Musical Chairs

I think I have delusions of grandeur.

My delusions deal with furniture restoration.

In the past, I've been able to deny my urge to rescue distraught furniture from dumpsters and street curbs and thrift stores.

It started with the big gold monster chair my dad snagged for me when I was a freshman in college. I don't really remember its providence (thrift store? back alley? port of authority? immigration holding cell??); I just remember that it rocked my world so much harder than any standard issue desk chair. Sometime mid-year, something--that might or might not have involved alcohol-fueled clumsiness (someone else's, I assure you!)--happened to it , and it became incredibly wobbly and would topple over at random times. You gotta understand that this chair was huge and heavy and swiveled on a pedestal base, and quite reminiscent of Martin Crane's chair in Frasier (you know, the big ugly arm chair that offended the minimalist sensibilities of the titular character):

I tried my best to resurrect the beast, but by the end of the year when it was time to move out of the dorm room and put my stuff in summer storage, I felt it was time to let go of the behemoth. It's probably sitting comfortably in the summer 1998 layer of the Canyon County landfill, being much loved by vermin.

When I moved down the California, my mom gave me a chic striped Asparagus Green and Amber velvet upholstered tub chair with a wooden frame and rattan inserts that was once my great aunt Clara's. It's a striking piece of furniture, and I love love love it. I've meant to re-upholster it for the last 8 years, and it's still on the to-do list (and keeps getting shifted further and further down).

My reupholstering delusions of grandeur are firmly rooted in how freaking easy Trading Spaces makes it look. If Hilde can do it, I reason, so can I!

But like I said, I've managed to keep my dark urges to rescue distraught chairs from the clutches of obscurity very very well.

Until we bought the house and started frequenting ReStore.

Meet our new friends at the house:

One of the six side chairs that came with our new-to-us dining room table. They're kind of ugly, but they're kind of growing on me. I think I can successfully spray paint the metal and change the fabric on the seat pretty easily, and they'll look infinitely better.

One of the two arm chairs that came with the dining room table. Albert likes the fabric on the seats--especially for scratching.Horray for ReStore! I got these next two beauties for $20 for both. I love their mid-century looks. The arm chair's latest home is up in our bedroom.The side chair I use as my computer chair. I used Restore-A-Finish on the side chair last night, and took the vinyl off the seat. I'll post pictures as soon as I have the new fabric in place. A few weeks ago at ReStore, we found these next two chairs sitting out front. They didn't have any seats/backs and looked shabby at first glance, but my heart was a-flutter because I loved their lines. A closer look at them, and I realized that they very likely came from a carpenter's workshop. They're solidly built, and will look magnificent once they're finished.

This is a detail shot of the chair's arm. You can see pencil marks on it, from where the craftsman had intended to carve out an art deco-esque pattern. I found some lovely Liz Clairborne upholstery fabric at Joann's that I think will look STUNNING on these chairs. I'm VERY excited!
This chair is just beautiful. It's vaguely neo-classical, and I just love it. I think I'll strip it, restain it a darker colour, and then use the same fabric I'm using for the chair above.

A detail of the carved legs.

Now that I'm done with my special Christmas project for all my family members, I can move onto my refurbishing dreams. Stay tuned!

Bats in the Belfrey

We lived at the condo for three and a half years, during which time we had three Halloweens come and go. The first year, we did nothing (went to see a movie, I believe). The second year, I got three faux pumpkins and carved them up, and set them on the porch area in front of our door, bought a large vat of Tootsie Rolls and waited for the trick or treaters. The day after Halloween, our Tootsie Roll supply had been depleted only by the ones that we had chowed down on, as there had not been a single trick or treater. Last year, we did the pumpkins again, but I got choice Hershey bite-sized candies, thinking that the kids would smell the CHOCOLATE and be enticed to knock on our door. We had ONE trick or treater, a 13-14 year old kid dressed in a hoodie and carrying a back pack. Pah-thet-ick.

