downloading fool
4 Mar 2007 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouMust be spring: I've been working on the house like a madman, and in between downloading like crazy, getting ideas from various sites and checking on how-tos from carpenters about some of my ideas. I know I'm terribly behind on replying to folks' posts, and I think I've missed some big events/announcements from some of you, so my apologies for being in hyper-focus mode. If you see replies to older posts, over the next few days, that's just me catching up.
In the meantime, I've realized a few more truths of the universe. First. That design show -- While You Were Out, something like that -- was the brain-child of a Virgo. I'm almost positive of this. Who else would say, "hunh, I'm alone in the house without my usual entertainment/conversation companion, this seems like a great time to paint the hallway a different color!" As for the rest...
And a few other things I've realized: my style and CP's style mesh in some ways, but -- as I get him more used to seeing space, and understanding it, and articulating his personal style into something I can translate into reality... damn, in some ways, we are so radically opposite.
Like... my zen bedroom? So a thing of the past, and soon to be utterly oblitherated. Sigh. First there was the ribbon-curtain we put up between bedroom and bathroom, then the pillow-cases people keep giving us (but not the insert pillows, grrrr, just the odd-sized pillowcases!)... and then when we were at Ikea, we pass by a set of gauzy curtains -- teal, purple, magenta, orange. CP stops, stares, and I say: [insert mild-sarcasm/surprise here] "you like those?"
CP: Those would be awesome in the bedroom.
Me: *sinking feeling*
So I put them up, along with the two sets of shelves I'd originally thought would make a great quasi-headboard if I could just find a good platform bed. I'd had this notion of shoji covering the walls, a kind of modified-shoji modernized panel-system (key: removable) and wooden floors and a sense of zen, quiet, deep gray walls... well, so much for that. I asked, and the answer was, "between the two? I'd rather have a harem bedroom."
Me: *stares*
Eh, well, harem bedroom it is, then, and boy, is CP going to be in for a shock when he gets home! (Back to the "well, you were gone, and I was bored, and there was paint within reach...) No, I've not painted -- he's not out of town long enough, damn it -- but I did swing by Joann's yesterday to look for pillows for our pillowcases, and lo and behold, the store is moving to its new twice-that-size location. So everything in that store, and only that store, is marked down eighty-percent, OMFG, I went to town. I just walked along the rows and snagged anything that might work, why the hell not? I'll admit, though, my reasoning was like this: "hmm, would I want that in a bedroom? hell no... okay, I guess that's just right, then, I'll take it." Hot pink. Lime green. Deep purple. Turqouise. Orange. Magenta. Yellow. (I also snagged some other fabric but that's for a later surprise, eheheh.) Plus, two curtain-rod systems that elsewhere would cost about $100 to $200 (each!), or I could get at Ikea for about $50 all told for all parts not counting curtains. The manager checked the price -- $110 each -- and yelled across the store, "take both, and I'll give 'em to you for $20 each!"
Score! So those are set aside, for now, until I figure out what kind of panels I want to hang from them. That's one deal I simply couldn't pass up, I say.
The time to sit here with the lights off and watch the passage of light through the space -- this is why, I think, you can't honestly contemplate renovation until you've lived somewhere for at least a year. Maybe a little longer. I mean, I had good ideas, design-wise, when we first moved in, but now I know how the space works and know those original ideas are good, but not 'good' in the sense of pefectly tailored to the space itself. This, at least, is where CP and I have converging styles, although I lean much more towards contemporary minimalism (or, as I've seen it called elsewhere, 'practical minimalism') which emphasizes strong geometric lines intersected by curves, while CP's idea of minimalist interiors are most definitely Eastern-influenced, and nowhere near Mies Van der Rohe. (Damn it.) Otherwise, it seems he leans much more towards deep, jewel-tone colors, saturated colors, with luxurious textiles and patterns and various other strongly Indian, Morrocan, Beduoin, drape-heavy low-lighting eyecandy-rich interiors, struck through with the super-saturated bright colors of the Mediterrean; throw in a few Indian saris and he's a happy man.
[Although I think we'd both live quite happily in an Eichler, now that I've spent about four days poring over that man's interpretation of the 'suburban' house. Wow.]
