Paint it White

 I’m This part of the project reminds me of the scene in The Devil's Advocate where the two main characters get to see their apartment for the first time. The woman down the hall explains why they have the apartments painted white so you can see the walls naked so you can choose your palette.

'Before 

.

After 

 Well....now I have a lovely blank canvas. My hands are all painty but who cares.  However, this is a really sad way to spend New Year's Eve in Vegas. There's a law on the books here 

that says you are required to go out and party party party. If you don't abide by this law, you get a steep fine. 

Yuck!

My library glue smells rancid. I mean really REALLY rancid.  It smells like hard boiled eggs that have become rotten with a slight whiff of roadkill. How does that happen to glue? I guess I should go to the craft store for a new bottle because it's something I can't live without craft-wise. I also use it for it's intention---it's great for mending books. 

No longer a lean-to

I received a brand-new teevee typewriter for Christmas and I'm still working out some of the quirks, not to mention login info.  The townhouse took a bit of a backseat so I could work on some other projects. I went to Lowe's and bought a couple of 2 X 4's and used Liquid Nails to adhere them to the dollhouse so hopefully the leaning will finally be gone. I'd hate to have it lean-fro. 

I have included a photo of the Liquid Nails application just for posterity. 

Unfortunately I overdid the Liquid nails on some of the floors so I decided to use spackling paste to make it look like plaster walls. Plaster walls give the appearance of an older home in the days before drywall. I plan on spray painting the entire house white with the paint that adheres to plastic. Soon I'll be able to decide what color paint each room should be. 

This is where the fun part begins!!

You're My First Mate

I'd like to give a thank-you to my father and stepmother for instilling my DIY ethic (the other woman in the photo is my Auntie Em. Yes, I really have a wonderful Auntie Em. How Wizard of Oz-esque!!)

They taught me how to do things by hand such as having me out early in the morning in the front yard mixing cement. They gave me guidance when I was stripping the white paint off my first Heywood-Wakefield chair. I basically learned that there was virtually nothing out there that couldn't be restored.  This is my favorite quote from "The Lovely Bones": 

  

Susie, hobbies are healthy,

they teach you things.

Like what?

  

Like if you start something,

you finish it -

you don't stop until

you get it right.

If you don't get it right,

you start over again...

and you keep on going as long as you have to.

That's the way it is, that's what you do.

It's perfectly normal.

You know Granpy taught me to do this,

and now I'm teaching you.

We're creating something here, for us.

Something special.

- I know

You're my first mate, Susie Q. 

One day, all of this all will be yours. 

I *heart* gluey messes!

I woke up at 4am today which is not unusual for these past few months. Now, instead of trying to sleep and tossing and turning I just go with it and get out of bed. I'll tell you this, though---being up at 3am-6am is really peaceful. You accomplish quite a lot. Not to seem trite but our sunrises are really gorgeous and I get to work on my dollhouse while basking in the sunrise. 

Lydia Lunch once said "I like to {get up at 6am} because the first four hours of the day .are the most peaceful. No one's calling you on the phone. I can assure you of that. NO one's knocking at the door, and even the mailman doesn't come 'til noon. So I  like to get an advantage on everyone else:; have some peace time." 

Anyway, I decided it was time to dismantle the dollhouse and re-assemble it with the PVC pipe and the Liquid Nails. I put in a dvd of the first season of Dexter and by the time that particular disc was finished, I was covered with glue. By then I realized I should be wearing hair dying gloves. Whatever. What's done is done. I finally got tired of redecorating the house. I need to buy a giant piece of paneling so I can start painting rooms and hanging art. 

The following are photos of my progress:

This is the patio I've constructed. I constructed a sauna that's more size scaled to the rest of the furniture. I have the cedar benches inside sauna and the small dish of rocks. I need to secure the little pull mechanism. I've also planted three pots of rye grass which seems very hardy and adds a little bit of realism to the project. 

  
This is a full view of the house. I made some wonderful discoveries at Michael's Crafts. Once I decide a color scheme for each room I''ll be able to paint the furniture. 

This room has a funny backstory. It's the top half of one of those ladder shelves from Target. I was trying to scoot it over and forgot it was bolted to the wall. You can only guess what happened. I was covered in books. I was able to buy another and assemble it. Anyway, I thought it would make an interesting little apartment-type room. My grandmother's basement was like this. It had a seperate entrance, a kitchen, a laundry room, a bathroom and several bedrooms. I would like to imagine it as a little living space for an older teenager or a young woman living at home. 

