In Lieu of Pressure

I have been sort of lost this past week. Most of my time in the past three years has been dedicated to my degree, to learning as much as I can about photography and applying those skills in my art. I am at a loss now that the bulk of that education is completed. At this point I have to put a show together, which I could do with the work I have already created, put together my final document, of which I already have five different papers/prewriting exercises to use as fodder, and complete my defense, which will be done in front of my committee during the show hanging and for which I am already preparing by doing the photography and writing the document.

The show hangs in September (I hope) and I have set a personal goal for myself to get the writing done (first draft) by the middle of August. So I have almost two full months to prep. Which is infuriating to someone like me who prefers to be busy. If I had a job (still looking, no luck), I think I would be further along in my preparation for graduation than I am now. Because now, I have all day every day to dedicate to it and it is much easier to laze around and not do anything. WHAT?!?!? Sometimes I hate my stupid brain because of how intelligent and also how lazy it is. I can convince myself (and anyone else, mind you) that I am fully capable of putting together a show, a document, and a defense without so much as a misstep in a week. I can sit down and write six thousand words in one day with decent flow, continuity, and structure. I have also gotten much better at editing and, with the help of my beautiful and brilliant husband, can tear through those six thousand words to make them more fluid, contiguous, and structured in a matter of days. Okay, so that puts me at approximately two weeks for a full doc if you consider that I will be writing in parallel with editing and polishing.

Soooo, I sit around the house, look for jobs that I want (because I am not yet at the stage where I will apply for just any job, and certainly not at the state where I will go crawling back to my old life), watch TV, clean the house, and stare at the ceiling. Literally. Sometimes I lay on the couch and stare at the ceiling.

And now SPF and I are surfing twice a week, so two days a week I think about that, stretch, stare at the six bikinis that I own and determine which one I am going to wear, make sure the towels are clean and dry, the wet suits are rinsed and ready, the boards waxed, the car full of gas, and some sort of dinner ready in the fridge. (Yesterday I made a beet and caramelized onion salad (thanks JB!) and put it in the fridge and then we grilled chicken to go with it when we got home from surfing. Tasty!)

But what I really need to do is GET MY ASS IN GEAR! But, in lieu of actual pressure for the deadline, I seem to prefer to linger in the ocean, catch up on Avatar, and play Farm Frenzy 2 on Yahoo. (You should check it out.)

The Office - Take 2 - Day 9

As I mentioned in the previous blog, the next major accomplishment for this room is the decorating stage. For the most part we have the elements to decorate with already in hand, but for the room to really look new and fresh, we needed to address our futon.


The problem here is that the cover looks filthy. It isn't. It is actually pretty clean and gets laundered fairly regularly, but the pattern itself has worn out from use both as a couch and a bed. Ahh, you gotta love the futon. Mostly, though, you can tell that the cover was most heavily used, and loved, in the center of the pattern, where the blacks have faded to muddy browns and the creams have disintegrated into beige. You can tell what the pattern used to look like at the edges, especially on the right hand side.


So, it must go. Step one, make futon a bed for ease of removing cover.


Step two remove cover.


Step three, inspect mattress prior to new cover installation.


Step four, replace with brand new cover that matches the new color scheme of the room and is made of a sturdier material. Step five, position futon as bed again.


Step six, push back against wall. Step seven, accessorize.


Once the new futon cover and accouterments were in place, it was time to address one of the walls. One of the many things that I have learned from HGTV is that storage can be found in lots of places and with lots of clever solutions. In this particular case, we decided that this wall space could be used to store, display, and allow easy access to some of our possessions that are not used enough and are also hard to store well.


So we started with the Ibanez base.


Moved to my Fender Squire.


Followed by SPF's Samick.


And lastly SPF's Art and Lutherie acoustic. (As a side note, if you are in the market for a really wonderful acoustic steel string, this guitar is phenomenal. It holds tune tremendously well and has a rich, full tone. Highly recommended. Canada rules.)


This is the view from the other side of the room. It actually looks better in person. I sort of love this wall. And, as the desired result, we played each of them in the process of putting them up. What I really learned is that I need to play my base more and actually learn a real baseline rather than making one up. Although, making them up is awesome.