Strangely he decries my love of Chinese architecture and furniture design as too heavy, ornamented, and curclicue'd -- oh, and gilt. That chinese red with the gilt covering everything, and he doesn't like it. Oh, but you like Morrocan, where even the frickin' doormat is ornamented within an inch of its poor life? Unh-hunh, I see the logic here.
It's an odd thing -- and one I find fascinating -- to think on so many levels at once: the things that make CP comfortable, the things that make me comfortable, the space itself, and the ever-present pragmatism that unless we choose to live here for the rest of our lives (hrm, not sure on that count, but doubt it), then some changes are out of the question because they simply do not work with the house's location, general exterior design, and the value of other homes in the same neighborhood. I could feasibly rip out a lot of the walls and introduce sliding shoji screens, but then we'd have a late 60's-era quasi-spanish ranch that abruptly turns Japanese on the inside, and that's a paradigm shift that doesn't/can't merge: we'll end up with a quasi-spanish exterior whose interior was gutted to be redone in a pseudo-Eastern style. There'll be no dialogue between interior and exterior; hell, the two halves will stop talking to each other and be filing for divorce.
Some concrete carpentry/wood-butchering commentary for those of you interested: it's been twenty-four hours and I can hang the shelves. I was going to do another coat of poly... oh, hell, maybe I will, after all. I did the three shelves and uprights with 60-grit sandpaper (took me a bit to get the hang of the orbital sander + aspen being a hardwood). Then I conditioned it... then didn't sand again in time, and left it. (Too late at night by then and figured neighbors weren't interested in hearing the sander going for forty-five minutes at midnight. I do have some sensitivity to time. At least a little bit.) Yesterday I sanded at 100 grit, going much faster now I've got the knack; I mixed up the honey amber dye and distilled alcohol, and went to town.
Wow. Bright yellow! Granted, aspen's a pretty white-shade wood, and it's hardwood, so I skipped redoing the conditioner, but I noticed several things. One, I wonder if I should've done conditioner regardless (will do that for next test wood pieces and see), and two, aspen's grain lines are truly wacky. Some places, the grain is this gorgeous flat-cut; the shelves are, hrm, what's the technical term?, glued short pieces of aspen planed as one. So there are quarter-sawn pieces as well, and those took the dye in the most peculiar, rippled, bubbled ways. I'm not sure if conditioner would've helped that, or if that's a quality of aspen's grain. The other thing I realized? Dye ripples, in itself: I set up the shelves, pegged onto the uprights, so I wouldn't have to worry about that "laying it down and it dripping to the other side" nonsense that always trips me up. The dye would spread in drips and waves down the wood, I'd spread it out, and keep moving with wet edge. I'd forgotten the ends; I went back and did those, then found the ends had soaked up the dye more readily (as they always do) and it soaked into the ends, and was visible on the shelf top/bottom as though the wood had sat in the dye. Erm, hard to explain. I used more dye to 'brush out' those deeper-stained ripples, but as it dried, I could see where the dye had been layered or manipulated.
So future questions for the cabinet-makers I know: should I do two layers of dye? Can I? Is it better to use rag to wipe on dye, than brush? If I use rag and rub the dye in, will it end up lighter than the ultra-soaked yellow-gold I got from brushing on a thick amount and then brushing it off again? And, finally, does it really help to mix the dye in with the shellac?
I didn't do shellac on the shelves (I'll save that learning experience for the next-go round, too); I was out of distilled alcohol to cut it, and I had fast-drying poly, and it's not like these shelves are built using any of my grandfather's wood. No need to be truly fancy, or spend too much time: the point was to learn about wood dye.
Oh, and lastly: I've saved the dye I didn't use, in a tupperware container with lid. All it said was "do not store in metal," but how long can I store it, covered and sealed, after mixing it? Guess if I don't get answers here, I'll just swing back by Woodcraft and ask them.
This is all well & good to realize about my space (and me), but now, I need to go deal with laundry... and I could've sworn I did it only just three days ago. Ffffttt.
In the meantime, I've realized a few more truths of the universe. First. That design show -- While You Were Out, something like that -- was the brain-child of a Virgo. I'm almost positive of this. Who else would say, "hunh, I'm alone in the house without my usual entertainment/conversation companion, this seems like a great time to paint the hallway a different color!" As for the rest...
