Petunias, Planters, and Patios, Oh My!

When we purchased the building that houses 'some things looming' we were particularly thrilled with the attached courtyard, despite the fact that it contained trash and two-foot high weeds.  One of the first things we did, was to put Joshua, our gardener-in-training and my first-born child, to work cleaning up the space:  pulling the weeds, throwing out the trash, and digging out two foot long roots along the building perimeters.  He's a high-energy kid.  Over the years, I've put him to work in my own yard to burn off some of that excess energy, so it was a task he was familiar with and often enjoys. 

In the spring of 2010, we added a fence, complete with gate and lock to keep our neighbors from throwing their trash into our courtyard.  At this point, our progress stalled because the courtyard is landlocked by several buildings. There is no egress to the street, which means, any kind of patio materials had to go through the gallery or the boutique to get back outside.   The more we contemplated how we'd haul brick and stone, the more we realized it might be better to pay someone to do the work for us.

This past fall, we hired a landscaper who designed the patio and installed it behind the fence.

Building the Patio

It took three or four days, and many many more truckloads for the two landscapers to deliver the brick, stone, and sand.  Hauling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow, they carried the materials up a ramp over up our front steps, through our gallery, and to the courtyard.   Daily I watched the progress of the construction.  Being an artist who finds the process as exciting as the product, I was enthralled watching the assembly.

One half complete!

Almost finished!

This Spring, we had the landscaper come back and fill the region outside of the fence with decorative stone.  I'm not even going to guess how many trips that took. And finally, our patio/courtyard was complete! Or was it?

We still needed to acquire tables and chairs, and what about decorative elements? Prowling stores from here to Timbuktu, Floyd managed to snag three large table umbrellas the very color of our 'some things looming' green.  He put up the center awning, anchored it down, and voilà!  NOW we were finished with the courtyard.  Or were we??

Any good city courtyard should have a container garden, we thought. And since we wanted to debut our outdoor space at the Size Matters opening, it fell to Floyd and I to create the garden.   I wanted evergreens, first and foremost.  So we hopped in the car and started hunting through garden centers all across our fair city's suburbs, in the cold, misty, spring rain.  We began with some dwarf spruce trees, and some blueish-green shrubs, I have no idea of their names.  I'm not a gardener. I leave that up to the kid, who has a ridiculously keen green thumb.  Mostly, I said "ooh, that's pretty and would go nice with all these other shades of green. Let's get that!" 

I picked out a couple of ruby daylillies as well as some reddish grass-like plant.    Then we found this rose bush/shrub variety called "Knock Out Roses."  Knowing how much Rebekah loves her roses, we decided to grab three of those for three corners of our patio.  Unfortunately, nothing is in bloom yet, so we knew we'd need some annuals to add color.  Floyd suggested some hanging window boxes attached to the top of our patio fence with a draping flower out of them.  We ordered eight boxes, and are awaiting them, even as I type.

Piling our finds into Floyd's truck, we headed to the next stop for some containers, stone, and potting soil to plant our goodies.   Next came the fun part: getting it all back to the courtyard.

Joshua, our gardener

Back and forth, forth and back, we hauled our prized purchases.  Thankfully, I had our gardener-in-training, Joshua, to help muscle us through the process. He even began the planting process that evening, managing to set-up three trees and one rose bush.  The next day, I brought over some annuals already in planters (thank goodness!) and a couple of window boxes to hang off the railing on the steps leading out of the boutique.  Floyd and I began to tackle the rest of the pots.  Half-way through our first pot, we wondered to ourselves how a fourteen year old boy managed to plant three trees and one rose bush all by his lonesome.  It was quite the task for just the two of us! 

