Painter Girl

Running Around...

Sorry for the lack of posts this week.  That is due to not too much of interest to post about!  I have some contractor delays on 2 jobs, so I am just waiting around for my turn to be able to get into those houses.  In the meantime, I had a new client call, a real estate appraiser who had been in one of the homes I have done, doing an appraisal.  I met with him and his wife yesterday and they are anxious to have me do some work in their home.  Since my schedule is so insane over the next few months, I told them I could fit their kitchen in if I could begin tomorrow.  Their walls are freshly painted with the correct base coat for the finish they selected, so this would be a nice job to slip in.  Here is the finish they've chosen:

It's a finish I call my "Tuscan Finish", consisting of 4 glazes.  They would have small clusters of grape vines stenciled randomly at ceiling height, around the room.  Not too much, just a few here and there.  This is a nice, warm finish and goes well with their cherry cabinets and dark granite counters.

They also have a white fireplace surround that needs some interest in the Family Room.  They picked out a nice finish and are looking at these design elements.  I'll have to do this job at a later date, when I can fit it in.  Also, these designs will have to be ordered.

Whenever I am not out working in someone else's home, I am staring at my own walls wondering what I can do to them next.  I love this wallpaper pattern that you are seeing in all the magazines and design blogs these days:

Of course, "wallpaper" is a word that is forbidden in my house/world, so I designed my own take on this.

I want to do this on one accent wall in my living room.  I'll do the trees, floor to ceiling, like the wallpaper. This is my base color of my living room walls.  I used an off white tinted Venetian Plaster, and dragged  a stiff brush through it while wet to form the bark.  When dry, I added the brown. It will be easier to do the bark with a graining tool that I lent my friend Stacy, so will wait until I get that back.  I may lay it all out on the wall, in the meantime.

More snow, rain and freezing rain here in the Boston area today.  I need to go out in this yucky weather to meet with a client to finalize some colors for next week's job.  Hope you are all staying warm and dry!

Back to Business, sort of...

I hope you all had some time to relax and enjoy time with family and friends.  I still have some family here with me, but they will be leaving later today.  I'll have a few days to regroup before my good friend Maura arrives for New Year's.  I am hosting a girls night out/in for New Year's Eve.  Weather permitting, a few of us will go into Boston on New Year's Eve, late in the day/early evening... to view the ice sculptures, see the parade and early fireworks.  After that, we will head back to my house, cook up a storm and enjoy a relaxing evening in...eating, drinking and lots of girl talk!  Then it's back to reality.

Today I am going to do a little cleaning and organizing, try to get some exercise in, and do some reading.  I have one client stopping by to pick up some samples and will give the ceiling client I did before Christmas a quick call.  They asked me to return and add a little more stenciling to the Family Room ceiling, before New Year's Eve, if possible, because they are having a big party.  I'll go do that tomorrow. The day after Christmas I received a call from a new client, a referral from another client.  This woman wants "something done" in her newly remodeled kitchen, so I will meet with her on Saturday.  I like to see my January calendar filling up. :-)

My last job, a quick striae in a dining room, went well.  This was a quick job, taking less than a day to complete.  I am hoping to return to this house to do some work on their ceiling in the dining room.  When you see the pics, you'll see that they could use a little interest on that very white ceiling!

This is my sample board (on the right), with a strip of wallpaper attached to it.  This client wanted to duplicate this wallpaper as closely as possible.  Oh, I see the picture is upside down, but you get the idea!

It's a small dining room... maybe 12' x 12'.  This is the Before Picture.

This shows the first wall I did. 

All done... It looks much nice w/o the blue tape. :-)

Another view. It's still very wet.

This ceiling would be much happier with a nice ceiling medallion stenciled around the base of this chandelier and maybe a nice scroll design in the four corners, don't you think? ;-)

Armoire Completed

Well, for those of you in this business... you know what a pain in the butt Thanksgiving through Christmas can be.  Lots of juggling with the schedule to fit everyone in on time or to fill time slots from clients who end up postponing their work until after the start of the new year.  That said, I'm busy working on 2 ceilings in one of my favorite homes.  I'll post more about that tomorrow.  Right now I need to bring you up to date with the last house I was working in.  After finishing the Family Room I had an Armoire to paint for them, so did that last week.  You will recognize my Family Room walls in the background of some of the pictures.

Here's the "Before" picture. The Armoire was painted once, a long time ago, by someone else.  This is the color it was when they bought it several years ago.  It had been sitting in their garage until recently.  The walls in the background are also the "Before" picture.
See how bland...dull and boring everything is in it's neutral state.

Ah... a much warmer, inviting look for both walls and armoire, don't you think?  This is the best "After" picture I have right now of this room because it is still awaiting Marc's magic touch with some new window treatments, furniture and accessories.  But... back to the armoire.  A flat screen tv sill go in the top portion, so little of that interior will be visible.  And of course... the drop cloth will be gone! ;-)

Here is the door detail.  The inserts of the door panels, the 2 bottom drawers, and the side panels are all done with plaster.  Once dry, the plaster is glazed with an umber to look like leather.  The stencil design is raised from troweling the plaster through the stencil and then glazing.  The entire piece is waxed.  This stencil design is one of Melanie Royals, but I do not have the info about it on hand at the moment.  I will try to insert a link later.

The drawer, without knob, also has a raised design.  This was a free stencil inserted in a trade magazine.  The stencil is by LaserExcel.

The side panels are done with the faux leather finish, but with the addition of some bronzed lines to form a diamond pattern.

The top of the armoire also has 3 raised designs, one center and one on each side.  Again...free stencils from LaserExcel. Over the years I have amassed quite the collection of their free stencils that are found in trade magazines.  Their small size works well on furniture or fabric.