As of yet unhung is SPF's ukulele. We thought that the guitar holders wouldn't accommodate the small neck and head of the uke, but it turns out that we were wrong. As soon as I make it back out to Guitar Center, we should have another lovely addition to the fantastic new wall. SO GREAT! Honestly, I think I am going to play right now and then head up to the piano as well. I am trying to learn some Rachmaninoff and freshen up some Burgmuller on the piano, trying to remember my Beatles on the guitar (which SPF just repaired for me), and I have discovered that I love to play Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay. I sing along with what SPF calls a "bluesy voice." I am not even really certain how the vocals go and am making it up as I go along. So, I'm a vocal experimenter.

The Office - Take 2 - Day 8

This will be the monster post. Even though the bulk of the heavy labor work was already done at this point, lots of the details remain to be completed, and the devil is in the details.

There is nothing more nerve wracking during a remodel than installing something on your newly finished walls. At this point, you understand what kind of work goes into any little repair, so any ding, scratch, mar, or hole seems like a gigantic problem. So, you try to prevent that. But, at the same point in time, you realize that you need curtains and curtains need a rod.

We already had this awesome two-fer curtain rod holder from The Office remodel 1. So, it was only a matter of measuring new holes (I wanted them to be a little higher this time because last time the sheers dragged on the ground a little) so I measured, used the level, and installed the first one.


Once the first one was installed, it wasn't that difficult to get the others in place as well. That first one just made me a little nervous. But, I conquered that fear. :)


Installed holders sans rods.


This is the first rod with the sheers. I wanted you to see the whole scenario. I don't know why. I think it is a cool design. At any rate, here are the sheers on the rod without being spread over the rod.


And here they are with even distribution. Immediately the light in the room became soft and warm. The harshness of the direct sunlight was cut down and diffused through the crinkly, cream-colored sheers. So nice.


The second rod installed contained the curtains. You can see at the very bottom that these curtains shrunk in the wash, but I don't really mind because the sheers are longer and more consistent. Plus, I love the brown buttons on the top of the curtains that match the oil-rubbed-bronze hardware. I think this look is really nice. Plus, the curtains are long enough to block the entire window, so when this is used as a spare bedroom, it will cut down the light for extra sleeping in.


The next stage, and often my favorite stage, of the remodel is redecorating. I had to get low on this one to be sure that you could see the image of Jim Lovell. This was a gift to SPF when he went into the Air Force Academy and one of the links between us. We both wanted to be astronauts. So much so that we both went to Purdue to pursue that goal way beyond our cute, initial "what do you want to be when you grow up" phase in life. Purdue has graduated the highest number of astronauts of any other university in the country as well as consistently graduating the highest percentage of female engineers. So, win win. Needless to say, neither one of us are currently employed with NASA, but SPF did get his physics degree. I am still hoping to be the first professional photographer/professor in space.

At any rate, since we both wanted to be astronauts and this is still a room of work/play/dreaming, I thought it was appropriate to hang the picture back up in here, on that wall where it lived for many years. It was serendipitous that the inner portion of the window matt matched already.


The room with everything in its place. Still with bear walls, but I will post any updates on that when I figure out what goes where.


A different perspective.


So, the next big project is going to be finishing the hallway and second closet in this room. At the moment, everything is sort of shoved back there so that the spare bedroom would be "done" for the purposes of pictures. However, this room has to be back in order by the time my in-laws come for a visit in a few weeks.


I also have a stash of various art wall hanging items in the hallway that needs to find new homes on the walls around here. I will have to deal with them as well because they block the walkway pretty severely.


But, at least the cats like the new arrangement.



When SPF got home on Day 8, I gave him two new professional grade outlets to install. One of the two that needed to be replaced had gotten loose (as in the plugs simply fall out when you push them in) and the other was nasty and one of the outlets had stopped working altogether. This one was the loose one. We turned off the power, checked it twice, and then he ripped this one out and had it back in the wall in no time.


Once the oil-rubbed bronze outlet cover was installed, this one was ready to go.