Our "gardener" and his sisters who "helped"

Much to our chagrin, we miscalculated how much dirt and stone we really needed, which meant another trip to the garden center.  We decided to pick up more annual planters to decorate the empty space between the door leading out of the gallery and the door leading out of the boutique.  Piling it all in the back of my mommy-mobile (aka mini-van) we headed back to the studio.  A gazillion more trips back and forth from the street, through the gallery, to the patio, and we finally unloaded the rest of the stash. 

By this point, our bodies were talking to us. We had been squatting, bending over, or hauling large heavy bags of product for hours, and decided we might not be able to get upright ever again.  Thankfully, this was not the case, and by the evening before the Size Matters opening, we were able to sit out and enjoy the fruits of our labors. 

leading out from the gallery to the courtyard

The patio at night

 

 

Looking back towards the gallery door

During the day.  Doncha love the green umbrellas Floyd found? They're our color!

It's lovely to sit out here.

or here. :)

We hope you'll stop by sometime, to see Size Matters, and maybe take a peek at our little courtyard hide-away here in the city.

~Melanie

Word for the day: Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism. Sounds like a germ doesn’t it? It can be passed along (I’m sure I got it from my mother) and it can definitely have unpleasant consequences (attic-itis…a swelling of the contents of one’s attic). This is the act of assigning feelings and humanity to inanimate objects. It has caused me to hang on to many things that I should throw away, caused my daughter to have a collection of hundreds of teddy bears, most of which talked to me and of course some that ended up talking to her, and to keep broken bits of this and that in the name of family history and sentiment.

Old buildings have been talking to me since I was 8 years old. The first building I fell in love with and talked back to me was along my walk to school. It was this wonderful brick house, with a nice front porch that had pretty wrought iron trim on either side of the porch. I could see amongst the over grown shrubs and little out-buildings that it had been a beautiful little home with a warm and welcoming back yard. I could see it in its former glory and wondered at the people who might have lived there, loved it and cared enough to make it so beautiful. I would whisper prayers for it that someone would buy it and love it back to beautiful again.

This ‘thing’ that makes me want to tangibly see and feel the beauty of the past has never left me. Reading, Pennsylvania speaks to me that way. It makes me love the city to the point It almost hurts. I see these beautiful old buildings all around me and I can imagine them restored to their former glory. I can imagine all the lives that have passed through them when they were new and loved.

I sigh over the wonderful roof lines, the turrets, the bay windows, the stained glass transoms and pretty little decorative window accents, the wrought iron trim and fencing, the miles of brick, the stone that looks like it was fire kissed…but clearly really wasn’t. And that’s just the little row homes that line most of the city streets. Stop for a minute and stand still on Penn Street. Take a look up at those old multi-storied banks and buildings. There’s some amazing detail on some of those wonderful old buildings.

Why do I share this today? Because last week we received the most delightful surprise from the city. We were selected to receive a commendation for our restoration work on 526 Washington Street, home of some things looming. She’s a sweet little row that was probably always commercial space with the owner living and working there, perhaps on the third floor where Melanie has her studios now. Tonight we will go to city hall and receive a certificate of commendation. It has been a long, but wonderful journey bringing 526 back to her former glory, with a bit of a modern twist. We hope you stop by sometime, enjoy the art, and the ambiance of our building.

~Rebekah

Paint, 2. Us, 0.

The evening started out well. We arrived at some things looming, and gleefully tore into packages that had arrived via UPS. It was like Christmas all over again, as Rebekah and I examined the artwork and posters she had purchased online to adorn the walls of the building. Jeremy, my husband, computer tech guru, and sometimes helper-elf, arrived shortly before the pizza delivery. We ate dinner, formed a plan of attack, assigned tasks to one another, and dug in. Rebekah (aka Mom) and I decided we'd finish painting the bathroom doors in the basement. It was a good plan, and was going along smoothly until the paint gremlins got us.

Rebekah was painting the bright lime green at the bottom of her door, when it looked as if she slipped, knocking her can of paint over. "Oh no, Melanie! Help!" She called, as it oozed out of the can, and glopped lazily across the basement floor. The paint didn't even have the decency to land on our cardboard "drop cloth." As I went to step down from my perch on a folding chair, I landed on top of my bright pink paint.