Dining Room Chairs

I've been very busy, both on the home front and with work.  I am still trying to get my own home ready for the Holidays when all of my family descends.  I have agonized over which dining room chairs I want to buy for several months now.  When I originally began my dining room makeover, I was sure I wanted these chairs from Crate & Barrel:

But...I went to C&B and sat in these chairs, and found them to be not so very comfortable.  That is my big complaint with my current chairs, they just are not chairs you want to sit and linger in. I do love the style and color of these chairs though, but then I found another chair I liked better...

Enter the Silver Leaf Oval chair from BrocadeHome.com, in flocked leaf silk upholstery, the one featured on the left.  I do love this chair, but had to eliminate it for 3 reasons: price was over my budget; my 2 cats would totally destroy this fabric in days; and lastly... I just bought these drapes by Waverly for the dining room (at Target, on sale!), and that is enough Damask pattern in this room, I think.

New drapes!

Then I went back on line and did some more chair research.  This is what I think I want now.  I really don't like the idea of 4 matching chairs.  I want 2 of each chair, plus I also already own 2 Louis Ghost chairs (good score on ebay months ago!).

I love the style of this chair and I think the green will be a close match to the green horizontal stripe I painted on my walls!  I found this at http://www.eurway.com.  So, 2 of these please and...

2 of these from Brocade.com.  Isn't this just the most elegant chair?!  I think 4 would be over the top, for me anyway. 

I'm going to sit with this selection of chairs for a bit, before I make the commitment.  Also, huge error in my check book this week, so need to recover from that little fiasco! :-(

As always with my business, it's Feast or Famine.  After a short Famine stint, I am now in the Feast cycle...sigh of relieve.  I am presently enjoying doing some work in a new client's home and will be sharing pics and info about that next week.  Also, because I just cannot come home and rest at the end of the day... I have been working on a Magnetic Bulletin Board for my new home office.  I've been taking step by step photos and will share this fun and easy project with all of you next week too. 

Lastly, a huge thank you to all local Boston readers who have bought pies from Community Servings, Pie In the Sky fundraiser.  The deadline is nearing... November 14th, so if you are still in need of pies, please place your order asap.  My Seller Number is #987!  Thanks! ;-)

Current Projects

My apologies for missing a few days here.  Lots going on, so little time to sit and post.  The good news is, I finished the 3 black pieces of furniture I had been working on, and my client gave me a 4th piece to do.  She is also contemplating having me design a faux headboard for her bed, to be painted directly on the wall.  I am reaching some options now.  I only took pictures of one of the black bureaus because the many drawers were all out of the 2nd piece for transport and I did not want to put them all back in to photo and then have to take out to put in my car.  I will take a photo of this piece when I return to the client's house next week.

Had I look at this pic before I returned the furniture, I would have noticed that bare wood spot showing to the left of the top drawer...where the drawer does not close flush.  I had the black paint w/me when I returned the furniture, so touched it up on the spot.This piece is only slightly distressed, as the client did not want a lot of the finish to be removed.  I also added a finish coat of wax.

Now... onto a new topic.  Last night I attended a Life Drawing session at my friend, Tasha Cough's studio in Jamaica Plain. (MA for those of you out of state...near Boston). Tasha has been kind enough to keep me on her email list about these monthly sessions for the past several months...even though I had not attended any until last night.  I had not done any Life Drawing since my art school days...back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, so I was a bit hesitant!  Well, I had a great time!  Met some wonderful artists and enjoyed a very relaxed, friendly atmosphere.  It was very enjoyable to do this type of sketching, since it had been so many years!  Tasha is not only a decorative painter, but a wonderful artist.  Please visit her Fancypaints website to view some of her work.  To meet Tasha and see more of her work, Tasha will be part of the annual Jamaica Plain Open Studios, September 29-30th this year.  Thanks Tasha, for a fun evening!

Back to Painting!

Sorry for my absence here last week, but I really did not have much to write about since I was still working at home, not out painting.  Also, I just got my camera back (after leaving it in Marc's car), so couldn't post any new pics either. 

I did manage to get almost all of my filing done, with just a few small piles remaining to be put away.  My daughter, Sarah, still has some misc. books and boxes left in her former bedroom, which will soon become my new home office.  That room looks even worse than it did a week ago because I have now added my boxes of office supplies, etc. that will need to be put away.  For now, it will remain a junk room, until I can find the time to prep the walls and paint and then set up my office.  My main concern was to get the office supplies out of my own bedroom closet and move a bookcase that was in my bedroom into the new office.  With that accomplished, I was able to reorganize my own bedroom.  I will be doing a fabulous stencil design in my bedroom, once I repaint the walls.  I hate to tell you how many times I've repainted the walls in my home since I bought it 16 yrs. ago!  I will be using a Ben Moore color, called "Quiet Moments" on the walls.  If you go to the Ben Moore site, they now have a section called Personal Color Viewer.  Here you can key in your Ben Moore color and see what it will look like on the walls.  This color, "Quiet Moment" is one of the colors Marc picked out for some of the walls in the Bourne house on the Cape.  (More about that in a bit).  In yesterday's post, over at Design Inspiration, Planet Stencil Library, Rachel writes about redoing her bathroom and shows her before pics.  I will be using the wonderful Fennel stencil from Planet Stencil Library for my bedroom redo, but am still working out what colors I will use. 

Tomorrow, early... so I better get to bed soon.... I am off to Bourne for the week.  I decided to stay down on the Cape vs. driving back and forth 1 1/2 hours each way, all week.  Not sure if I will be able to post because there is no Internet service where I am staying... but I may be able to find some, somewhere, so am bringing my laptop.