My live, eat, sleep and work space

"You have done enough for now."  I told myself yesterday when I looked around and saw there was still stuff I wanted to do to the house.  For three weeks I have accomplished a lot.

The curtains are hung.  I so love Ikea that's were the curtains, rods, red framed mirrors  on the entry wall  and the blue metal table came from.

I have some place to eat.  I am so happy my oldest grandson Josh is so handy with the electric drill, a wrench and screw drivers. He put this set together for me.   My pub table will seat four when the drop leaves are raised, here it is shown with one down and  placed against the wall with three paintings that I did today for the space.  Painting on canvas... I much prefer cloth that is quilted.    Joann's daffodil sale was a good time to buy these three 12" x 24" canvases. 

This is a look at the office space portion of the great/lodge what ever they are calling these open space rooms now a days. 

The sewing studio part looks like it is being used which it is.  There is three plus yards of  soy soaked and dry silk waiting to be painted.  Tomorow I will look through my idea books for images to paint.

I also told myself  yesterday that what's left to be done can wait for a few weeks.   I am so itching to paint something, maybe three or four somethings  and get back to dyeing some fabric too. 

While at Joann's I looked  to see if they had any pfd fabric and I found none.  Hobby Lobby which carries Kona cotton is too far away to drive so I guess if I am going to get back into creating with my own dyed fabric I better look for an online source.

But in the meantime I will paint.  I put some soy beans in water and stuck them in the fridge to soak three days ago, ( so they were good and ready for the blender this morning after I said, "that's it for the house stuff".

I still need to have a laundry tub installed in the garage to make doing wet work more efficient, but I haven't gone in search of  the sink yet.  But I do have a plumber lined up for when I do.

Maybe next week.

My cloth line is stung across the garage and waiting to be used.  What a joy not to have the feeling of doing something against the rules, which I did have when I used to hang soy soaked silk on the apartment balcony to dry.  Not that anyone ever commented, but there was a no laundry drying on the balcony clause in my lease that I broke on more than a few occasions. 

I  have while decorating the house taken breaks from time to time during the last week  to do some quilting and last evening I finished the piece I started in the apartment several months ago. 
This will be the last post about the house since you know I am settled in and getting on to the art part of my life.

Speaking of the art and teaching part of my life, for those who might be interested I have added some pages at the top of the blog with dates for workshop I will give in my studio. 

 

Yesterday was the deadline

I gave myself a 10 day limit  to get back to stiching after the closing, the moving and teaching/speaking for three days last month..  There were times  when I didn't think I would, but I made it.
Before dinner on yesterday I went to the garage and sandwiched a piece I had painted a couple of weeks ago and sat quilting in heavenly peace until Lyn and the grandsons joined me in my space to watch the ladies of UofL win their simi-final NCAA game.   YEA...Go CARDS!!!

There are still things to be done to and about the house, such as I need  to shop for a dining set for the eat-in kitchen space.  Right now the trash can and tri-pod are residing there and while I on most days not sit down to eat there alone, the space is too large to leave bare. 

 I also need to hang art work, bric-a-brac or my quilts throughout the space, but I will put that off until I decide what color walls I can live with.  At this point I am warming to the color that is here  because all of the paint samples I choose prior to waking up to the fantastic light that come into this space are too light... I would need sunglasses to live here if I used any of them.  

To make my color selection I taped the samples to the wall and  viewed each throughout the day, one at a time and found them all to be too bright, too light and I who love bright sunshiny days and lots of day light never thought that was possible. So more and more I am feeling comfortable with what is here. I just need to find what color it is and do some touch-up instead of totally repainting the place.

 

I also need to decide what window treatments if any I will hang in the sitting area of my in house studio space.

 Through these windows I get a picture perfect view of the community pool.  It's close enough that I could rightly claim to have a pool in my yard.

  There is still a sink to purchase and have installed in the garage and a little more weeding through of stuff not important enough to unpack and find a place for. But when I do, I know I will need another shelf or I will have to finish out the attic space to use for storage.  But for now of that stuff I still need to go through, I have decided it can all wait for a little while.  I am not a keeper of unimportant stuff and don't want to become that kind of a person simply because there is space for it in the garage, so I am sure I will get back to tending to this chore shortly.  Already in the unpacking I have made three trip to the near-by Goodwill. 

Supplies and equipment (stuff) is on the shelves in the garage sort of by how I will use it but I think I will have a better idea of  better placement after I have worked out there for a spell especiall when I begin doing some wet work.  But for now with the tall table the space is  great for sandwiching a quilt. The 505 is close at hand as well as scissors, backing fabric and the roll of batting.  On the wall to the left that you can't see will be the utility sink and shelves with wet work supplies and other stuff.

Here's a look at my inside studio space as it looks this morning.

This is the view to the back yard (west side) as I see it from my computer desk area.

My bedroom is located off a very short hall on the left. The hall space is just big enough to need

something to keep it from looking bare but  not big enough to do something important there. So for now it is bare. 

The windows on the north wall, opposite the desk and television, limited me to a 6'  tall by 11' wide as installed design wall space.  I covered the 2" foam with grey felt, because the white felt was too stark and glaring. Again, I never would have thought it.   I am planning to store a couple of  8' x 4' felt covered 2" thick foam panels in the garage for use when I am working on something large or to move outside for photography when needed. 

 

Now back to the sewing machine.

 

Making a house feel like my home

is all I have been doing for the last week. Although I went to closing on March 20 and I began to move stuff from the apartment to here on the 21st, to my way of thinking I have been here a week.  That is since last Thursday, the 28th, when my bed was trucked over from the apartment. 
That night I slept in the house for the first time, on my mattress, laid on the floor, in the space that will be where my sewing machine will take up residence.  I didn't go to the trouble of putting up the bed in the bedroom  because carpet was to be installed in the room on Friday.  Once that was done  the bed went up, clean sheet put on.... ahhhh.  Slept like a log.
     The biggest concern I had when I went searching for a house to buy was; will it feel like my home and could I work in the space?   So far, it feels like home.   Can I work here is yet to be determined since all the supplies and equipment I need to work with are not unpacked.  I did not move into this house in my head prior to closing because I did not want to be disappointed if things fell apart in the buying process therefore I did not have a clear vision of where things would be placed. 
Here-to-fore in all of my previous homes I have done scale drawings of each room and know from day one where things would be placed.  Over time, these initial placements would be changed but I have a clear vision and know keeps you from po-ing the movers. 
Because I did not know where I wanted anything beside where my bed would go, I had everything off loaded into the garage and used it as the staging area.  What I discovered as I considered where to place an item was, yes the place is larger than where I was living, but it has far less wall space due to all the  windows, doors and hallway openings.  Mind you, I am not complaining.
    Windows are a good thing.  I love the light that comes in, but configuring the working and living spaces to best advantage has proved challenging.
Today I am going to spend most of my time in the garage.  Much of what will remain in the garage was  in the apartment, like my shelving and or stored in two large closets.  
I hope I will be able to show you some quilt work soon as my fingers are itching to get back to that instead of aching from all the wrapping, packing, cleaning in the apartment and  unwrapping, unpacking, placing, changing my mind , replacing and/or  repositioning.  I've given myself until Sunday to be done.