Mind The Gap

Sometimes I think about how cool it would be to pull down some of the kitchen cabinets and put up swanky open shelves in their place, but then I’m deterred by my fear of what kind of shape the wall behind the cabinets might be in.

Worked on the counter tops again tonight. I *think* I’m done with all of the artistic business, and so once that’s good and dry it will be time to start sealing it all up with coat after coat of poly. Woo!

And now for some close ups.

Started the counter top refinishing.

Picture of the paint colors that are to be used:

Closeup of the base coat (blend of grays and black):

Shot of the kitchen with the whole counter top base coated:

Tomorrow after work I’ll start adding the layers with the additional colors to build up a granite sort of effect, and after a couple installments of that it will be time to start building up layers of poly.  After it’s all done I’ll theoretically take time to post a detailed walk through of how it was done, along with a review of how well it holds up to standard kitchen use.

I caulked the seam between the counter top and backsplash, in preparation of scrubbing, scuffing and refinishing the counters.

While that was drying, I went ahead and painted the upper cabinet doors, which I’ve just finished hanging back up.  Woooo!

We went to a birthday party on Saturday night, where I took several pictures of the *cough* campfire, which I’ve allowed Picasa to string together into a video.

Today Ryan and I did a lot of work in the kitchen, repainting the cabinet doors. The bottom doors are now black, the drawer fronts are dark gray, and the upper cabinet doors will be light gray (I plan to paint them tomorrow). The main idea is to break up the almond/off-white color of the whole thing, and make the otherwise awesome kitchen more likable. Note that the microwave does not normally live on top of the stove…everything is scattered about to make room for the work going on.

Additional steps to complete the kitchen’s low budget makeover:

• Paint the counter in layered specks of several shades of grays and white, with a bit of silver and pearl, in an attempt to look like granite.
• Add a shelf above the window at the sink, flush with the top of the cabinets.
• Add hooks for coffee mugs and such.
• Paint the area between the counter and upper cabinets in a yellow-orangey color that will pair with the floor tile to positive effect.
• Paint the bit of wall above the upper cabinets in a sky blue type of color.
• Move my vegetable themed ceramics up to the top of the cabinets.
• Add some fake vines/plants up there with the ceramics.
• Add some fake birds and a birdhouse or two.
• Try to talk Ryan into adding some subtle lighting of some sort.
• Obtain new rug that is:
• more comfortable to stand on
• more attuned to the happy colors and vegetable/nature kitsch
• Find a way to hide the trash can, or get one that looks better.

The general idea is modern, but rustic, as this is sort of the house’s natural character. (An example being the ceiling that is vaulted up to the column in the somewhat octagonal great room, very late seventies/early eighties modern style, but the column is then covered in rough-hewn wood, with matching beams in the ceiling, very rustic lodge/cabin.)

Revamping the kitchen to break up the ivory and better fit the general character should make the kitchen look like it’s worthy of being in our super cool house, and let us personalize it without major expense to do new cabinets, counters, or flooring. I’m excited.

It’s times like these that I’m pretty glad the previous owners did paint everything white when the put the house up for sale. It gives us a nice blank slate to work with.

I made the ears tonight and attached them!  Also added some ribbon to give it that extra cutesy oomph.

School starts up pretty soon so I’ll be busy again, but the next piece will be either the tail, or the pink and purple striped boot covers.

Finished the pink and purple wig!  Still have to make the cat ears, looking forward to that.

Yay!

Finished the wig I started last week.  Like it a lot.

Shots of the wig on the little stand thingy:

Action shots:

   
Yay!

Also, I started the wig for another costume.  Here is the wig i started with (leftover from a past Halloween).

Here’s a couple shots with the original hair sectioned and back combed (not yet twisted or sealed).

 
This afternoon I added several more dreads to it, and got maybe half of it all twisted and sealed, with the rest waiting to be sealed.

Here’s all the hair that I added, back combed, and twisted tonight.  Picture taken after I attached the sections.  All the hair that was already ‘done’ at that point was just pulled to the front to be out of the way.

Shot of one of the pink and purples swirls.  These were a pain, twisting the pink hair in with the wig’s own purple hair was not as successful as I would have liked.  These guys are wrapped with thread every 4-5 inches in hopes that’ll help them hold together.

Shot of one of the pink and white swirls.  Both the pink and white are added on hair, and they came out fine.  (We’ll see how they hold up with actual use, but they seem ok so far.)

The wig’s original hair is a blend of a fuschia-purple sort of color, with black hair blended into it, with the result that the hair looks dark purple for most of it’s length, and fuschia-purple for the bottom few inches.  it was fairly tough to back comb and seal, but comes out with a fairly neat transitional look.  Doesn’t seem to show up in pictures too well, but I did try:

From here I have a ton more sealing to do.  I need to fix the goggles that go with the natural colored wig.  I picked up some awesome pink and purple furry fabric to use to make cat ears to go with the purple wig.  Playing with fake hair is a lot of fun.

On Saturday morning Ryan made a shocking discovery.  This discovery was a few inches of water in the bottom of a warm, stale freezer.  While I made a run to get some ice to move everything into coolers, Ryan started pulling things out of the freezer, to see what was going on.

There was a thick coat of frost/ice on the back wall, so Ryan figured that seemed like the likely culprit, and I went to consult the internet on some directions for defrosting the freezer.  After getting the visible ice out, we noticed the back panel had screws holding it in, we took that out and found that there were a couple layers of bristly-brushy things that the cold air gets pushed through.  These were totally covered in ice!

Long story short, after an entire afternoon spent de-icing the freezer by gently melting all the ice with a blow dryer on the low setting, and a quick attempt at vacuuming the coils underneath, and everything seems to work perfectly now.  Ryan saved the day!

Tonight I steamed the dreads on my wig to seal them up.  The next step will be to begin attaching extra dreads to fill out the empty spots and make the hair big (big hair = good).

As you can see, the front of the wig looks pretty alright as it is (well, it could be bigger, naturally).  This is because the front and top part of wigs tend to have a lot more hair on them.

Here are a couple shots of the back and one side.  As you can see these are pretty mangy looking.  Wigs (especially cheaper ones like this one) tend to have less hair on the wide open areas of the back and sides, because the concentration of hair at the top tends to cover them up.  So, wig styling from a cheap store bought wig often involves adding more hair.  Such is life.

 
Well, back to dismantling those falls from Halloween!