"Oh No!" I said. I helplessly watched, brush in hand, as more paint puddled under my feet. I couldn't think, my brain seized up. "Call for your Dad. We need help," Rebekah said.

"Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad! Dad?!"

"Floyd!?"

We called simultaneously up to my father, Floyd, fix-it expert of all things and rescuers of damsels in distress. He took one look and said, "You can scoop that back up into the paint can."

"But your floor..." Rebekah began.

"It'll clean up. That's why I varnished it. Yo, Mel. You're making a trail."

"But I took off my shoes and socks," I said as I hopped towards the double basin sink.

"Well, you're dripping."

I looked at the bottom of my jeans, and sure enough, they had been dipped in pink paint. I had to flip up the cuffs to stop making pink tracks across the floor. Meanwhile, Jeremy wandered down, wondering about all the commotion. Handing him a bucket and a sponge, we enlisted Jer on clean-up duty.

"It was the weirdest thing, like the paint gremlins got us," Rebekah said. "Honestly it was just one can after another."

"Well, I think we oughta just call it a night, "I said. "Usually when stuff starts to go this wrong, I take it as a sign, and pack it up."

"I'm with you."

Melanie

Happy New Year!

The countdown to our opening begins. We have a little less than two and a half months before our Opening. Some of our promotional work is finished, and our signage has been sent to the printer. What's left to do? It feels like just about everything!

Floyd began working on our boutique, prepping the room for paint, and taking down ceiling tiles. It will be the "Gallery for Functional Art," so we're focusing on making it the best. Our not-so-little-helper-elf, Steven (who also happens to be Nephew S to yours truly) has made major headway in the second floor bathroom. We love the antiquated pedestal sink with its separate hot and cold faucets, and the very dated toilet in the second floor bathroom, so we're going for a past meets present kind of look with modern wallpaper, and black and white subway tile. In between working on the bathroom, Steven can be found on a ladder, painting primer on the boutique windows' woodwork.

The community studios are coming along as well. Floyd and I spent a few weeks before Christmas vacation cleaning up two of the four looms in the weaving studio. I washed and polished the wood, while he removed any rust we found on the metal parts. What parts that couldn't be preserved, he and I replaced.

Floyd also finished the basement floor that leads to our future dye kitchen. And, we still have some minutiae to finish in the downstairs bathrooms: hanging art, finish painting the doors, etc. We have been very busy since my last post in November.

Behind the scenes, Rebekah and I are working on the copy for our website, which is currently under construction. Once up, we will list our classes and workshops, our current and upcoming events, as well as individual artist pages, for those who rent studios within our building. We will be spending more time updating this blog, so keep checking back with us over the next weeks!

All in all, things are progressing, despite the quickly coming deadline. We hope you had a wonderful holiday season, enjoying friends and family, lots of love, warmth and good cheer. Blessings to you and yours for 2010!

Melanie

What ever happened to puce?

What do kiwi splash, turquoise mist, and alpine valley all have in common? They're all on this paint card I picked up from the mega-monster warehouse hardware store. And they're all blue.

I've often wondered how they come up with these names. Is there some team of people in the paint manufacturing world who sit around and toss names back and forth?

"What do you think of Celestial Seasonings as a name for this bright orange?"

"Uh, Fred, that's a tea bag company. They make sleepytime tea."

"Hey! Sleepytime! That sounds like the perfect name for this neon yellow!"

