Kitchens On My Mind: Half a Dozen Fabulous Redos From Around the Web

Hola darlings!

It's a beautiful day here today. Finished the front yard tirmming and swept everything up; cut the back yard grass and am now going to head out and start trimming and them whacking down and pruning!  But I have taken a couple of breaks in-between the work and got this post ready for you.

I have gathered these projects as examples of what can be done with imagination, a plan, lots of hard work, a handy mate or close relative who works for pizza and beer, and a small budget!  There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of kitchen revamps and redos on the internet, and they range from the grandiose in mansions five times the size of Maison Newton to small but beautifully rendered galley kitchens in New York apartments.  I selected these particular redos because (1) the footprint of the kitchen was not changed, i.e., plumbing was not moved and the original kitchen arrangement, including cabinets, remained more or less intact, (2) lots of sweat equity but low cost, and (3) doable by a single woman on a miniscule budget, possibly with the help of her reasonably priced handyman, Kevin the Wonder Man! 

Enjoy!

Ashley and her husband at Domestic Imperfection created an incredible kitchen.  Their total outlay so far is $1,600, not including new appliances (purchased before the redo began in earnest) that bring the total up to $3,700.  Still to come is new flooring (although truth be told I see nothing wrong with the current flooring and think it looks great with their restyled kitchen) and new lighting fixture(s).  The before and after pictures are stunning!  Here is one of them:

From Domestic Imperfection blog.

You can read all of the details at Ashley's blog.  The floating shelves created to hang underneath the upper cabinets is one of the most ingenious uses of space I have ever seen, and I love them to pieces!

Kelli at Pretty l'il Poseys shared a dramatic kitchen makeover too -- of her mom's kitchen!  Oak colored cabinets were changed to dark and gorgeously dramatic, and all white countertops turned into a spectacular granite look with acrylic craft paints -- the kind you buy at JoAnn's or Michael's (total for countertop redo $20), all for about $250. The painted countertops are simply awesome and look like the real thing even in close-up photos.

Here is one of the after photos.  When you see the sole before photo you'll immediately appreciate the amazing transformation that paint and some decluttering created in this lovely kitchen -- I want those windows, and the countertops too!  The look is definitely luxe and would look fabulous in one of the multi-million dollar mansions that we see in People Magazine and Architectural Digest...

From Pretty l'il Posies blog.

I hope you'll read all about the amazing transformation at Kelli's blog.  This kitchen amply demonstrates the amazing transformative power of painting, staining and switching out cabinet hardware! 

Jami and Brian at An Oregon Cottage did a total transformation of their kitchen for - are you ready? - $1,165!  Again, with no relocation of any major pieces or plumbing, paint and new countertops were the primary agents of the amazing transformation. The microwave was moved -- to above the range, which was itself transformed merely by the removal of a "back" piece that unscrewed and made the range/oven look totally different and very 21st century.  A new sink and faucet were added as well as new hardware on the cabinets.

Here is one of the after photos.  It was sheer genius to have some of the cabinet "fronts" removed and glass installed in place - same cabinets used, but with the glass an entirely new look resulted.

From An Oregon Cottage blog.

You can read all the details at Jami's blog, including a cost breakdown.  The entire project took about a year; it was done in increments which is a very good idea, because it gave them time to see what they liked and what still needed to be changed, as well as saving up for the costs of doing the work.

Jane at Frugal Fine Living did a kitchen transformation for $250.  She took her space from 1990's builder's standard (with yet more of those oak colored cabinets) to a rocking kitchen with hints of Provencal in its toile curtains and hardware.  Check out one of the after pics:

From Frugal Fine Living blog.

You can read all about Jane's progress as she takes her readers step by step through her redo/remake process.  Beadboard wallpaper, which I've also seen elsewhere in kitchen redos, was used to great effect on the backsplash and the end of the cabinet runs.  In 23 years I have yet to install a backsplash in my kitchen and if I do not do it anywhere else in my kitchen, for SURE I am doing it this year behind the stove, with paintable, scrubable high-grade vinyl wallcovering that will eventually also be installed elsewhere in the back of the house which has kitchen, dinette and family room all open to each other overlooking the back yard. 

