Knobs

Midcentury Geometry

I went with Restoration Hardware when it came time to find new knobs for the laundry room. I was looking for something a bit midcentury, not too big, and with some substance.  I could have spent another few weeks searching for the perfect knobs, but I think these will do. 

Closet doors

I did go with paint for closet doors.  I love the color blue that contrasts with the white of these doors:

Doors

The doors have been stained- they're drying and waiting for install.  I had a difficult time chosing between stain and paint for the doors. The trim is painted white, and I didn't know how stained doors would look framed in white. I couldn't find many pictures online of this particular combination. My gc seemed to like the idea of stain, and the birch doors were really pretty- I didn't want to cover them up with paint. Good wood seems to call for stain.  So that's what we went with. They look cool all lined up to dry. The doors for the lower level are a lighter stain- see picture to the left. Below are the darker stained bed and bath room doors for the main level, along with evidence of how they got to be that way. I continue to feel very grateful to all who are working on the house and I especially love the pictures that hold the beauty of their hard work.

Woman in Paris

This was the title of the first painting I noticed when I walked into an outdoor Arts Festival this weekend. I had walked by a tent or two, occupied by respective artists and their creations, and then found myself drawn to a painting in one of the next tents. A woman dressed in a black coat and hat, sitting by the water, looking a bit chilly, and starring into some far off place. I glanced down and looked at the title. In small letters on the bottom left of the canvas was written, Woman in Paris.

Woman in Paris: supercoloring.com

Is it a sign?                                                   


Creating Home may be turning into Leaving Home....?

Today's Inspiration

Loveliness of staying open

Dreaming of Paris....

I visited a psychic yesterday. A friend recommended her, and so I looked-up her profile online. She describes her work as connecting with God and as intuitively channeling messages of/from the divine for the individual she's working with. It sounded good to me. And I could tell she was the real deal.

I showed up for my appointment; R introduced herself; we sat down; and she then asked two questions.

The first, "You're single?"
"Yes... I mean no."  It was a Fruedian slip we would go back to later in the session.

The second: "Are you here to connect with someone who has passed over?"

"No," I replied. "I'm not sure if I can put into words what I'm looking for. Just general guidance about my life path, I think. Not in the sense of career- more like what I'm supposed to be doing here at all." I said all of this with tears streaming down my face and added something about how I can no longer connect with my own intuition. I needed someone to do it for me. That was the jist of what I was doing in a psychic's office on a day when my husband would have preferred me by his side as he observed his religious holiday: I needed her to read my intuition for me.

R then began the reading. Starring somewhat into space, she spoke:
"I'm getting something about house.. and home. Home is significant, we need to go there... It's like you're nesting, building a nest, and it's keeping you stuck. Like you're not able to branch out because of this nest." R, the psychic, then went on to ask and answer a series of her own questions about the stickiness of this nest.

"Does your husband limit you? Is that it? No."
"Is it kids? No."
"What is it about this house, this nest?" and with that she looked at me.

Nesting sounded good to me, but R's impression was that this was a bad thing. Associating to this, I easily recalled all of the turmoil that searching for a home brought me this past year.

"Well, I'm renovating a home that my husband and I bought six months ago. It will be finished soon. The whole process of buying a house was difficult for me. I don't like my life, and it has felt like buying any home was a way of solidifying the life I don't like." More tears.

R smiled knowingly. This is what she was hearing and feeling during the reading. Something about home stifling me.

The short version of the rest of the story is that R predicted that my husband and I would no longer be in this house-that-I-was-making-into-a-home within 1-4 years! She was pretty confident in her prediction that we would sell it in the near future. She said she saw, in the futures of L and me, a move out of our current geographical area, not necessarily to somewhere far off, but to somewhere different. (She also saw us as soul mates; she emphasised my being his soul mate and the reason he's in this world, but seemed to indicate that he was a soul mate for me as well. She seemed to really like the idea of him for me, if I can put it that way.)

The rest of the story involves my staunch resistence to my own desire, resistence to my life as is, and my inability to name even one thing I wanted for myself.

The pain of wanting anything at all runs deep for me.

It involves a very deep and powerful fear of humiliation & rejection. Interestingly, I felt that painful, dagger-through-the-heart humiliation today in another incident connected with the house. The aim of the dagger couldn't have been more perfect. Clearly, the world is trying to teach me something.

The point of including all of this, here, on this blog, is that by the time we were done with my consultation I was dreaming of Paris. "If I were healthy," I said to R when she was pressing me to name just one thing I wanted, "I would go to design school." That's the one thing I could name as a desire, but only in the hypothetical world in which I was healthy; not in this real world in which I struggle with chronic illness.

"There is nothing in your energetic field to stop you from doing interior design."

"I can't carry rugs, or tile, or carry-out any of the other physical tasks... bla bla bla..." I was protesting.

R started getting firm with me- not accepting my rejecting and resisting attitude & holding me accountable for my life. It must have worked, because on my way home, I started dreaming of Paris... and of attending art school there.

So, .... so much for the house. The house that I thought had good karma when I first saw it. The house that indirectly brought me an experience of humiliation today. The house that the psychic saw as "shackling me to the ground."  The house that has cost too much money. The house that I think is causing a lot of people stress. The house that I loved designing....

So much for the house. .... at least I have dreams of Paris!!

Evidence of Work, Devotion, & Talent

For Jocelyn

It's small, but will do the trick!

Jocelyn is the very talented tile specialist- and my biggest supporter-on this project. I remember asking her about vertical tile for the kitchen backsplash and she instantly pulled out what you see here. It didn't work for me in the kitchen, but I knew I had to use it somewhere- so here it is: In the small, lower level shower. I don't anticipate the shower will be used too much, and I've decided to try it without a door. I love how it turned out & want to be able to look directly in.

Pietre Blanca, American Olean

Getting there...

I had a lot of fun choosing bathroom tile, until I discovered that I had been wrongly assuming I would have a glass-enclosed shower to show it all off! The glass enclosure wasn't as simple as I originally assumed. Fortunately, Jeff, our GC, was kind enough- and determined enough- to come up with a solution so that I could have my glass. The resulting window and built-in shelf are his innovations. I think they look great.

And the tile job is fabulous. Mike and his crew did an exceptional job laying it. The attention to detail is phenomenal. Thanks, guys!

Main floor bath

Jeff's Window

Waiting for fixtures...

And a Punch of Pink

The house is beginning to come together. These are pics of the lower level, now tiled in what's turned out to be a very beautiful tile with the right choice of off-white paint (BM White Blush) to best complement the tile and the right choice of heels by my sister to add a punch of color.

THE CRASH

All Things Die

I made many of the decisions that I introduced below, and then some, a long time ago- or so it seems. Now is supposed to be the fun part: Watching it start to come together. We went from demo in June to a blank-slate with updated/graded electrical and plumbing in July to paint on the walls in August. Seeing the paint go onto walls and tiles onto floors is supposed to bring a sense of satisfaction, I think.

My husband asked me about this the other day: "Are you excited to see it all come together?"
"It's sort of irrelevant," I said and was somewhat surprised, not by the feeling, but by my choice of the word "irrelevant." And that's how it felt... for the most part, how it feels. It was the process of making the choices that was fun for me; in fact, it's what the whole project was about. Could I trust myself enough to decide? Could I embody some confidence in my vision? Could I allow it to happen at all without going totally to the place of feeling selfish about it?  I think I did a decent job with all of this, but now that it's almost over, I'm anticipating the crash and begining to feel sad about the whole thing.

I don't fully understand this. I do know that there's a part of me that wants to start on another home as soon as possible :(

In Love with the Process