Kiwi Splash is blue. Um, the last time I peeled open a kiwi, it was green, not blue. Besides, doesn't that sound more like a super sugared, ultra-food colored kid's drink? There's Blue Bayou on this other card. As if bayou is going to make the blue seem more, I don't know, blue. And Frivolous. I'll buy that, it's frivolous, but I've just got to have it. Just exactly what color IS Frivolous? Oh, look at that! It's also blue. No? How about Gulf Grandeur or Astral? None of those? Well, how about Free Spirit or Galactica? Yessss...Galactica, as in Battlestar? Maybe I should just stick with Just Jazz, or Safe Harbor. Teal Zeal sounds fun, but maybe just maybe, when I look at my walls, I want a Caribbean Holiday. Personally, I'd think a Caribbean Holiday color would not be midnight turquoise, but a bright flashy orange or hot pink. But that's just me.

Now I am an artist, and I do differentiate between light blue, dark blue, turquoise blue, versus a green blue. There's warm blues and cool blues. Blues that are on the verge of purple (a.k.a. blurple). There's navy blue, blue black, blue grey, and earthy blue. I understand blue sky, ocean blue, periwinkle blue, cornflower blue, bright blue, aqua, and blueberry. But I don't think I can conjure up a greenish/bluish ocean blue when I hear the words Alpine Valley. Maybe that's just me.

Most of the time, I ignore the names, and well heck, the color cards, and put my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree to some actual practical use! I mix my own paint colors! My family ribs me for this, but I hate waste. If I have a little of this, and a little of that, I make my own color that is only marginally off the mega-monster warehouse hardware store's paint palette, but for considerably a lot less. Most of the time it works out pretty well. Sometimes I have to go back to the drawing board. The verdict is still out on the kitchenette.

My studio is yellow. Why? Because I had a lot of different yellows in the basement and one really bright orange. I mixed some of the yellows, a spot of the orange, and dumped two cans of bright white in. I ended up with five gallons. I used three and a half gallons of the yellow to paint the studio, so I decided to use that color as a base for the kitchenette.

A survivor of the seventies, the kitchenette stove is a lovely olive green (not Party Time, nor Flower Power, nor Mexicali, nor Pretty Paisley, but olive green). Most of these mega-monster warehouse hardware store paint centers will sell two to four ounce samples of paint so a person can test Melodious Strain on their walls to make sure it harmonizes with Candlewood Lane. So, I bought two different DARK yellowish greens, Avocado Surprise and Jalapeno. Hey at least those names sound like something green. I mixed those with the yellow and added a bit of the earthy grass green Floyd painted in the office on the first floor. He uses Premium-Super-Expensive-Paint that us mere mortals can't really afford. I have no idea what the name was, but I'm sure it had nothing to do with green.

I must say, on one level, my yellowish green does match well enough with the seventies oven. However, I'm not sure it's really all that attractive. If I can pull it together with some other colors, it will be either brilliant, or a total flop.

Hannah, my youngest child and owner of one unhappy tummy, came to work with me today. She wandered up to the third floor while I was painting the kitchenette walls. "OOOOOoooh, PRETTY!" she exclaimed.

"You think so?" I asked, standing on the step ladder. "The jury is still out on this one for me. I dunno yet if I like it. Don't you think it looks like boogers?"

Hannah giggled, "Yeah, it kinda does. I still like it though."

"You know what?" I looked down at her sweet little face.

"What?"

"I think I'll call this color: Sinus Infection."

"Mama, you're silly." Hannah called over her shoulder as she descended the stairs.

Maybe. It's either that, or the paint fumes. I'll just wait until tomorrow after it dries, and darkens up. Who knows? I might like it after all.

Melanie

Attack of the killer...

I've had a frustrating couple of days. Yesterday I dropped, broke, spilled, dumped, anything and everything...including the rabbit pee that was lying in wait in the bottom of Oswald's (my angora bunny) cage tray. Isn't the kitty litter supposed to absorb that stuff? After about the umpteenth millionth mishap (and no I'm not exaggerating) I gave up hopes of getting over to the studio to do yet more manual labor. I set out to get there by eleven. It was one thirty in the afternoon, shortly after cleaning up rabbit pee, getting into the van, and having to turn around because now I could add "forgot to bring paint" to my list of: dropped, broke, spilled, and dumped. I figured Fate was out to get me yesterday. I don't tempt Fate. I figured the forgotten, needed paint was a sign. Heeding the warning flag Fate was waving my way, I curled up on the couch with a fluffy book. (It was terrible. I don't remember the title, but it was bad, so it doesn't matter).