The wallpaper is a great budget-wise idea that will also be easy to swap out for another look down the road, should I tire of it.  I seriously doubt I'll tire of it though, since I've had the kitchen in its more or less original state for so frigging long, har!  Should I live another 23 years I'll be contemplating a kitchen redo at age 85.

The final kitchen redo I'm featuring is this amazing space from the Mills family at The Handsome Home.  It is just awesome and once again, how many times can I write it??? -- shows the power of paint and, in this case, actual beadboard used to cover over a darkish-beige tiled backsplash.  Check out one of the after pics:

From The Handsome Home blog.

It is hard to believe this is the same space (many before and after pictures so you get a great feel for how the space was transformed), but it is. As far as I can tell, the only thing that was swapped out was the kitchen sink and faucet, from double aluminum sink to porcelain (?) farmer's style sink and a new faucet. Of course, that style of sink and faucet can be VERY expensive. I don't have a cost on this kitchen transformation, but I would say overall it was done on a modest budget. 


So, there you are.  My inspiration kitchens, done on a dime and a TON of imagination!  I love each and every one and will be incorporating many of the ideas shown in these kitchens in my own redo.

Trad Home's Online Magazine Special: Great Kitchens

Hola darlings!

I have been perusing Traditional Home's special online magazine this month on Great Kitchens.  I've oohed and aahed my way through the first 41 pages thus far and while lovely, I confess that I just cannot relate to the humongous cavernous kitchens that are beautifully done up but make me laugh when I think about today's nuclear family in one of them.  Then I got to page 42 and "Small Size, Big Style" (written by Ruthie Staalsen) and I fell in love with a kitchen!  There are before-after pictures too, that were missing from the previous articles.

In this roughly 14' x 14' kitchen, existing cabinetry was retained, painted white and glazed with a warm color to give a time-worn patina and rich glow.  Wrought iron hardware was added -- pulls and knobs.  New lighting was installed, the existing island was expanded to add an in-cabinet waste bin and then the island was embellished to look like a stand-alone piece of furniture in a contrasting finish to the cabinets.  Just gorgeous!  New flooring (tile set on the diagonal to visually "enlarge" the space) and tumbled stone inset with black wrought iron medallions backsplash treatment were added.  A soffit was added above existing cabinets to the ceiling and then trimmed out with elegant mouldings to eliminate cabinet tops that used to just collect dust.  A bay window was added by the sink to flood the room with light.  Here is one of the pics of the refinished space I snipped from the online magazine article:

Is this style Provencal or Valencia?  I don't know, but it's so beautiful.  I love the chandelier above the island -- so light and airy but providing tons of work light.  And the sconces on the cabinets on either side of the sink area.  How on earth???  The wiring must disappear inside the cabinets and then into the wall.  I imagine that would be very expensive to have such wiring installed.  The sconces themselves, though, are drop-dead gorgeous! 

Other changes included replacing an outdated drop-in cooktop with a flush surface cooktop mounted directly into the new granite countertop and new appliances, including a new microwave installed above the cooktop. 

This homeowner was able to do this gorgeous designer-created kitchen due to an inheritance from her grandmother that specified the money be used to remodel her kitchen!  I do not expect to receive such beneficience from any of my relatives, but there are plenty of ideas in this kitchen remodel that I may be able to borrow and adapt to my own humble kitchen. 

And humble budget, too!  In the next post I'm going to show you a handful of some kitchen redos from various blogs, most of which have one thing in common:  low cost! 

What Does Your Kitchen/Dining Table Look Like?

Hi Everyone.

If your house is anything like mine, chances are your table acts as a catch-all for mail, projects, computer work, etc. etc.  On mine, my piles tend to get larger and larger and larger... until it's time for the meeting of the investment club that I belong to that meets once a month at my house!  And then I MUST clean the table off and get the kitchen/dinette area into shape!