- Architecture is the skeleton of a house, and if you don't have the bones, you won't have the muscle. I'm more than tired of fabulous rooms where the text says, look at the furnishings and paint color, but the truth is that in a room only fifteen by eighteen with eight-foot ceilings, you simply would not get the same result. Period. You don't have a wall of windows, exposed wood beams, old brickwork, ten-foot ceilings, elaborate crown moulding, whatever, then your backdrop ain't there and all the expensive designer furniture is still going to look like overpriced fancy designer furniture in a stinkin' suburban cookie-cutter box.
- You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Trite, but too fucking true. If you want your house to look like a million dollars, it's not going to happen with only $100, especially if you're talking about achieving a style based on opulence. Heavy victorian drapery looks that way because of the weight of the fabric; you can match color and print but if the fabric don't weigh, it won't look like it weighs, and it'll look like... oh, it'll look like you tried to make a full-circle skirt from only two yards of fabric. The second you spin -- the second someone glances at your draperies -- it's obvious you skimped. And skimping, IMO, is ten times worse than just bloody well doing without. Or, even, recognizing that the style you want to achieve is simply out of the question on your budget; doing it anyway will just look like you slapped up some paint, draped some gauze here and there, picked up a few pillows from Target, and called it Early Bordello. No, it's still Suburban Monstrosity, it's just Suburban Monstrosity With Skimped Interior Design.
Don't even get me started on the idea of painting -- in satin latex, for crying out loud! -- pseudo-arches or pseudo-picture/rail/chair trim. Or using 1/4" plywood to create window arches or valances. This is, in fact, a great deal like sewing. My grandmother's comment to me once was that the absolute worst insult to a seamstress is to say, "oh, my goodness, that's lovely, did you make it yourself?" UGH. No, your goal is to have someone look at your suit, or your living room, and think/say, "wow, who's the designer, this is amazing, it must have cost a fortune!" There's a reason tailors use $30 a yard Pendleton wool; it hangs in a way the cheap knock-off wool from Hancock Fabrics just can't manage; that's the reason interior designers use those expensive materials, too. Unless you're going for the look of plywood-backed maple, then no matter what you do, it ain't gonna be mahogany. You might get the color, you might get the gloss, but if you put it against the real thing, you'll instinctively feel the difference.
- Redecorating is not the same as renovation. I'm sick and tired of damn books that claim to be about renovation when they're really only books about "how to create more geegaw holders out of old windows and milk-bottle crates to give your house a cottagey look." No, it'll just make your suburban cookie-cutter look cluttered and chintzy and awkward. Renovation means tearing down walls, doing full-on trim, wiring in new lighting, stripping floors and replacing doors. Renovation means dealing with the house's bones: the floor, ceiling, walls, foundation, roof; it does not mean a coat of pant and some cheap draperies and a multi-colored throw from Walmart tossed over the back of the same beige sofa you've had all along.
- The quality of light is what defines every single space. I still remain envious of AR's place, with the (frosted) skylights coming down from the roof to line the stairway, and the same kind of skylights making up nearly the entirety of the bathroom ceiling. Yes, the place is small, with other design and traffic issues, but those skylights? Absolutely the best part, IMO.
I've lived in Victorian homes, hell, I've lived in a home built in 1810: what defines each, despite their oh-so-tiny size (especially by today's standards) is the way light interacts with the architecture. Remembering that until about 1880, or later, the vast majority of folks were still using oil lamps and candles: so windows were a major source of illumination. The key here is that if you are illuminating by window, then room size is tied to window size: the depth of the room is in proportion to how far the light can reach. So in the little 1810 house, with its single-pane single-hung windows about 24" wide by 48" tall, and that's one window per room btw, is only going to get X amount of light through a window 2'x4' set in a plastered stone-wall nearly 14" deep: the house's four rooms were maybe 12x12 max, and yet that single window for each room lit the room as brightly as the sliding glass window at my back.
In fact, in some ways, the windows in the 1810 tenancy lit the room better: they had deep 'window wells'. Deep-set windows or thick walls aren't just a sign of industrious insulation (since that house had none other than the major heatsink qualities of a foot+ of stone), nor are they just a nifty provider of window seats, but the walls framing the windows act as reflectors. It's the same concept as in solar tubes, bouncing the light back and forth down a shiny metal surface to pour out into your dark hallway at the other end. Living in that tiny little house, with its cramped quarters and deep windows and the original 10x10 oak chunk that made up the back-door threshold (now the door to the kitchen, built sometime in the decade or so after the Civil War)... that threshold? Wow. It was worn down in a curve like stone steps in an ancient cathedral: coming up on two hundred years old, and two hundred years of feet had polished it to as smooth as silk. (Then I scrubbed it and discovered just how much dirt unprotected wood can hold, OMFG.)
