The Happy Place!

I am starting an online watercolor class this weekend! It's another course on the Teachables platform, with The Happy Ever Crafter. I really enjoyed the modern calligraphy course so when I learned about this one decided to sign up. I had a few watercolors missing from my collection so I went online and ordered them along with a few other items I needed. Shipping has been absolutely crazy lately. This order originated in Kernersville, NC, then went to USPS in Greensboro, NC, where it sat for 5 days! Finally, it arrived in Seagrove seven days later. I was getting worried that I wasn't going to get my paint in time for the start of the class.

Last week I experimented with creating watercolor backgrounds using plastic wrap.

It was a fun process with some interesting results.

I doodled over this background with a combination of colored pencil and water color pencils. Not sure about the end result. It has grown on my over time, but there are elements I am not happy with.

Part of the problem is that I am not crazy about my watercolor pencils. They are from Arteza, not the best quality. My regular colored pencils are Prismacolor professional series. I love them and have had them for 20+ years. What I do need is a blending pencil. Once I get one I will try this technique again using only the Prismacolor pencils.

I am off the spend the rest of the day glazing piggy banks and salt pigs. We have a kiln that needs to be fired!

Progress

Anyone who visited us at the log cabin studio,  knows how jammed packed our small space was. It's now empty, and last Wednesday we did a final cleaning!

 It was a huge relief to get it done. All that's left to move is the kiln. We will fire it once more before the Celebration of Seagrove Potters show and then start deconstruction. It's a small kiln so it should go quickly.

The rest of our days and evenings have been spent scraping paint and priming walls in our new space. The ceiling is painted plywood. Power washing removed a lot of peeling paint but there was still quite a bit of scraping to do. After scraping, we washed it with TSP and water. 

Last night Jeff started to texture the ceiling with a mixture of paint and joint compound. It will help to hide roughness of the plywood. He experimented with a few textures before deciding on what looks and works the best. Such a messy job! He was covered in paint and joint compound by the end of the night. His time spent as a drywall hanger, in his youth, has served us well.

It's exciting to see our new space come together. Progress this week should be very big...
stay tuned for updates!

Getting Primed

It felt more like Labor Day than Memorial Day. Yesterday we got almost all the cabinets primed. Today we will rip off the countertop on the outside wall to make priming the interior of those cabinets easier. We are leaving the interior of the cabinet over the wall oven green! It was the only one that was green, and it looks like the cabinet was never used. We will put the doors back on that cabinet. It will be a good one for storing baking pans. All of the lower cabinets are getting their doors back on. Some of the uppers we will leave off so that we can show off our handmade dishes.

Today we will unload the kiln and ship pots. Then it's back to the house to put a coat of real paint on the cabinets. No funky colors. We are playing it safe with "Churchill Hotel Vanilla". I can't wait for this project to be done so we can move in! Sunday night we slept in the guest bedroom. It's the only room with some furniture right now. It felt so good to wake up in our own home and enjoy coffee on the patio.

I just need to be a little more patient!!!! We are almost there.

Kitchen Facelift

Jeff had one day to recover from jet lag and then it was back to house renovations. The kitchen is our top priority before we move in completely. First order was to remove all the cabinet doors. No easy task, since all of the hinges had been painted over. It was a chore to get them off and when we paint and replace them, they will get all new hinges... never to be painted again.

 The interiors of the cabinets are three different colors, pink, green, and off-white. They are absolutely disgusting, inside and out. We made the decision to replace the countertop, sink, and cooktop. Last month we bought a dishwasher on sale, and that has already been delivered, just not installed. The countertop will be something inexpensive that will coordinate with the island. It's not financially possible for us to do it all right now. At this point we are just looking for clean and neat.

This house has a large living room and a good size den. We only had a chair for the den which was going to make it a rather sparsely furnished room. A neighbor potter is moving and she had a sofa for sale at a great price, so we snatched it up!

It's a sofa-bed and was a b!tch to move! It had to come down a short flight of stairs at her house. Thankfully at our house it only had to be moved through the carport and into the first room. A few new pillows from IKEA and the sofa looks great. This is the room with the lovely wagon wheel light...

That light really has to go. I am just not into the wild west decor.