What is it about kitchen tables anyway?  Is it just the fact that it's a large flat surface begging for clutter?  LOL!  Don't know.  And countertops - geez!  Same thing!  Look at all the crap piled on that countertop.

Geez!  There were dirty dishes in the sink, too...

Sooo, time to do something.  I'd been thinking about what to do; the wall opposite the patio door has been blank for a couple of months, after I took down what used to be on it in preparation for painting that - well - let's just say I haven't gotten around to it yet.  Just like I haven't touched the half-removed wallpaper in the family room that I started to take off in, er, March...

I wanted to go seasonal; well, even before I started reading DIY and budget-decorating and not-so-budget decorating blogs, I would swap out curtains and table cloths and such for the fall/winter.  So, it's that time of year; shorter days; longer nights; cooler weather; the heat is turned on.  Sigh.

I'd been wanting to put up a gallery wall in the dinette.  My original thought was to use all matching frames and line them up in a 3x3 grid!  I have the frames!  I thought that would look pretty darn cool.  So, I do just the opposite of my intention (of course).  I don't know what it is about me.  I get perverse with myself.  Weird.

Anyway, I had to hike to the Pick 'n Save to pick up some groceries, including a fresh supply of peanuts.  But I by-passed the Pick 'n Save and headed toward the TJ Maxx instead.  Oh oh, there she goes...

I had already visited the TJ Maxx in the mall downtown earlier in the week, where I picked up an autumnal-toned 70" round table cloth on spectacular clearance (a Ralph Lauren pattern, no less), 12" tall smokeless, dripless candles in a rich white (not cream, not that "dead" looking white), that will fit perfectly into my candleabra, and a very large flameless pillar candle with a sort of honeycomb or diamond pattern on the outside.  It is the coolest thing! 

So now why was I at a TJ Maxx again?  Well, I'd had a vision about something I wanted to put on the wall where I thought I was going to put the photo gallery.  I was on the hunt for two specific frames.

Instead, I got totally side-tracked and didn't end up buying anything I'd intended to buy! You see, I happened to see this certain table runner and even though I hadn't thought for a second about buying a new table runner, when I saw this one I just knew I HAD TO HAVE IT AND IT WAS PERFECT!  It was a good price ($16.99); it had ALL, and I do mean ALL of the colors that I have in my kitchen/dinette/family room area that are all open to each other - a large space that runs across the back of the house facing west.  Best of all, it was in a cool geometric pattern that for some reason really appealed to me.  I grabbed it.

Then I found a set of three small flameless candles that I thought might fit inside my large votive owls, so I grabbed them, too.  Turned out they didn't fit -- too large, but small enough to tuck away in hidden places to add flickering light. I love candlelight at night in the front room where I work at the computer, the t.v. on the fireplace mantle and the candles flickering away.  These flameless candles - best invention EVER!

I saw some really gorgeous glass plates, or maybe they were shallow bowls.  Really large though, and I thought about lugging one or more of them to the Pick 'n Save and then up the hill the mile walk home.  Decided - nope, not today Jan girl.  And I turned my attention to picture frames.  I ended up buying one only, totally different than what I'd envisioned doing.

Hauled my stuff to the Pick 'n Save and bought my groceries.  Lugged everything up the hill on the hike back home, huffing and puffing.  Round trip - about 2 miles; work-out - priceless :)

Here's the "after" of the wall; I'd stuck a mirror up on it recently just to take away some of the nakedness of it all without anything on it!  That mirror went around the corner into the short hall where the doors to the basement and powder room/3-4ths bath are, as well as the open staircase to the upper level and the entry to the front room.  It fits that space well.