Anyway, my point is: if you want to build a larger room, you must compensate with larger windows, and if you don't have deep window-wells surrounding your window, you must increase the windows even more. It's as though, in the last fifty years of creating cookie-cutters, we cut a lot of corners and the average person just doesn't get, on an intellectual level, why a space is different; few people are trained to comprehend space, let alone lucky enough to live in spaces that can instruct them. The result? You get a lot of gorgeous pictures of homes with amazing architecture and the text all says, "if you buy this sofa, your room will look like this." No, no, it never will, not unless you do something about your cookie-cutter's miserable, pathetic, inadequate bones. - Design/interior photographers use wide-angle lenses. These will fool your eye. (And then there's the newbies, easily identified by their inability to compensate for the wide-angle by changing depth of focus, and you end up with pictures of tiny kitchens that look large... but have these bizarre curves to them at the edges, like the carpenter steadily increased his alcohol supply as he worked out to the edges. Errm, no, that's just bad photography.)
And a few other things I've realized: my style and CP's style mesh in some ways, but -- as I get him more used to seeing space, and understanding it, and articulating his personal style into something I can translate into reality... damn, in some ways, we are so radically opposite.
Like... my zen bedroom? So a thing of the past, and soon to be utterly oblitherated. Sigh. First there was the ribbon-curtain we put up between bedroom and bathroom, then the pillow-cases people keep giving us (but not the insert pillows, grrrr, just the odd-sized pillowcases!)... and then when we were at Ikea, we pass by a set of gauzy curtains -- teal, purple, magenta, orange. CP stops, stares, and I say: [insert mild-sarcasm/surprise here] "you like those?"
CP: Those would be awesome in the bedroom.
Me: *sinking feeling*
So I put them up, along with the two sets of shelves I'd originally thought would make a great quasi-headboard if I could just find a good platform bed. I'd had this notion of shoji covering the walls, a kind of modified-shoji modernized panel-system (key: removable) and wooden floors and a sense of zen, quiet, deep gray walls... well, so much for that. I asked, and the answer was, "between the two? I'd rather have a harem bedroom."
Me: *stares*
Eh, well, harem bedroom it is, then, and boy, is CP going to be in for a shock when he gets home! (Back to the "well, you were gone, and I was bored, and there was paint within reach...) No, I've not painted -- he's not out of town long enough, damn it -- but I did swing by Joann's yesterday to look for pillows for our pillowcases, and lo and behold, the store is moving to its new twice-that-size location. So everything in that store, and only that store, is marked down eighty-percent, OMFG, I went to town. I just walked along the rows and snagged anything that might work, why the hell not? I'll admit, though, my reasoning was like this: "hmm, would I want that in a bedroom? hell no... okay, I guess that's just right, then, I'll take it." Hot pink. Lime green. Deep purple. Turqouise. Orange. Magenta. Yellow. (I also snagged some other fabric but that's for a later surprise, eheheh.) Plus, two curtain-rod systems that elsewhere would cost about $100 to $200 (each!), or I could get at Ikea for about $50 all told for all parts not counting curtains. The manager checked the price -- $110 each -- and yelled across the store, "take both, and I'll give 'em to you for $20 each!"
Score! So those are set aside, for now, until I figure out what kind of panels I want to hang from them. That's one deal I simply couldn't pass up, I say.
The time to sit here with the lights off and watch the passage of light through the space -- this is why, I think, you can't honestly contemplate renovation until you've lived somewhere for at least a year. Maybe a little longer. I mean, I had good ideas, design-wise, when we first moved in, but now I know how the space works and know those original ideas are good, but not 'good' in the sense of pefectly tailored to the space itself. This, at least, is where CP and I have converging styles, although I lean much more towards contemporary minimalism (or, as I've seen it called elsewhere, 'practical minimalism') which emphasizes strong geometric lines intersected by curves, while CP's idea of minimalist interiors are most definitely Eastern-influenced, and nowhere near Mies Van der Rohe. (Damn it.) Otherwise, it seems he leans much more towards deep, jewel-tone colors, saturated colors, with luxurious textiles and patterns and various other strongly Indian, Morrocan, Beduoin, drape-heavy low-lighting eyecandy-rich interiors, struck through with the super-saturated bright colors of the Mediterrean; throw in a few Indian saris and he's a happy man.
