hold and so I think that I will soon be painting that door to match the rest of the trim. The hunter green is just not working for me here. And by the way, anybody recognize the top painting in between the two doorways?

Ta-Daaa!

So here it is - a shot of the painting area of my new studio. These are just my basic supplies as I am still trying to finish up painting the trim before I really junk the place up.

I did a whole batch of underpaintings on Monday up there and it was lovely. The work didn't seem to be affected by the move (yet) but it did take some time to settle in a bit. I spent a lot of time moving things around, getting the placement of the easels and tables just right and especially adjusting the lamps over my easel (mainly I paint at the one on the left). It was difficult to get them in the right place because of the sloped ceiling, which I almost immediately dented with the halogen lamp.

I suspect I will be moving things around quite a bit more before things feel right.

One thing that is right is the color. While I appreciate the clean look of a white studio, it is not for me. I like to feel all cozy and tucked in when I am in my studio, and actually in any room that I am in in my house (none of which have white walls) and white walls just don't do that for me. But since most of the studio walls are actually the sloped ceiling, and because of the limited natural light I decided to paint the ceiling an off white; the same creamy white color (Aspic from Sherwin Williams) that we used on all of the trim in the house, as well as the ceiling in our bedroom, which is very similar to the studio. But then I had to contend with the short knee walls. I considered painting them Aspic too, but then well, the room would have seemed white. After collecting a ton of paint chips, I finally settled on a dark color called Peppercorn from Sherwin Williams. Even though it is pretty intense, it is actually a pretty neutral color, not exactly blue or green or brown and not too cool or too warm. Neutral. I also hoped that by just using it on the side walls that it would help to make the room seem a bit more spacious.

Even though I was sure about this color, I have to admit to being a bit nervous when I painted the first wall section. If I was wrong about it, it would be a real pain in the neck to change! Luckily, though by the time I was about halfway done with the first side, I was liking it and when it was finished I REALLY liked it. Phew.

After all that drama however, it probably won't really matter what color I decided on. I am pretty sure that soon I will have a lot of crap lining those walls and I'll never see Peppercorn again.

Jim, the floor guy came last week and sanded and polyurethaned the floors over the course of several days. As we suspected, the floors were the same wood that is in much of the rest of our house; pumpkin pine. No stain necessary, the warm orange of the wood was enough color for me and really contrasts perfectly with the wall colors. I am giddy about how beautiful the floor is. I will even admit to rolling around on it a few times. Heh. (actually I am not kidding)

The beams are amazing, even if they are kind of in the way and it hurts a lot to bump into them. Jim said he has seen only one other house in the area with this sort of diagonal structure. Our house is over 200 years old and is pretty dang plumb all things considered and these beams have a lot to do with that. They are connected to each other with pegs, not nails and you can see the hatchet marks where they were cut. As soon as I finish up the walls, I am going to give the beams a good coat of tung oil. I think they deserve it after all their hard work.


So there you go. This project cost twice as much as we expected, but I think it will be worth it. I am pretty sure that there will be some good art made up there.

Here are some pictures of the progress.

Painting the walls:


At first I was deathly afraid of walking out on this 2 foot wide ledge in order to paint the wall and ceiling. I was afraid that I would lose my balance, hit the stairs and break something. But by the first coat of Peppercorn on the wall I was practically bustin' some Coyote Ugly moves out there and feeling pretty pleased with myself.


Finished stairs and studio floor:

Still have to finish painting the trim and railing, but I also have a temporary table set up to prep a few panels 'cause I have a show in July to prepare for:

So-o-o, watchya think?

The Joy of Painting

Elemental, 2008, Oil on Panel, 9x18

So exactly five years ago this month we were still living in Utah and just finishing up the renovations on our money pit house here in NY. Our excellent contractor and his crew did a wonderful job, but naturally we went way over budget (well I did, I kept adding things) and the bid for painting the interior was about 20,000! Yikes! No money for that at all. So we hired the painter to do the ceilings and to prime the new walls. And our brilliant plan was then for me to spend a week or two out here, painting the house. The first trip was for about a week and there was electricity, telephone and heat in the house but nothing else. No appliances, satellite service, furniture. We had brought a load of things the previous summer so there was a bed and a few chairs and I did have a portable stereo, thank god, or I would have totally gone crazy, but that was it. There was one sink, a toilet and no shower (only a tub) hooked up. I kept food in a cooler on the porch and I would have gone out for dinner each night but I ended working almost every single minute that I was here. On that first trip I lightly sanded all of the previously painted woodwork with a palm sander, which sucked so bad I can't even tell you. I remember sitting out on the front steps just crying because I was so sick of the endless sanding. But I got the woodwork sanded and primed AND I even managed to get sides of the kitchen cabinets painted so that the appliances could be installed after I left. I also managed to paint the walls where new sinks and toilets would be installed.

