Showing posts with label art deco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art deco. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Measure twice, cut once

Such a simple idea, but I'll never learn.  After spending the better part of the day butchering turkeys for the spoiled rotten dog who doesn't even live here anymore, and dealing - finally - with this...


which has been piling up for a month (which I know because there were two months utilities bills in there), I finally sat down at 7:30 pm to finalize my plan for the headboard.  I've been agonizing over the details of the design - and how that will impact the execution - for days now, but I finally at least decided that regardless of how I intend to treat the face, I want the general structure to be the same as the one shown in this absolutely fantastic series of videos on youtube...







Before I had my eureka moment where I decided to pull the bed away from the wall so that I could center it and do flanking window treatments, I had intended to simply upholster a piece of plywood and attach it to the wall.  But now that the bed will be several inches away from the wall, that obviously won't work - it will have to have legs and be bolted to the bed frame.  The video series (there are eight episodes in all) cover everything you need to know except how to upholster around the legs if you're not intending to do the shirred border they use which, coincidentally, is exactly the same width as the 2x4 leg.   I had also originally intended to do simple diamond tufting, but scrapped that idea a couple of weeks ago when it became obvious that the room is already quite feminine enough.  Instead, I decided to do channel tufting because it would echo a pretty common art deco design...


So, great - that would give me a way to force a 3-1/2" edge in there, but, I really, really, reeeeeeeeally don't want to do channels every 3-1/2" all the way across the headboard.  It would be too busy, and it would be a PITA!  So I played around and played around with variations of 3-1/2" channels and 7" channels and combinations of the two and finally just decided I'm overthinking it.  I (think) I will (probably) just do 7" channels and when I get to the part where I have to upholster around the legs I'll wing it!  

Having this "decided," I headed out to the garage to start cutting the lumber.  I already had the headboard itself cut out, so I figured it would take me fifteen minutes to cut the 2x4's to the correct lengths and then I could get the sucker glued and screwed together and go to town.

And then I cut my longest 2x4 WRONG.  And did not have enough lumber to make it up.  And Home Depot was closed by this point, of course.  So here I sit, having once again screwed myself because I'm always so damned scatterbrained.  This isn't the first time I've cut WRONG.  I do it with lumber, I do it with fabric, I do it with anything you can think of that can be cut.  And every time it happens, it's because I'm not fully "present in the moment."  I'm always thinking about what I can do after I finish the current task, and sometimes what comes after that, and after that, and after that.  It's a sickness, I tell you, and I wish they'd make a pill for it!  

Manana!

Monday, November 8, 2010

Painting progress

As expected, covering up the raspberry zebra stripes took a couple of coats of paint, but progress has been made...


As I was scooting around the room on my tush cutting in the baseboards in the wee hours of this morning, I kept glancing over at the interplay of the newly painted walls with the current black trim and carpet in an empty corner of the room...



At first, it hit me wrong, but almost immediately on the heels of "Oooh, not so sure," my thoughts started going to "Hmmm, very art-deco."   Not current-day, Miami art-deco, but 40s Hollywood art deco.   





The above bath uses almost exactly the same two shades of green with black.  Love it!




I'm sure any of you who have ever done any house or apartment hunting in older sections of your town have seen this tile combo a time or two.  The woman who sent this pic to "ApartmentTherapy.com" was asking how to hide it.  I would showcase it!  

As I sat and looked at that stretch of black trim against the two greens last night, my second thought after "art deco" was that I could now see a way to make this room a balance of feminine and masculine.  My kids are probably the main people who will be using this guest room.  When I showed my son the bedding, his immediate and visceral reaction was "Floral?!?!?!!"  Okay, point taken, Chevy!  Since that "conversation" I've been looking for ways to masculinize the room a bit, and the art deco sub-theme seems a perfect jumping off point for that.  I've always loved art deco, but I've never, never been happy with any room I've done that's been true to one style and only one style.  I really prefer an eclectic mix, so I'm hopeful that I can blend the whimsy of the bedding and a couple of pieces of furniture I have planned with the more ordered elegance of art deco. 

Another thought I had while this idea gelled in my late-night musings was how much a luxury it is to be doing a room for myself rather than a client.  Not that I dislike having clients, believe me!  But if I were doing this room for a client, the basic decisions - wall and trim colors, fabrics, etc - would have been made at the outset.  I most likely would have chosen white trim instead of black, and I would have given the client a whole slew of reasons why that was the best choice.   And then, when I had my Eureka! moment in the midst of the work, I'd either have to sit down and shut up or go to the client for approval...

Me:  I know we agreed on white for the trim, but now I'm thinking black.

Client:  But you said white was classic and that black was going to be too heavy in this room.

Me:  I was wrong.

NOT a conversation that's fun to have with someone who trusts your judgment! 

By the way, cool as I do think the black looks, I brushed on some of the Regent Metallics Silver Bell with Behr's Black Suede and think this is really "it" for the trim...






I was actually going to go into a couple of other things today - bedside light fixtures, a few ideas I'm trying to decide between for the accent paint colors, and the headboard, but I need to get back to work!  Hopefully I'll have some photos with those accent colors up on the walls tomorrow.  In the meantime, I'm sharing this photo that I stumbled across while searching for art deco just because it made me go "Wow!"  I may make this a feature: a weekly or more frequent "Random WOW! of the week" photo.  Enjoy!




Designed by artist/architect

Friedensreich Hundertwasser

as featured on Furniture Fashion

Art as architecture, or architecture as art.  Whatever you call it, it really made me go WOW!