[Although I think we'd both live quite happily in an Eichler, now that I've spent about four days poring over that man's interpretation of the 'suburban' house. Wow.]
Strangely he decries my love of Chinese architecture and furniture design as too heavy, ornamented, and curclicue'd -- oh, and gilt. That chinese red with the gilt covering everything, and he doesn't like it. Oh, but you like Morrocan, where even the frickin' doormat is ornamented within an inch of its poor life? Unh-hunh, I see the logic here.
It's an odd thing -- and one I find fascinating -- to think on so many levels at once: the things that make CP comfortable, the things that make me comfortable, the space itself, and the ever-present pragmatism that unless we choose to live here for the rest of our lives (hrm, not sure on that count, but doubt it), then some changes are out of the question because they simply do not work with the house's location, general exterior design, and the value of other homes in the same neighborhood. I could feasibly rip out a lot of the walls and introduce sliding shoji screens, but then we'd have a late 60's-era quasi-spanish ranch that abruptly turns Japanese on the inside, and that's a paradigm shift that doesn't/can't merge: we'll end up with a quasi-spanish exterior whose interior was gutted to be redone in a pseudo-Eastern style. There'll be no dialogue between interior and exterior; hell, the two halves will stop talking to each other and be filing for divorce.
Some concrete carpentry/wood-butchering commentary for those of you interested: it's been twenty-four hours and I can hang the shelves. I was going to do another coat of poly... oh, hell, maybe I will, after all. I did the three shelves and uprights with 60-grit sandpaper (took me a bit to get the hang of the orbital sander + aspen being a hardwood). Then I conditioned it... then didn't sand again in time, and left it. (Too late at night by then and figured neighbors weren't interested in hearing the sander going for forty-five minutes at midnight. I do have some sensitivity to time. At least a little bit.) Yesterday I sanded at 100 grit, going much faster now I've got the knack; I mixed up the honey amber dye and distilled alcohol, and went to town.
Wow. Bright yellow! Granted, aspen's a pretty white-shade wood, and it's hardwood, so I skipped redoing the conditioner, but I noticed several things. One, I wonder if I should've done conditioner regardless (will do that for next test wood pieces and see), and two, aspen's grain lines are truly wacky. Some places, the grain is this gorgeous flat-cut; the shelves are, hrm, what's the technical term?, glued short pieces of aspen planed as one. So there are quarter-sawn pieces as well, and those took the dye in the most peculiar, rippled, bubbled ways. I'm not sure if conditioner would've helped that, or if that's a quality of aspen's grain. The other thing I realized? Dye ripples, in itself: I set up the shelves, pegged onto the uprights, so I wouldn't have to worry about that "laying it down and it dripping to the other side" nonsense that always trips me up. The dye would spread in drips and waves down the wood, I'd spread it out, and keep moving with wet edge. I'd forgotten the ends; I went back and did those, then found the ends had soaked up the dye more readily (as they always do) and it soaked into the ends, and was visible on the shelf top/bottom as though the wood had sat in the dye. Erm, hard to explain. I used more dye to 'brush out' those deeper-stained ripples, but as it dried, I could see where the dye had been layered or manipulated.
So future questions for the cabinet-makers I know: should I do two layers of dye? Can I? Is it better to use rag to wipe on dye, than brush? If I use rag and rub the dye in, will it end up lighter than the ultra-soaked yellow-gold I got from brushing on a thick amount and then brushing it off again? And, finally, does it really help to mix the dye in with the shellac?
I didn't do shellac on the shelves (I'll save that learning experience for the next-go round, too); I was out of distilled alcohol to cut it, and I had fast-drying poly, and it's not like these shelves are built using any of my grandfather's wood. No need to be truly fancy, or spend too much time: the point was to learn about wood dye.
Oh, and lastly: I've saved the dye I didn't use, in a tupperware container with lid. All it said was "do not store in metal," but how long can I store it, covered and sealed, after mixing it? Guess if I don't get answers here, I'll just swing back by Woodcraft and ask them.
This is all well & good to realize about my space (and me), but now, I need to go deal with laundry... and I could've sworn I did it only just three days ago. Ffffttt.