Sooo, as you can see.  Totally NOT 9 matching frames in a grid.  The frame I bought yesterday is the one on the left showing me and Mr. Don on the bridge outside of St. Martin's Bridge across the ravine from the ancient city of Toledo in Spain.  It's a little hard to see the colors -- they go perfectly with the colors in the rooms: there is a light blue-green that goes very well with the curtains on the patio door and also picks up the pale greenish blue that's in the new table runner I bought (you'll see that in a photo below).  The two mirrors I purchased a couple of months ago from Target online, intending them to be used in conjunction in the front room with a couple of shelves I also bought from Target.  Well, nixed that idea, as right now I'm going with a more "minimalist" look on the front room walls...  So, the mirrors ended up on this wall.  All the other photographs were already in their frames.  There are brown, green, and gold frames, and the mirrors are sort of bronze-y/taupe-y and give off a Zen vibe.  LOL! 

While my photographs don't do this wall justice, I have to say that it fits the space and the mood of my house very well!  I'm quite pleased with it.  Best of all, there is plenty of room to add more photographs and hanging tchokies.  As you also see, I had to work around the thermostat!

Sorry about the reflections from/through the patio door!

AND - get ready...

A totally clean countertop!  That's my Norfolk pine that I rescued half-dead from a Christmas basket at the office years ago.  It was less than five inches tall at the time.  That hunk of wood is rescued wood that I found downed in the yard last month after that bad windstorm we had (the one I still have not finished clean-up from).  I call it Dead Dragon's head.  Can you see the broken off horn/ear nearest the camera and the "eye?"  The "chop mark" on the neck?  Well, okay.  I see a dragon's head when I look at this piece of wood :)

And here's a photo of my spray-painted leaves a little over a week later - they have curled up a little bit but I love the painted effect!

The ladies of the investment club really liked them, and couldn't believe how easy it was to "make" them -- just a bunch of wet leaves I spray painted with hammered bronze and some gloss white.  Will definitely do this again next year, maybe trying out lots of different colors. 

Here's the new table runner:

Shoot!  The colors didn't come out exactly right.  What looks like greyish on my monitor is actually a pale blue-green (celedon).  I really liked the geometric pattern and the colors are spot on with what's going on in the rest of the space across the back of the house.  The summer tablecloth is gone, replaced by the warm MDF "wood" tones of my dinette table and the runner. 

Look, Ma, a clean table top!

Those sheer curtains on the patio door are a pale blue-green.  To the left, you can see part of a family room wall with the remains of wallpaper on it that has yet to be removed...  I absolutely love this cast iron globus (armillary sphere) that I purchased earlier this year from Kirkland's online.  I am in love too with my new runner :)

Sooooo.  Got the clean-up accomplished, got the gallery up on the wall!  Just not the "look" I had originally envisioned! 

Still to do - I need to lower the curtain rod holding the sheers in the dinette; they are only 81" long and they dangle above the floor some inches.  HATE that!  I also have a new rod I purchased and for the "winter" look I'll be adding a valance over the patio door.

The family room -- it's a mess!  Half-packed boxes of stuff from the bookshelves litter the area as well as stacks of research on family trees and chess history that need to be sorted through, organized, and put away; the bookcases have yet to be totally stripped.  I had no idea HOW MUCH STUFF those two bookcases hold!  Geez!  I already have half a dozen boxes loaded with stuff tucked in the garage and in the guest room upstairs. 

I really do want the house in order prior to the holidays.  That doesn't leave me much time to get things done. But with the health, family and other issues that have occurred during this Summer and Autumn from Hell, I just don't know if I'll be able to get it all together...

All I can say is - Thank Goddess for my Family and my Friends.  They have been absolute lifesavers and steadfast with me through this horrible period in my life.

Ooks! Goofing Off Instead of Painting the Kitchen II...

I've got a few issues to deal with in the kitchen, and can't think about yard work or my little critters right now.

Darlings - take a look at THIS:

Where the hell am I supposed to put the line to stop the taupe paint? Where the soffit above ends is shorter than where the countertop ends on the peninsula below, underneath the upper cabinet, which is inches "indented" from the end of the soffit on top, and definitely not aligned with the end of the countertop, below!