So I had high hopes for this year when October rolled around, and many many many homes in the neighbourhood pulled out elaborate Halloween themed decorations with everything from creepy spider webs with gigantic spiders to full-on haunted forest set-ups with mummies and monsters. Not wanting to get my hopes up, I resolved to keep things modest and not decorate until the day of (my plans were also largely dictated by the horribly time consuming business law course I was enrolled in at the time). I bought a large real pumpkin and snagged four more faux pumpkins on clearance from Michael's. After I finished up my final for my class, I started carving the faux pumpkins. BEHOLD

The kitty face and bat cave are the pumpkins that I carved two years ago--the bat cave hasn't held up very well, and there's now only one bat left and I had to staple his wing back on.

Then on the 29th, I decided we didn't have enough real pumpkins and that I really wanted the faux spider web stuff to put on the porch and that we just had to have it, so I drug John around to various places for more pumpkins and webbing. Rant: Vons wanted $15 for a pumpkin that was a good bit smaller than the $3.54 pumpkin I snagged at WinCo a week before. F-them! So we got some slightly smaller pumpkins at Trader Joes for $3.49 each.

Then I got to thinking about how long our driveway is, and that the incline probably isn't that enticing to little kids, and the fact that we don't really have a lighted path up to the house and the stairs leading up from the driveway are kind of sloppy and irregular and that since we're homeowners, we are not LIABLE for injuries. So I convinced John that we needed to light the path, and ran over to a Dollar Tree to look for something to do just that. I picked up (10) clear glass cylinder vases, took them home, and painted Halloween-type silhouettes on them using black acrylic paint. I added a cup of rock salt to keep them from slipping down the hill, and used large tealight candles. Behold! I also decided that 10-vases wouldn't be enough to light the path, so I picked up some brown sacks and drew some silhouettes on them using black permanent marker, as well. For extra weight, I added a cup of rock salt and used flameless battery-powered "candles." Behold! Saturday was a busy busy day, as we went to a woodworking trade show out in Costa Mesa (about 60ish miles) and then to Ikea in Costa Mesa (to return some broken/unneeded items that were purchased on our last trip). I still hadn't carved the real pumpkins and put out the spider webbing (John needed to clean leaves off the driveway first, and he did it in the morning before we left for Costa Mesa). So as soon as we got home, I got busy threading the spider webbing on nails and staples and hooks that the previous owner of the house had left. BEHOLD!

We have a portal to (hell) the crawl space under the house, so I put webbing there, too. Behold!John helped me put out some more staked solar lights we purchased several months ago, but never bothered to put out.

Then I started putting out the various votives, luminaries and faux pumpkins. BEHOLD!

I quickly cleaned and carved the real pumpkins. I had high hopes that John and Josh would like to relive their childhood glory days and get in on the carving but, alas, they refused and each went off to play whatever video games they wanted. :o( Woe was me.

I didn't have time to do something fancy and cool like I'd done in the past, so I settled with traditionally carved faces. Behold! John had been using the power drill to put out more solar-powered light stakes along the driveway, so I snagged the drill and "carved" the final large pumpkin. Behold!

There was one more real pumpkin that I got a chance to carve, but it looks like I didn't get a picture of it. So I guess I'll have to say that it was THE BEST PUMPKIN CARVING ever and you'll just have to imagine how AWESOME it was and that it made that pathetic face look even more pathetic.

While I was getting everything ready, I could hear the sugar-fueled laughter of kids a few streets over, and I got excited that we'd FINALLY have trick or treaters (I cannot really explain my desire for trick or treaters. I swear it's not evil witch-like from Hansel and Gretel. I just like the thought of kids getting hopped up on candy and terrorizing their parents).

After I was satisfied enough that we had adequately lighted the pathway so as to limit our liability, John and I enjoyed a nice Costco pizza and watched Let the Right One In as we waited for the trick or treaters.

And we waited.

The whole freaking night, we had FOUR trick or treaters. The first two were 12-13 years old and had a back pack for candy (WTH is it with teenagers and backpacks!?). The second two were a little more appropriately aged 7-8 year olds, and for their effort of trudging up the drive way, they got a nice handfull of Almond Joys and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Whoppers.

