Over to Texas on Tuesday. Looking forward to the sunshine (hopefully), the long winter days (unless the earth tilts), camping in West Texas (if my father’s not too wimpy) and skiing in New Mexico (concerned about snowboarding assholes decapitating innocents).
Merry Christmas to all y’all out there in the binary aether. Happy New Year tonight, or this morning if you’re in New Zealand. Until next time, peace on earth and purity of essence for all!
We didn’t love the kitchen that was in our house when we moved in, so we’ve been gradually giving it a facelift. The first thing to change was the walls. They were baby blue and Becky repainted them a shocking but effective yellow. The idea was to brighten and simplify the visuals.
Here is the kitchen after repainting painting but before anything else…
I grew to hate the dark counter tops, despite how fashionable they are. They narrow down the space and you can’t see dirt on them. There is no way to tell whether you’ve cleaned them well enough! The tiles, also fashionable, are hideous. With the blue on the walls they were even worse. We had already changed the horrible spot lighting for the more generous glow of normal drop lights. What a nightmare.
I hate doing dishes by hand. We wanted a dishwasher. This week we got one and I completed some of our other kitchen refit desires. Becky painted the motley tiles yellow to more or less match the walls. I replaced the black counter tops with wood laminate ones. And I put in a new ceramic sink to replace the old metal one.
For me, this is a much better space, functionally and aesthetically. Look how the countertops open the space. They even make the kind of ugly melamine doors look good. Next we’re going to replace these doors with painted frame and panel ones.
The big winner is the dishwasher though. It’s like I never truly lived before.
No, not citizens… life drawing. This past Thursday we worked with paint. Hellish hard to do life drawing with paint. I brought watercolours and only one of my three sketches really worked at all. The others were muddy messes. This is the best one:
I’m quite happy with it. Not everything about the drawing is perfect, but I think it captures the moment and the girl quite well. I didn’t have time to finish the background. We had thirty minutes. It took me at least five to pencil in the compostion.
Regarding the experience as a whole, I would rather have had a lot more time practicing with pencil and charcoal before moving on to paint, especially watercolour which I’ve always had a hard time controlling on the page. Still, I think it made me engage with watercolour as a medium in a way I have never done before. The result is, I like it, and will use it more in the future.
In other news, I am finally posting a photo of the built-in unit I have installed in our house. This is the most basic type of unit I will be offering for sale: a fully built-in painted bookcase with adjustable shelves. This one has been primed but not painted yet; the final paint will match the architectural trim in the room. The first shot shows it without flash, the second, with flash.
I’m now working on the additional three units for our living and dining rooms. One will be just like this one, the other two will have cabinets below and shelf units above. Their countertops will be made of some very special burr oak that I have waiting in my workshop.
Whether women or wood, there’s nothing like a natural figure. Good evening.