This one, on the other hand, was the one that had one dead outlet and was, as you can see, nasty and old. He suggested that I try my hand at electrical repair. Again, we killed the power, which also killed the only light in this room. I know you can't tell it from this shot (because my flash is so amazing) but it was dark in here and we were working with a flashlight at this point.


But, I got it loose and took it out.


Only to find five wires that we weren't expecting. SPF's outlet had three wires. Mine had eight. Nice.


So we stopped and thought. We evaluated where each wire was coming from and going to, what each purpose was, and what we would have to ensure to get them back in the correct orientation function without blowing a circuit or starting a fire.

Thankfully, we had a class on electricity and magnetism at Purdue with Professor Durbin with lots of circuitry mapping and schematic reading, and so we figured out that the outlet was a pass through in series with the subsequent outlet on the wall, which happened to be a switched outlet, hence the addition of several more wires.

So, I broke the gang link of the right hand side of the new outlet and started to curl the wires to screw them into the appropriate places.


Each wire had to have a little hook curled at the end to ensure that it would hold the screw and stay tightly attached to the outlet. So, I curled all eight of them.


Then I screwed them all in place and shoved the whole assembly back in the wall, screwing it into place as well.


Another oil-rubbed-bronze outlet, and voila!


So pretty. We are so close to being done on this room.

The Office - Take 2 - Day 7

As expected, the work continues. Now that the mud is more appropriately smoothed over, I primed this wall again. Ahhh, smooth and white with no bizarre bumps or weird surface changes.


After the primer dried, on both the wall and the window sill, I started painting. Again, very excited with the progress, so I took pictures right away. This one was easier because I didn't have to worry about the corners being a different color or worry about overlap. The only place that I had to be careful was around the window, because the sill was going to be a much lighter, warm cream color.



After the that final wall was painted, here is what the room looks like! The furniture is still pulled away from the wall because of the wet paint, but we are at least getting somewhere. I love the new paint. Love love love. So close.


I know it is hard to tell, but the left half of this window sill is painted the new color, over the top of the white primer. It is subtle, but it makes a big difference. The mild orange hues in the wall paint and the soft yellow in this paint really work well together. I like the sill being lighter, feels like a welcome mat for the sunlight into the room.

I Did Not Expect That

As I was walking around the house turning off lights so that we could head to bed, I glanced over at the couch. Our youngest cat was lounging lengthwise at the edge of the cushion, her belly drooping down over the edge despite that we have tried three different diets, reduced portions of food, and increased exercise.

My husband was lazily petting her as she purred.

With concern, I looked at him and asked, "If we have kids that are overweight, what are we going to do?"

"Use them as pillows."

The Office - Take 2 - Day 6

Day 6. At this point I am just tired, so my blogging might be a little lackluster.

The paint finally dried with two coats and I was able to remove the tape from around the archway, the ceiling, the wall corners, and the door.



Despite appearances, the room is still a total disaster at this point in time. Everything is still shoved in the middle of the room and away from the now newly painted walls.



Since everything is dry, though, we started moving some furniture items back into place. Or, rather, moved them into their new places. This particular shelf used to live where the futon will soon live, so it has been moved to take up this portion of the accent wall. Once in place, we started to fill it up.


And continued filling until everything that lives on this shelf was back on the shelf and out of the way or off of the floor. With similar logic to our closet remodel, nothing goes back on the shelf without being cleaned and reevaluated. As this is my main photo shelf, though, pretty much everything went back on.


Then we pushed, wiggled, shimmied this shelf back into place as well. We didn't actually take anything off of this shelf before moving it, so I still need to go back and evaluate at some point in time. Just. Not. Now.


At long last, the futon finds its rightful home! Thank God. Now I can get into and out of bed more easily and, with this adjustment, we have a legitimate spare bedroom!


You can tell how many hours in a day we put in with these evolutionary images. By the time the futon was placed, we were pretty much ready to collapse. . . but everything that had been stacked on the futon in the bedroom was now neatly stacked on top of the bed. So, there was that.


Even though this image looks mostly done, that was really just because I wanted to see what the layout would look like. In reality, I still have to prime and paint that wall and the window sill (a different color) as well as hang the curtain rod, curtains, and clean. Still so much to be done.