Oy, look at that cluttered countertop, which is the real world and not cleaned up and "styled" for a  blog photo shoot. Well, this aint no fancy pants blog, that's for sure! This is real life, I am a single woman who works full time, trying to maintain my career, this home, a big yard and the equivalent of a second full-time job doing my chess stuff.  Geez, those cabbage-rose print sheers have got to go...but they really are pretty!

Look! I cleared away some of the crap off the countertop so you can see the end of it much better. And the problem of where to 'end the paint' is now made crystal clear, I think...

To the right of the peninsula is my dinette/dining area that is wide open to the family room. That wall (facing west) also holds a 6 foot wide patio door to the deck. There's not actually much wall surface. And, as you can see, my formerly white telephone that is so old it's turned rather creamy yellow with age (I'm not a smoker so it's not that) is placed in such a way that it would be difficult to run some kind of moulding from the top edge of the counter to the ceiling. I'm not inclined to go that route in any event, first of all because I'm no damn carpenter, second of all I don't have any moulding just sitting around waiting to be used and thirdly, I think it would just look silly cutting the wall off in such a way with a smidgeon of inches on the right before the soffit above and the countertop below, appear.  Just to get a straight line of paint?

No way, says Hera, Goddess of the House and Hearth.  HEAR ME.  Okay, okay!

Soooooo -- after thinking about it for all of, oh, two seconds maybe, there are two easy solutions: (1) DO NOT PAINT. (2) Paint the entire west wall (the wall that includes the patio door) in the dark taupe color.

While I was thinking about this, I swept the kitchen floor. I caught up in the broom what I thought was an errant bird seed (the seed winds up all over the place when I pour it in the cup every morning to toss out for the birdies) but it was a daddy long-legs spider. Damn!

I HATE bugs. When I see one in my house in my living territory (they can stay in the basement okay, I won't bother them down there unless one wants to do battle for territory), no matter what time of day or night I get the vacuum out right away and hunt it down relentlessly, and even stand on stuff to get it and sometimes fall off of stuff to get it, like if it's on a ceiling. I've fallen off chairs; I've fallen off the toilet in the upstairs bath; I've fallen off my own damn bed whilst trying to balance on tippy-toe on the edge of it hunting down an errant black "crab" spider on the ceiling, EEK!

But daddy long-legs I leave alone. They are so harmless and delicate. This one I didn't realize was even a spider until a sudden movement caught my eye on the floor as I was sweeping everything into a little circle in the middle of the room in preparation for sweeping it into the dust pan, and there it was, scampering away as fast as it could. I let it go, waiting impatiently for it to find a hidey place so I could safely sweep again. Of course, wouldn't you know it, it ended up nearly back where I first swept it up, but disappeared into a crack to go inside the lower carousel cabinet. I hope it goes WAAAAYYYY in the back and stays there. If it parks by the pole where the shelves turn it will get crushed as the carousel (lazy-susan) turns, should I start hunting for something on the upper or lower shelves.

Am I crazy for letting daddy long-legs go? Does anyone else out there do this? There was an ancient daddy long-legs who lived in my first floor bathroom for at least a year - always in the same spot, I checked it every day (no way to get close enough to tell the gender -- are they all girls?) There it would be, camped out. A couple of times when I was cleaning and sweeping in the bath I accidentally hit it with the broom and it was still alive after months and months, and it went scampering up the wall. I would finish up and leave as quickly as possible. One day, I didn't see the daddy long-legs and it did not return. So maybe it went to the DLL (daddy long-legs) Happy Hunting Ground.

Recently, in the living room, I swept off what I thought was a cob web near the junction between wall and ceiling where it begins to slope upward (I have a 2 story sloped ceiling in the living room) and was vacuuming away at the carpet when suddenly -- how do I see these things when I can't read to save my life without my Walgreens magnifiers on? -- there was this little bead scrambling frantically over the top of the carpeting back toward the wall. A daddy long-legs! It was a little black speck on the ceiling that I had swept away along with the whispy web. Guess who's back up in the same spot on the ceiling in the living room?  Yep.  Little black speck.  I made a point of pointing "it" out to Terry, my cleaning lady.  Don't sweep up there, I told her.  Okay, she said.  Terry "gets" me.  Thank Goddess!

