So, this first image is kind of weird but it gives a good overhead view of (most of) the whole mosaic.

You may remember the upstairs hallway from this post. Well, it’s changed a bit, as I started this huge-ass mosaic project over a year ago. This is not surprising, really, as it has already been established here that I can be…well, lazy. But, finally, I think the end is near. I’ve finished about 10 feet of it with about three more to go. Woo!

I don’t really have a lot to say about it, other than to help psych myself up to finish it already. For those interested, I purchased all of my vitreous glass and Italian iridescent glass tiles here. They have relatively good prices / shipping and I have been pleased with their tiles. For the adhesive, I’ve been using Acrylpro and I have a bag of sanded black grout all ready to go when I lay that last glass piece down.

Here are some more pictures:

This is the first section. There’s lots of lavender, an olive plant, a dragonfly and even some tomatoes. Since the window looks out over the backyard, there’s supposed to be a garden-like feel to the mosaic images, (even though we don’t have olive plants but they were fun to make).

It’s not exactly hard, per se but breaking the tiles can be time consuming and it does create a small hazard with any glass shards I miss picking up. So far, no major accidents except for the night I got a glass sliver stuck in the heel of my foot. Ouch! But since then, I have been very careful about wiping the counter and immediate floor area down really well when I clean up.

Here’s where I am now — more tomatoes, because I really liked how they turned out on the other panel. I have two more small panels of the repeating pattern to go and then two more panels of pictures. I’m still undecided on what to put in those but probably more lavender, olives and maybe a bee, as I have yellow and black tiles. bzzzzzzzz.

A food post tomorrow with some lemon custard cakes for Sugar High Fridays 12: Cooking Up Custard!

The Wildwood review isn’t quite done yet, so this is a garden post (otherwise known as filler …) No, not really! The garden deserves its own post. Hey look — I have purple basil growing out of a Greek head planter!

Seeing that it’s September, the garden is finally getting into full swing. Actually, that’s not quite true — we’ve had butter lettuce, herbs (basil, oregano, thyme, sage, parsley, rosemary and others) and strawberries throughout most of the Spring and Summer. Now, we’re just starting to really pick the tomatoes. These are a mix of Early Girls and Romas that I harvested last week.

I’ve already made a tasty salsa out of this bounty and am trying to come up with ideas for the next crop of ripe ones. Should it be a Tomato tart? Tomato sauce? Or this tomato sauce? Tomato soup? Hmmm…I need to formulate a plan!

We’re still anticipating all of the squash (spaghetti, acorn and a pumpkin) that’ll come in Fall. Although, I think next year I would like to plant a few more items, such as bell peppers, maybe some corn, and perhaps some black beans.

One of the first things (okay, after the dining room wallpaper removal) that I wanted to do in the house, was repaint the entry way, stairs and upstairs hallway. The above photo is the way the upstairs hallway looks now.

This is the way it looked when we first moved in:

I chose to paint the wall with the windows a funky 70’s pea green and repaint the rest of the walls upstairs an off-white — they were looking fairly dingy. Now, there’s still work to be done, of course. I hate the plain white, metal curtain rods. I bought new ones a while ago that jwa has yet to put up. Pretty soon, I will have to drag out the drill and do it myself. Maybe if he’s reading this today, he will be reminded to put the new ones up. A girl can dream, can’t she?

Hmm…it’s somewhat sad that I dream of curtain rods, huh? Yeah, I agree.

Still on the topic of the upstairs hallway, another project for this area that I am currently working on (but is not shown in this photo) is a large mosaic on the top of the counter. It’s about 3/4 of the way done and now it’s just a case of being un-lazy and un-procrastinate-y and finishing it. Pictures of that will be posted soon.

Moving on, here’s a shot of the old stairway color scheme, looking up:

I guess there is no accounting for taste, but I really don’t get the old taupe and dusty pink combo throughout this area of the house. Talk about no contrast — one light, dull tone right next to another light, dull tone.

In contrast, here is the way it looks today:

The banister and woodwork around the stairs is a dark, dark purple color that I love called, “Merry Cricket”. I love this name — it reminds me of Chester and The Cricket in Times Square.

The stairs themselves are lavender color and the walls are now a pale yellow. I am very pleased with the way it turned out. It almost looks kind of Parisian to me. No doubt the people who live in the house after us one day will hate it but, hey, I guess that’s part of the fun in buying a house!

Although I don’t have an old picture of the door and actual entryway, it used to be the same taupe (door, moulding, woodwork)/ pepto dismal pink (walls) combo of the rest of the area. Here it is as it looks today:

Yeah, we still need to replace the stair carpeting (yeah, that has definitely seen better days) but this part of the house is getting there!

Tomorrow I will probably post about food again…oh! Here’s something quick to include a food-item in today’s post. Last night jwa and I watched Emeril’s Salute to Artisan Cheeses and uh, yeah, that looked gouda. Hee!