 Check out the shelf I made! I've been saving tiny makeup containers. 

 This is the office and it's one of my favorite rooms mostly because of the color scheme---orange and green. To me, it's kind of mod. Do you see the rye grass in the corner?

 I'm a total sucker for vanities. I have two in my own house. The Barbie statue was a Christmas ornament. The other figure is a Shriner from Archie McPhee. 

 This is the master bedroom and it's one of my favorite rooms. To me it looks like something from West Elm. 

 This is the interior of the new sauna. 

Piso Mojado

The house has been totally dismantled to install PVC pipe. I didn't post a photo because, frankly, it isn't terribly interesting. I did, however, score some awesome pieces at Michael's Crafts.. Hey, like I said, I'm a finder and good at repurposing objects. I'm not a builder.. 

The Baron told her that only art meant anything

Since the structure of the house is still giving me fits, I thought I'd display the art that is ready to be hung on the walls of the house---as soon as I build permanent walls. 

One of my Jack Kerouac pictures may have bitten the dust. I mounted it on a sheet of  that homemade scrapbooking paper and when the moisture of the glue hit the paper, it wrinkled up and couldn't be saved. 

When people ask me where I get my clothing or where I get antique/vintage items in my house I generally reply by saying "Everywhere." This comes across as sounding glib but it's true. I find items at thrift stores (although I haven't thrifted properly in years), estate sales, tag sales, eBay, gifts from people who clean out their basements (that's how I acquired several 60 yr. old Gucci purses) as well as alley rummaging. Before I get labeled as a hoarder, let me add that I constantly have a box actively used for items that need to be taken to the Salvation Army. Some may look at my house and see clutter. I see collections that make me happy and that I love showing people when they visit. Every item has a zone (Dia de los Muertos zone, incense collection zone, pink pottery zone, Mertens Kundst zone, antique henna boxes zone) which actually makes my collections LESS cluttered. 

That being said, my favorite bidding items on eBay are the lot auctions under the search parameter of  "antique ephemera lot." You can bid on literally pounds of paper items which include old postcards (my favorite), photographs, maps, brochures, autograph books, diaries (another favorite), old greeting cards, and antique playing cards (my favorites are the deco playing cards which I collect and frame together). 

In the first photo, there are two Edward Gorey sketches from one of my old day-by-day calendars from a few years back. The other three items will look good in the bathroom. I'm particularly proud of the Fedrazil bookmark which is really and ad for cold medicine. The other two items are playing cards. 

I mentioned the Kerouac photo and the Velvet Underground photo. The latter was snipped and saved from an issue of Star Hits magazine. Anybody who was into British Invasion/new wave-type bands in the '80s probably knows what Star Hits magazine was. 

The photo with the two girls is actually a photo I  found at a house that my ex husband and I rented. One of the girls in the photo was our landlord's mother. THe reason they're making believe they're drinking beer and smoking cigarettes is because they came from LDS backgrounds. 

 Items such as these antique photos are commonly found in paper ephemera lots. Since they're smallish, I figured they'd make nice dollhouse art. 

 The pink/purple graphic was packaged with some items my ex husband brought back from India for me. The navy floral item is a tag from a dress and the circular Steampunk-esque item is actually a playing card. 

These are just stinking cute. One of them is a New Yorker cartoon mounted to a piece of magnet. The dad is telling the little boy to go ask his search engine. The Busy Book was in a box of Cracker Jacks. The blue card and the tiny photo are from my baby book. The "love rock silly" drawing was something I found in my classroom and kept. The Bunny Foo Foo item was something I did when I was little and the orange item is actually something I was using to test pen color a few weeks before and noticed that it was like Rorschach test. The two items before are for a dollhouse office. Note the "Five Truths of Life." Isn't it the truth??

These are from the same Edward Gorey day-by-day calendars as the one above. These are from his "Neglected Murderesses" book. I'm not sure where they'll go but trust me, I'll find a place. 

I don't know where some of these items are from. The milk graphic is a playing card. The Gore Vidal quote is from a notepad. The other two items just seem to have appeared in my art supplies. I figured all of these would look great in a dollhouse kitchen.