All cleared out and ready to go...

It took some work, a little sweat, and a few tears, but the kitchen is packed up and everything that is removable without tools is out of the kitchen. Tomorrow Tim comes bright and early and starts the tear out process. And, I think I MAY have figured out my colors. We will see...

Remodel - days 3, 4, and 5

These three days have pretty much been the same thing each day. M has a ceiling again, and it has just been Tim coming and putting in the drywall and then mudding and sanding and mudding and sanding and texturing, etc. Pretty boring.

Monday we are going to tear out, so I am packing up the kitchen. In the mean time, my walls look like this:

And my table and counters look like this:

And my brain looks like this:

I thought I had a color picked out. Then, I painted a sample on my wall. Despite the fact that is was a very grey blue, and even on the plate I used for rolling out the paint, it was grey blue, when I put it on my wall, it was a very bright blue, and rather baby blueish. So, I got more samples. Too light. I got the next sample. Too dark. Sigh. I have a pile of sample cards that range from light grey to dark blue, to various shades of green/grey/blue and I just sit and stare at them, completely stumped. Despite my artistic background, this color thing with painting rooms and coordinating them is just really not my forte! So, I will keep trying until I find what I like. And, in the mean time, I will pack more boxes.

Kitchen remodel (fixing the floor) day 2

Yesterday, at the end of the day, M's room looked like this:

We figured out that two joists were, in fact, sunken a little, causing the floor to be uneven. We also found some damage that also explained why the joist might be weakening:

Call me crazy, but cracks in the wood can't be good. Then, at the end of the day, this showed up:

It is huge! But, they told me this was the most popular size and probably the size we need for our project. The next smaller size these guys carried was called a "Bagster" where you put stuff in a big bag and they take it away. Somehow I don't think cabinets will fit in there… Today Tim came and got to work on the joists. He jacked them up (it was interesting to sit in my kitchen and hear the creaking and cracking of the walls.) Then, he reinforced them with additional beams. I don't fully understand how it works, but he had to jack the joists up 3 1/2 inches in order to push the floor up 3/4 of an inch. Crazy. But, it worked, and we have a level floor again. Hooray! The process ended up being more easy than we had originally thought (and dreaded) so we are happy to have it work out so far. (knock on wood!)

That is probably a confusing picture, but you are looking straight up at the joist, and it now has the reinforced wood on each side. The wiring and plumbing that go through the room made it really tricky getting those beams in there. I am amazed he could do it. Tomorrow he will have it looked over by someone who knows more about it, just to make sure all is sound and good, and then he will patch up the ceiling, and M can have her room back. I am hoping this means that the kitchen tear out can start soon… he hasn't given me an exact date for that yet. I am getting excited though!

Kitchen Remodel - starting somewhere besides the kitchen

I have debated about whether or not to post about the kitchen remodel. But, I decided it would be fun to document it as I go, simply for my sake. If you happen to be on here, and you happen to watch the progress, great. I hope it is fun for you. I just figured that the kitchen remodel is kind of my own new art project - it took some creativity and color matching, etc, right? And, it has occupied much of my time for the past few months, so why not post about it. Unlike most kitchen remodels, ours does not start in the kitchen. Ours starts below it in M's room. We had to move all of her furniture out (except for the bed which wouldn't fit through the door), and, as of this morning, it looked like this:

Tim (he is our contractor) came this morning and started tearing into the ceiling. We need to find out why the kitchen floor is sinking near our pantry, and this is how we look. It is still under investigation, but we have found that at least 2 joists have sunk a little, so we will have to jack them up, reinforce them, and hope it stays. (I say "we" but really, it is Tim doing the work). About 45 minutes into his work, the room looked like this:

Now, double the amount taken from the ceiling, and add another half on top of that, and you will have what it looks like now (I would take a photo, but I don't want to bug him right now) In the mean time, I have packed a lot of my kitchen up - just keeping what I need to continue cooking until I no longer have a stove or oven. Then, when this ceiling/floor job is done, I will pack up the rest, move some furniture, and we will start the fun stuff. For the past 2 weeks I have had wood flooring (41 boxes) sitting in my family room and study. It hasn't been too bad, but I love the flooring so much and just can't wait to get it installed. Right now it looks like this:

But, when it is installed, it will look more like the photos above. (I just LOVE the variation in grain and color!). It is called Acacia Golden Walnut. Acacia is a beautiful wood and it is very solid. I hope that will mean it holds up well in our high-traffic kitchen. (If you look closely on the photo in our family room (the smaller stack of boxes), you can see our sample of cabinet colors - the light will be on the outside cabinets, the dark on the island. I will take more photos as we go - including the gaping hole in our ceiling. M is being a trooper about it all. It can't be fun sleeping on the floor in another room surrounded by all of your stuff in a very small space. She said, "so, is this what it is like living in an apartment?" Ha ha. I think the space she has is about the size of my dorm room in college, so maybe she is on to something. :)

Two Portraits

Last school year I did very little art. I did a little bit of quilting, but really, the creative part of me was really quite lacking. I did, however, manage to do two commissioned portraits. One (in the dark pink shirt) is the sister of a boy I did a couple of years ago. Their family liked his, and plan to have a portrait done for each of their children when they reach that same age (3-4 years old).