How can I have a House Beautiful when I have daddy long-legs living with me in relative peace and harmony?

None of which answers the question about what the heck I'm going to do paint-wise with my kitchen. Logic tells me to not even attempt to paint it anything else except all the same color - and since the white I originally painted it when I was much younger and still had energy is still perfectly serviceable even after 21 years, what the hell? Right? Right? Leave well enough alone and all that.

But stupid me - I decided to paint the west wall (what there is of it) in the taupe paint. That inspiration picture HAUNTS me, HAUNTS ME, I TELL YOU! BWWWAAAHHHAAAAA!

How can any real woman's kitchen actually look like this, I ask you? But there it is. I want this fricking kitchen. Aint gonna get it, of course, unless I go totally, absolutely mad and take down the ceiling fan and put up a "chandy" (the word makes me want to puke) instead. I mean, really? A FRIGGING CHANDELIER IN ONE'S KITCHEN? Who the hell is going to clean all the greasy build-up off the crystals? Going to toss away those little shades every other month and put up new ones, are you? REALLY? Oh, just have the maid do it... By the way, is that some fruit turned black and petrified sitting up there on that window sill???

Remainder of "before" photos:

The east corner of the kitchen. As you can see, there is a sliver of wall where the cabinet DOES NOT MEET THE doorway. Damn! I'm going to paint it taupe from the top of the doorway down because the wall behind the fridge will be painted taupe and I don't want a silly quarter-inch line of white running down the wall - as if I could even do it straight to begin with! As you can see, since it's just me, I don't have a massive fridge that fills the entire space up. I have been toying with the idea for years and years of putting a bookcase in that space to hold junk and clutter - but maybe that's not such a good idea, since I seem to be a junk and clutter person when I have space to put junk and clutter. Something about 5' 6" tall, 11" deep and 36" wide would do the trick. Yeah, try and find that in ready-made!

That's the living room beyond the short hallway, where staircase to the upper level is opposite entry to the downstairs powder/room 3/4th bath. As you can see, my front door opens up directly into the living room. My house is not glam but I love it anyway. Big brown door on the left is to the basement, where my washer and dryer are, sump pump, assorted storage. Bugs, too. Although Terry cleaned down there this week with my newly-purchased wet/dry vac, so at least all the dead bug carcasses are gone now. Thank Goddess for Terry! By the way, she thinks the kitchen will look fab painted in dark taupe.  Oh and yes, that is one of those NIPPLE lights (GASP!) in the short hallway, just in front of the smoke alarm.

Holy crap, look - dirty dishes on the countertop, and the innards of the vacuum from the other day whe Terry was here to do the cleaning instead of moi. I've got one of those new-fangled cup things instead of a bag vacuum and Terry conscientiously cleans it out after she vacuums the house. There the innards sit until I figure out how they go together yet again snd snap them back into (more or less) the vacuum. The dirty dishes are from the steak dinner I made for myself last night. Now honestly, darlings, this just is not a "chandy" type of space. I mean, check out the glam view through my kitchen window. My neighbor's shed and my neighbor's house - and a utility pole - with dangling wires. LOL!

North wall of kitchen. As you can see, my space is small but set up in the classic work triangle, and it works well. Sink on west wall, stove and oven on north wall, microwave on countertop on east wall, along with the fridge (out of view). Peninsula, where the Norfolk pine sits, is on the "south" end of the kitchen and separates the working kitchen from the dining area. The kitchen is probably 11 x 11. Lots of cabinet space, a plus. Shitty job of cabinet installation - definite minus. I didn't realize until some years later and watching many episodes of This Old House, and other home improvement shows on PBS, etc. that I'd been screwed over by my builder. The model featured medium oak cabinets that fitted perfectly into the space. I hate medium oak. Always have, always will. I opted to "upgrade" to white Merrilat cabinets with a matt melamine finish and - at that time (December, 1989), the new "faceless" look. Hmmm, not sure that's the correct term but as you can see, there aren't any spaces between where the cabinets doors begin and end -- at least, there's not supposed to be.