This morning I thought, surely, whatever curse hovered over me yesterday would be lifted today. I was feeling more rested. I hadn't had a mishap. Surely, I was in the clear.

I began tearing out the carpet in the kitchenette. Why anyone would think carpet in a public kitchen is a good idea, I don't know. Like a gluey fly-strip collecting it's prey, It was a nasty combination of stains, dirt, and old food particles. I wrestled it into a roll, and began hauling it down the three and a half flights of steps to the first floor. Half way down the first flight, the carpet began to unwind, slowly. I got it to the landing and tried to remedy the situation. I wasn't going to fit it down the stairs if I didn't somehow make the carpet more compact. Even now, I have no clue how I managed it. But before I knew what had happened, my petite frame was swallowed whole by a carpet. Like a low budget horror flick, I, the heroine of this dastardly tale, discovered I was in the bowels of the monster with little hope of escape, my predicament revealed too little too late. I slowly turned three hundred and sixty degrees: carpet, carpet, carpet and more carpet.

I imagine I must have looked pretty silly standing there, or if anyone could have known I was standing there, in the middle of the nasty jelly roll of floor covering. My father was working on the basement floors, happily singing off-key with his earphones in his ears, hooked to his blackberry. There would be no rescue from that front, unless he just happened to check on me. Pondering the situation for a minute more, I decided standing there in the middle of a seven foot high roll, contemplating the riddle of how I got there in the first place, wasn't going to get me out. So, I fought my way out of the carpet maze, then kicked the menace down the remaining two flights of stairs. Ha! Take that you killer carpet! Setting it near the front door, I re-rolled it nice and tight.

I only wished I had something to tie it up with. You never know who its next victim might be.

Melanie

Studio 301, 302, in progress...

The week between Christmas and New Years was a tough one. Not only was my Grandfather ill, and dying, but I was trying to get my studio painted. Unfortunately, we didn't get as far as we'd like. For one, the place was filthy nasty dirty. The whole building is, as a matter of fact. It took us an entire day just to scrub it. Then it took another day to sand everything. The rooms are rather decent in size: 12x16x9.5 ft, and 11x13x9.5ft, so it was time consuming. And it was not a huge sanding, just enough to prep so the paint will stick. Joshua, my son, did most of baseboards using his mouse sander. I went in behind him and got the curved edges by hand. I also sanded one of the windows in the second room. Jeremy, my husband, sanded the two huge seven foot windows in the front room.

Josh tore up the carpets weeks ago, revealing baby poo brown painted wood floors. Not nice wood floor, as in I could sand it down and refinish into hardwood floors, no, these are rough hewn planks that are typically painted. Very common in this part of the world in homes/buildings from this era. My own house has this same kind of floor in the attic, where we have our bedroom. So before we primed the walls, we figured it would be best to sand the floors a bit, since the baby-poo brown paint had a high gloss to it.

After Jeremy sanded the floor, we painted a layer of primer on everything, except the floor. We'll take care of that after we paint everything else. Then we painted the first coat of color. It's a mixture of a bunch of different colors I had leftovers in the basement. Yeah, I know...maybe I'm crazy mixing up my own wall color, but it worked. I do it all the time.

As of this writing, I have put the second coat on the walls. Next time I head over there, I'll prime the closets and painting the interiors an accent color. Then I'm going to paint the trim (bright white) and finally the floors, an off-white with a yellow undertone. I'm not certain about the floors. I might end up re-painting them. The color cards looked good with the wall color, but you know how that goes.



Until the next update...

Melanie