I do have a new plan for this school year. Once a week I do something called "art class". I take 2 hours (or more, if I have it) and I do something creative, or I watch a video or read a book about art (I have several I want to catch up on).So far, I have done it most weeks. I do have a small quilting project that I finished- it was a new concept to try and was fun. I hope to do more like it. And, I have some other quilts to finish too, and they are making progress. So, maybe, just maybe, I will be posting more art and sewing projects on here soon!

Self Portrait

Because I haven't done a lot of art in the past six months, I have had a hard time getting back into doing it. I posted (below) about the Zentangle art that got my motivation going again.

So, I decided to start a portrait of my friend's grandaughter. And, everything that could go wrong did. For whatever reason, being out of practice, fear of not remembering how to draw, or something else, I could not get the portrait going. Last weekend was conference weekend and I like to draw while I watch conference. So, I tried during Saturday's session, and I got nothing. I finished the day feeling discouraged and frustrated.

On Sunday, I decided that maybe I needed to try something else. I have drawn my children. I have drawn my husband. But, I have put off drawing myself. With all of us, I would have the whole "set" of our family. But there is something about having to look at yourself up close (and see lines and wrinkles, knowing fully that you have to put them in or it won't look like you), and I was really afraid I wouldn't like it.  It took me a long time to even pick a photo that I wanted to draw.

So, Sunday came along and I abandoned the other portrait and pulled out mine (which I had sort of sketched out over a year ago), and I got to work. It worked out amazingly well. I still pick at it and see things I want to change, but overall, I really like my portrait, and it is nice to say I have now done our whole family. And, remarkably, it only took 3-4 hours to complete the drawing. Maybe I haven't forgotten everything I learned after all.

Here is my portrait:

And, for fun, here are the portraits of my husband and children - all of us together in the blog post. :)

Zentangle

I have taken a loooong time to get myself going back into art again. Summer was so busy and I had gone almost 6 months with no drawing, no quilting, no creating. And, I could feel it. I think I need to do things like this, for my emotional well being. It is amazing how much better I feel when I do something creative.

Well, one day I saw that Blick Art (an art supply store that I love) was doing a "contest". It was really a drawing, so no talent was needed. They wanted people to turn in a piece of art each day, which was an entry to win some art supplies. I pretty much never win drawings like that, but I thought that maybe if I entered each day, it would help get my creative juices flowing. The theme was Zentangle, or Tangle art, or Zen Doodle (It has many names).  The concept is kind of like doodling. You make shapes, you fill them in with patterns and designs. There aren't really rules to it. If you google it, you will see all kinds of quality - some are absolutely incredible - animals and such that are drawn with amazing detailed patterns that give their skin a really cool texture, etc.  Mine don't do that. Some days I didn't have a lot of time to draw, but I did manage to submit 12 or 13 of them to the contest. Not bad. And, yes, it did help get my creative juices flowing again. It was fun to try out, and the idea is that you use the process to relax and to get yourself feeling creative (Thus, the name ZEN doodle).  I am glad I tried it. I didn't win anything (bummer) but I did at least jumpstart my art again.  Here are some of my favorites (I like the butterflies the best, which is funny, because I am not even a big fan of butterfly things)  Enjoy.

I apologize for the massive size of the photos.  I am trying blogger from my ipad, and I haven't figured out how to make them smaller yet.

A portrait and a landscape

Art has been sort of slow going lately. Life has been busy and there just hasn't been the time to sit down and draw much.  But, I do have a couple of pieces that were finished not too long ago. This first is a commissioned portrait that I actually mostly finished around Christmas time. Then, it got put on hold for awhile, and then I did some tweaking, waited, tweaked some more, and now it is officially finished.

Carter

 This other one is an attempt at a drawing of Zion.  I like the red rock in it, but overall the drawing is just not my favorite. But, I consider it good practice, and I will try again. For years I have tried to get the perfect photograph of a scenery in Zion, and for years it was gloomy and overcast every time I went. And yes, gloomy skies can have their own appeal artistically, but I really wanted the red rock and the blue sky.  I got some okay photos in our last trip there, but I still haven't found the perfect one. I will keep trying...

Virgin River, Zion National Park