As you can see if you look closely, the cabinets are NOT the same size across the back of the kitchen - they did the same screw me over job on the bottom row of cabinets. The fillers installed aren't evenly balanced, either. But instead of coming to me and saying "hey lady, these substitute cabinets you want aren't going to fit into the space the right way, what do you want us to do?" They just went ahead and put in these cabinets instead of asking me if I wanted to spend some more $$$ to get two larger (and matching) cabinets for the right side of the room (upper and lower cabinets), and I didn't see them until the final walk-through of the house. Yeah, I had a checklist but I wasn't paying attention to how the cabinets were installed, I was primarily focused on the fact that there were actually white cabinets with the proper handles in the kitchen -- except for the hole they left for a non-existant and never-to-be-installed dishwasher. That's another story.

The cabinets themselves are top rate and are still in excellent shape after all these years. The white, which has gone in and out of fashion continually over the past 21 years, is currently back "in" fashion. Stove is new - purchased in December 2010. Hey look! My painted owls are in the left hand corner! Cheapo set of knives I inherited from one of my sisters still there - I use them on occasion and most of them are still sharp enough to get the job done that I need to get done, including sawing through the occasional log...

Box on the right holds hazelnuts for the squirrels. You can also see my croissants and butter container out from this morning's breakfast. This photo does not show you all the crap piled on top of the microwave...

East wall of kitchen. There's the new fridge, purchased at the same time as the stove, in December, 2010, from the now defunct and bankrupt Appliance World Milwaukee. Sigh. Good thing I was too cheap to buy the extended warranty programs! Please ignore the empty wine box next to the fridge. That goes into recycling since it is corrugated. American branded wine! BUY AMERICAN, LADIES!

So there you have it. Red-tailed squirrel, back yard in dire need of clean-up which it ain't gonna get today or maybe tomorrow, either, and my kitchen with funky soffit area and uneven cabinet installation. Oh, and small fridge, too. Yeah, it's tacky to have chess pieces marching down the side of one's fridge. What can I say? And notice how the overhead cabinet juts "slightly" out (only by an inch or so) beyond the end of the soffit?

Such is life at Maison Newton. Hmmmm, why does my kitchen look two-toned??? I can assure you the top cabinets and walls are not creamy-yellow (unlike my antique wall phone)...

One more comment: I know this is going to sound really crazy, but decorating is a lot like a chess game.

Chess is a series of moves, it is true, but players who are "in the groove" move their pieces according to an inner "voice" that only they can hear, and it's like the pieces dancing across the board in a pattern that only the maker can perceive -- sometimes not even wholly, as the pieces almost seem to move themselves with no conscious direction from the human hand. Layers and layers and yet more layers, as the moves increase and the other player responds, and ultimately, a unique weave is created.

If the music from this movement on the chessboard sounds dissonant and the patterns of the weave seem random and not appealing to the eyes, well, that's just because we're not looking deeply enough. Just like the best of decorating is done in layers, from the largest pieces (furniture) and the largest flat planes (walls, ceilings, floors), to the smallest, most intricate details (accessories, trims, fringes, matt colors in a piece of art or around a photograph), it takes a thankful (even awe-struck) eye to appreciate the intricate beauties of a chess game as it is being played, and afterwards, looking at the moves and playing through the game, one move at a time, to get the feeling-tone of it.

