Deconstructed Chair as Hanging Rack

This is hanging in a corner of the cabio (cabin+studio=cabio). In case you can't tell, it's a deconstructed chair I picked up at a yard sale a couple of years ago. Originally it was this:

Then this:

And for a season it sat with some plants here on the cabio porch. Then the rains came and I stored it inside the cabio under a table. It stuck out. I tripped over it. It was in the way. It stayed there for the better part of a year.
Last weekend I was grousing about all the stencils in my way and decided to hang a rod from the ceiling to house them. Then I thought of the chair. A coupe of eye bolts into the wall, some hooks screwed into the legs (smart husband's idea), a rod across the underside of the seat, and voila! Hanging storage.

Old Trunk

  After

I practically begged the client to let me do this trunk! 

Someone had long ago painted it light green enamel over the original olive and black and had painted the hardware a pinky-bronze color. (Forgive the tape, I typically forget the before pictures until I'm into the project - or finished...)

Before

Original finish on the back

I cleaned it up, eliminated the spider nursery, sanded it a little and hit it with a couple coats of Annie Sloan Old White. 

 Then I lightly waxed it a few times and distressed it with Modern Masters Furniture glaze (LOVE that stuff) mixed with some MM Tobacco, and a little Van Dyke for dirt. The metal of the trunk is wrinkled in lots of places which makes the finish even cooler.

The hardware is a beautiful dull silver foil with a brown crinkle running through it, also distressed a bit with the Tobacco color. I had a bunch because I used it on a powder room ceiling. Small ceiling = lots of foil left over.

       

Distressed, Stenciled Wall

Here's a living room I did a while ago with a Melanie Royals stencil. Used two sizes of this stencil. the larger one for the wall (this picture) and a smaller version inside the bookcases (not pictured). 

White Melamine Cabinet Transformation

This area in the clients' home is a pass-through from the pool to the wine room and the downstairs bath that serves the pool. The white melamine cabinets (last picture) were salvaged, moved over and I refinished them to coordinate with the new look of this reconfigured area. The stacked washer and dryer are now on the other side of the cabinets behind the curtain.

Previous configuration with the original finish on the cabinets.

Glam Finishes

Here are eight finishes I did in a class taught by the amazing Sheri Zeman at the International Decorative Artisans League conference in Reno this year. These are 'two-fers,' The backgrounds are suitable for application without the graphic. And of course they can be done in any colors. 

(In case you're experiencing deja vu, I also just put these up as an album on my Dancing Brush Painting Facebook page.)

Stripes!

 

 I just finished stripes in the most gorgeous house. The homeowners bought it in 2007 and gutted the entire place. (It needed it.) When they put the house they'd been living in for 30+ years on the market in March they figured it would take a few months to sell. You know what's coming. It sold in just a couple of weeks and the new place wasn't ready. They're camping out with very understanding relatives and hope they'll be in by Labor Day.

I got to do the colors for this house, too. Fun! Although the wife could be a decorator if she ever wanted a career change. She's done a great job.

This home has a fabulous view of Commencement Bay and the shipping lanes. It's about a half mile from the old Weyerhaeuser mansion/former University of Puget Sound CBC campus.

So this is a house-in-progress. No decoration yet. And I was shooting into the light that floods this entire house.

In the first picture I cropped out my mess on the table.

There's a beautiful bay window in this area. See the teeny little space between those windows? Yes, there are stripes in there, too.

I cleared my stuff off the table, which actually will move to the back of the house where there is room for the leaves that allow seating for twelve(!). The kitchen is to the right. The homeowners are thinking of using this as a sitting area. It's just to the left as you walk in the door. The living room is to the right as you walk in, the stairs are ahead just to the left. (Better Feng Shui than opposite the door.)

Stripes are a pain to tape off (it took me 7 hours to tape these - the ceiling is NOT straight and I did the top one three times). But so worth it.

The Baggage Carousel

 
Everybody has the same basic black rolling bag I have and it's hard to tell one from another when they're riding the baggage carousel. I did the 'tie a piece of fabric around the handle' thing and that helped, but I decided there had to be a better way.

Enter the stencil. And here is the transformation from basic to identifiable. (Pictures taken in the driveway because luggage in the house upsets the dog.)

The front is a Melanie Royals stencil called Endless Vine. I have three of them (I've used it a lot). One was cut up for corners and smaller spaces and that's the one I used on the front of the bag. See Melanie's wonderful website here.

Here are the cut-up pieces of a very well-used stencil:

The back stencil is from Peggy Ridgeway's Etsy shop, Artistic Stencils. Her shop is here. I saw this stencil on a blog someplace and looked it up - and she is in Seattle! Small world.

I didn't use fabric paint, just used stuff I had lying around. Golden acrylics, Proceed metallic pearl, and to finish it off I sprayed three coats of Deft Clear Wood Finish as a sealer. We'll see how it holds up. It gets its first test next week when I go to Reno for the International Decorative Artists League conference.

Upscale Laundry Room

I had so much fun in this laundry room. It belongs to Joyce Weir, a decorator I work with. Her house is just what you'd expect from a decorator, and I get to contribute. Lucky me!!

Although it's a laundry room, this is the entrance they use and it's the passage to the upstairs office, so it gets a lot of traffic.

The finish is an Anthropologie-type, distressed.. Unfortunately the pictures really don't do it justice. Not bad for Droid photos, though. Someday I'll invest in a real camera...

This is after:

 The counter was white Formica. It's now black concrete.

 This is before:
 The cabinets were pinkish wood. I'm not sure why they look yellow in this picture and white in the next one.

 You can just see the lip of the white Formica counter.

The Pacific Northwest Snow and Ice, January 2012

Well, here's how it started, all soft and pretty. A nice change from our usual rain.

Our front yard looking out to the frozen lake. We only got 4 or 5 inches of snow.

Then we got the ice storm on top of slightly mushy (now frozen) snow. It clung to the branches and power lines and it all got very heavy.

This is our front yard. You can see the first downed branches.

This has an ice cap now

 

 

More branches down  

And my ice encapsulated car

My husband pulled part of the ice off the back of the car

This was a very tall stand of bamboo in our back yard. It's spread out like a big full skirt now.

 Close-up of bamboo

Close-up of snow under ice on a tree branch

That's not melted snow, it's more branches down in our front yard. 

The lake is still frozen in the background.

A lot of the south Puget Sound area looks like this now. This is in our front yard, too.

A lot of this is very pretty, but more than 250,000 people (including us) are out of power, and the devastation to the trees and power lines and poles - and property as a result of falling/breaking trees, limbs, power lines and poles - is pretty amazing. So lots of people have been working to get this all cleaned up. Fortunately we know someone who has power and is letting us (and our dog and a friend and her 2 dogs) stay for a few days. (Thanks Lorna!)

It's been a disrupted week, and we're very grateful we are warm and dry. Wishing you the same.