Since I haven’t downloaded the pictures of any of the food I made this weekend (Curry, Strawberry & Spinach Salad, Grilled Chicken w/ White Nectarine Salsa)…and we didn’t eat out anywhere, I thought I would post some pictures of the flowers in our yard.

One of the nice things about living in a house (as opposed to an apartment), is having free reign to dig up the yard and plant all manner of things.

We have tons of poppies and they mainly bloom in the spring. They’re huge and red and in the front and back of the house. Some of them were there when we moved in, but I also went through a crazy poppy-phase and planted tons all around that first summer we lived here. (Not to be confused with the out of control mint-phase of 2003, which has reached epic proportions).

Lat year, a project I completed (during a really hot week, I might add), is that I dug up the grass we had in by the walkways in front of the house. I planted a strip of flowers including dahlias, lavender, and other assorted-daisy types of foliage. A lot of them came back this year, twice as big — see above. It makes the front of the house look a lot nicer, even though I keep putting off weeding yet this summer and putting a layer of bark chips down to make it all look nicer.

One day I will do that but for now I will just talk about it.

Well, not really, but it was the motivation to paint it and change the appearance. There’s only so much Law & Order a person can watch in the afternoon — or so I’ve heard. Um, anyway, this is the way the kitchen looks now. Here’s what it looked like when we moved in:

That said, the very first room we tackled after buying the house was the bedroom. We ripped up the dingy off-white carpet and painted the white (equally dingy) walls a dark blue. Now it is a dark & sleepy cave. (Pictures soon).

Then, we — and when I say we, I mainly mean I — took down the horrible floral wallpaper in the dining room — but hey, different people like different things. I’m sure the old home owners would have described that as lovely floral wallpaper. And I’m just kidding, he helped. If I remember, jwa did a lot of the 2nd coat of paint on the walls. But the stripping — that was all me. And it was nasty. I’m really glad we like the wallpaper that is in parts of the living room!

After the dining room, I moved on to the stairway and upstairs hallway. I believe this was the very first unemployment project, in fact. What was pink and taupe became pale yellow and dark blue. Then, as it seemed probable that a new job wasn’t happening as soon as I thought, I started on the kitchen.

Ah, the kitchen…

First thing, I painted the cabinets a glossy white and attached new hardware. Mostly, I ordered these for all the cabinets and drawers (I think in total it was about 16). They are a lot darker in real life than in the photgraph here. But, for a couple of the drawer pulls, we splurged and ordered really nice artisan ones. We have two lizards on the cabinets under the sink and two moose on a couple of the larger drawers. A look at the price will let you know why we only have four of these pulls.

I believe when I said, “Oh! Sweetie, I found the cutest drawer pulls today. I want to get a few. Let me have your credit card”, I neglected to mention the price. Sneaky! (Pete).

One small, miniscule drawback to these wonderful metal pulls that I love so much, is that they are very dangerous, not as in “oh, ow” dangerous but as in “oh my god! I’m bleeding & I need a tourniquet!” dangerous. The lizards have claws. Sharp, pointy, metal claws. I have gashed my hand a time or two and so has jwa. He, has proclaimed that he really dislikes the lizards and that they are impractical and unsafe, but I know that you have to suffer for art.

With the cabinets done, I moved on to the walls — a bright sunny yellow. I believe it was called squash and it does have a touch of grey in the hue. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. Eventually, we want to replace the gray, dingy wall tiles with bright blue cobalt ones and the gray, hard vinyl-like floor with something a bit spiffier. I’m kind of going for a sunny, bright Spanish looking kitchen. Ole!

Here are a couple more before and after shots.

The new (notice the lizards?)

vs. the old (no lizards):

Tagged with: kitchen photos

Now that it’s summer in Portland (and should remain so for about 3 more weeks), I wanted to spiffy up the front porch a bit. To that end, I recently painted a cheap wood table from Target and put it between the chairs we have out there. See, I was having trouble finding a table that matched the chairs well — everything I saw was a different color wood and would have looked stupid between the chairs. This table was originally a much darker wood color, but for about $16 I decided to get it anyway.

Ha! Now it is green and lavender — take that hard-to-match chairs! Anyway, I think it turned out very nice.

Here’s a detail of the fine paint job:

The cactuses are from Trader Joes. What can’t you find there? I do not know. (Well, sure, like you can’t buy a computer or a running shoes there or anything, but as a one-stop place for decorative succulents, dishwashing soap, frozen spinach, and goat cheese, you really can’t beat it!)

Hmmm…this was kind of a boring post.

But coming soon: A gazpacho recipe, fun w/ lavender (and possibly vodka), the Clinton/Division Street Fair, another restaurant review and Before & After shots of the kitchen.