It is the same in decorating. There are elements in decorating, as in chess, that cannot be readily defined - or even taught. It is learned to a certain extent, yes; it is part science, yes; it is part art, yes; but it is also so much more. I think that it is fundamentally a part of being human beings - that Divine Spark, if you will, that sets us apart from amoebae! It makes us yearn, crave, for more, always more. It is the expression of our creative urges demonstrated in a myriad of different ways. It is mathematics - the mystery of numbers, rhythym and pattern; it is music, it is an expression of soul movement. It is Life.  It is Love.  Decorating one's space, like playing chess, is the reaching out of the human spirit to create something unique and individual. Perhaps it is Goddess/God.

Ooks! Goofing Off Instead of Painting the Kitchen...

Geez, my backyard is really a mess!  It rained buckets last week Friday, was gloomy and soggy all last Saturday, and was nice -- too nice to do yard work -- last Sunday.  That same pattern is being repeated this weekend, except yesterday and today it's much colder, by some 30 degrees brrrrrrr, and we got a good inch of rain around here, so it's soggy again! Tomorrow, though, is promised to us by the weather people to be in the 70's and sunny.  We'll see.  At this moment, I'm finding it hard to believe as I've got the furnace turned on, it's cold and damp outside and inside, and I'm thinking about firing up the fireplace and moving to my workstation at the desk in the living room rather than continue here in the family room.

But I digress, darlings!  I shouldn't be doing this at all.  I should be busy up on my genuine antique ladder (I think it was made in 1340, around the time the Huns started invading Europe) putting painters tape all around the ceiling and trim where I'm going to paint my kitchen soffit and the area underneath the cabinets that lovely dark taupe color that will - eventually - be going into my family room, too.

I started out good, honest!  I got up before 7 a.m., fed the squirrels, had my coffee and croissant, checked the news, and I actually spent $1 yesterday and bought a Mega Millions ticket -- so I checked to see if I'd won.  Nope, did not win.  Can't hire painters.  Can't buy a house with a view on an island somewhere or way up on a mountain (but not a volcano). 

Then I started checking the blogs, and that's deadly to getting work done around here, oy!  Then I fed the squirrels again and that's when I noticed this little fellow - with a red (foxy red) tail!  Haven't seen him or her around before, and he or she sure is scared of me, and even of the other animals, so I know he or she isn't local.  Wonder where he/she came from?

I wasn't able to get close, and my camera, although it is a good Nikon, is a point and shoot from 2006 - practically an antique by now, darlings!  But I love it still.  It's only got 3x zoom on it and that does not give the best photos:

Squirrel is nearly centered in this pic - facing toward me, down below the slowy dissolving retaining wall.  Can you see the red in the tail?  Hmmm, no, this is not the best shot.  Also one big fat regular grey squirrel in the forefront!

There!  Now do you see that red tint?  It's not paint - at least, I'm fairly sure it's not paint; I mean, how could a squirrel possibly get just his tail painted red, but nothing else? 

Looks like the same photo, but it's not.  You can see the little flash of reddish tint in that tail.

He was down where I toss the bird food, no doubt nibbling away on the plentiful sunflower seeds.  Green stuff and my perrenials and volunteers coming up all over the place, and the wild honeysuckle shrubs that nothing can kill, not even my saw, are blooming out too, and I haven't cleaned out last year's detrius yet. 

He/she got really spooked by me and disappeared, finally, behind the picket fence on the west.  I'll keep my eye out to see if Red Tail returns.  I've had gimpy squirrels, aged squirrels, and squirrels with something like epilepsy (I call it the falling-down disease) hanging around in my yard for years, but I do not recall seeing a red-tailed squirrel before.  I have read that in Central Park in New York where generations of grey squirrels have bred in peace and relative security, some squirrels with red fur sometimes crop up.  I wonder if that is what happened here?  These aren't the English red squirrels, which are smaller and have differently shaped ears -- these are grey squirrels who have turned partially red because they don't need the grey-black-brown coloration to "hide" in their environment (trees).  Sometimes a squirrel can be right on the trunk of the big tree out back (you can see part of it in the first photo) but if it stays still the human eye doesn't readily pick it out because it blends in so well. 

Pleae see Part II...