The next visit a month later was better. I had a refrigerator and a microwave. The utility sink was hooked up. I had shipped out a few boxes so I had some things like dishes, a lamp, a few books, etc. I was only planning to stay a week or so but even though I was working almost every minute of the day, I still needed more time. So I talked to Doug and we agreed I would stay longer, but unfortunately that meant I would miss my daughter's sixth birthday, something I still feel guilty about and something that she doesn't even remember. Heh. Anyway, my strongest memories of this trip were of sitting on the front steps at two in the morning rinsing out paint brushes in mineral spirits while the neighbor (a doctor) drove by very slowly peering at me and probably wondering what the heck I was doing. I got most of the house painted though before I left to go back to Utah.

When we moved about a month or so later I went out ahead of the movers and finished up a few more things. And over the next month or so I did the last odds and ends. Finally I put everything away (without painting the last two window sashes, and they are primed but still no top coat five years later) and even though there are spots that could use some touching up, um thanks to the movers and to the kids, I have had a mental block about any kind of house painting whatsoever. I developed a newfound respect for painters and at the time, if we had actually had 20,000 dollars, I would have happily handed it over. On the other hand, painting this house really did help me feel connected to it, in a way that I have never felt about anywhere I have ever lived before. So I guess all in all it was a valuable experience. Um, yeah.

Why am I writing about all of this? Well, because it's another blog post to fill AND because I am having major flashbacks to that time. I have been painting my new attic studio for the last few days and all of that work five years ago is rushing back to me. I can't say I am feeling physically ill like I thought I would if I ever had to tape off a window or use a paint roller again, and in fact I am somewhat enjoying the mindless activity and loud music (see #4 below).

I have noticed a few things though:

1. I definitely am not in the same physical shape as I was five years ago. Ok, I admit it, I have gained a few pounds since then and I don't exercise near as much as I used to either. There is little chance that I can work all day, or for even more than a few hours, even if I wanted to. Crap. I need to get back to gym when this is all over.

2. I have the jiggly arm thing going now too and it is most noticeable when rolling paint onto the sloped ceiling. Yayyy.

3. My music options are much better. When I painted the house, I listened to about 10 different CD's over and over and over again. This time I have my iPod and unlimited talk to listen to on satellite radio.

4. I am not so out of shape that I can't sing while I work. The acoustics in my virtually empty attic are amazing and even though I am a horrible singer. I sound great. Well, at least the kids are at school and aren't around to tell me otherwise. Heh.

5. Every minute that I am painting the smooth new sheet rock walls, I am mumbling thank yous that there is no wallpaper to strip, no woodwork to sand and no suspicious stuff to scrape off. Last time I was just complaining about all of that stuff.

6. I don't recall bumping my head at all when painting the entire rest of the house. So far I have bumped my head at least seven times in the last few days. Mostly on the beams, and when backing out of the knee wall storage space. Luckily, I am not so decrepit yet that I can't walk while bent over without putting my back out and so yesterday I avoided hitting my head entirely.

7. I am actually afraid to paint the short wall that is about two feet from the open stairwell. I am saving it for last. Surely when I was 38 that wouldn't have bothered me at all, right?

Anyway, I am hoping to finish this up next week sometime. There is still much that has to be done in the garden this weekend, finally time to get the tomatoes in! and so I will only be able to paint in smaller increments of time.

And a post about wall color next too. Oy, has THAT been an issue!

The New White House (sorry, can't find a before photo)

We have been really needing to get the exterior of our house painted. And so last summer, we made two decisions:

1. The was no chance whatsoever that we could do this ourselves. It's a big house, and hadn't been painted for at least 12 years. The wood was bare in many spots and scraping paint is kind of like fingernails on a chalk board to me. I scraped one side of the hen house last summer before retreating to my room with permanent goosebumps. Plus Doug is so busy and travels so much it seemed laughable that he could ever get the job done. So we hired a guy, who with his crew, did the whole thing in about nine days. Totally worth the expense.

2. What color? The house was a light yellow, with blue shutters. A combination I hated from the first minute I saw it. I liked the idea of taupe with black shutters and with off white trim to match the trim inside, however, I kept coming back to the feeling that the house should be a classic white with black shutters. I liked the idea of all our interior color enveloped by a white exterior (Our house is full of color; the dining room is a tomato red, the kitchen is a squash yellow, apple green in the office and a sandy brown in my studio. The kids chose blue, mustard, lavender for their rooms and our bedroom is a warm grey.) So that's what we went with. White. I did choose a few less conservative details. The porch floor is barn red and the porch ceiling is a natural wood bead board.

We think it looks beautiful and I still get really excited when I drive towards the house and get a glimpse of it through the trees. Ok, I am aware that I need to get a life. Heh. But the funny thing is that not one single person has noticed it, none of our friends who have stopped by or our neighbors who pass by each day. Sheesh! How can anyone not notice such perfection!?

And what's really exciting is that after four years, we finally have a step from the TV room to the patio. It was a 3 foot drop until we had the step put in a few weeks ago. Total luxury!