Lessons Learned:

• Draw your silhouettes on the side of the paper bag that does not have the seam
• Use white paper bags rather than Kraft paper bags, as they'll create more light
• Bees are attracted to flames just as much as moths, and make interesting encaustic-esque sculptures when they get too close to the flame.
• Power drills are awesome pumpkin carvers, but they might quite a bit of mess (Linda Blair would've been proud). I recommend using them outside *or* cleaning up IMMEDIATELY as pumpkin guts practically fuse to granite when they're dry.
• Glass vases are very easily painted with acrylic paints. I suppose that if I wanted to keep the paint on them, I could spray them with clear spray paint. As it is, I think I'll reuse them for other things, so I'll just scape off the paint.
• I need to start earlier!
• Finally, the most important lesson learn: just because you build it doesn't mean they'll come. :o(

When I'm Filthy Rich

A number of years ago, I attended a National Science Foundation's Research Experience for Undergraduates Internship hosted by the Human Technology Interaction Center at the University of Oklahoma (yes, that is a mouthful!). It was an awesome, awesome experience where I was privileged to participate in the execution of cognitive psychology experiments, as well as participate in research for NASA. It was awesome. I spent 8 great weeks in Norman, Oklahoma, in the sweltering humid heat and blazing sun of a Midwestern summer, with the tornado sirens marking random afternoons. It was awesome.

On my last day on the OU campus, I had some spare time to explore the Fred R. Jones Museum of Art. I was excited, because I knew the museum was hosting a travelling Impressionist art exhibit, and that particular Friday was the first opportunity I'd had to visit the museum, so I was looking forward to immersing myself in the work if Impressionist masters. Unfortunately, I was retarded and mis-read the posters for the exhibition, and didn't realize until I had gotten there that the exhibit had not yet opened--I was a week early, and the next day I was to be on a plane back to Idaho. Great. Defeated, I walked around the museum, and enjoyed (begrudgingly at first, since it wasn't what I had gone for) (happily, later) the collection of Eastern Orthodox Icons and an exhibition of artist Tony Scherman's Chasing Napoleon series.

The museum itself is two stories with a basement. At the front of the museum is a bank of gigantic windows that open to all three floors and provides natural light for all three levels. There's a landing at the bottom of the first flight of stairs to the basement, with the final flight perpendicular to the first. I was headed from the Icon Collection down to the Scherman exhibit in the basement. I was walking down the stairs, watching my step so as not to stumble down them and crack my bean at the bottom. I heard a very loud car drive by outside. I was looking up the peer out the giant windows, when I was literally stopped dead in my tracks as my eye caught the massive artwork that engulfed the wall of the landing. It was mesmerizing, and I think it's the closest I've ever come to a Stendhal moment. The harsh Oklahoma sunlight, filtered through the UV coating of the plate glass windows, bathed the painting in a warm, ethereal light. I honestly cannot describe the feeling of seeing that beautiful work for the first time. Even now, eight years later, as I write about it, I'm at a loss for words. It was absolutely stunning. STUNNING. I spent several minutes absorbing the work from a distance, committing the work to memory (alas, no camera). I had never seen such a beautiful photograph and marveled at the massive size of the work (nearly 6.5' square). As I got closer, the focus of the image blurred. I read the placard for the piece and was astounded to discover that it was, in fact, a painting and not an enlarged photograph. I jotted down the artist's name and the painting title (Gerard Richter, Seestück) and resolved that as soon as I got back to my room, I'd search the web for more work by the artist.

I did just that, and was thoroughly annoyed to discover that the artist had painted an entire series of Seestück paintings. Now, these were the early dark days of Google Images, before it got huge. I simply could not find the exact painting I had seen. Since that fateful August day, I have--every six months or so--conducted a Google Images search of "Gerard Richter Seestuck."

In late June, at long last, I believe I finally figured out exactly which Gerard Richter Seestück I had seen. The painting is currently part of the collection at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. I immediately bugged my friend that lives in Dallas about it, asking him if he ever got down to Fort Worth, and if he ever did, to do me the huge favour of stopping off at the MAM and snagging a photo of the painting. As insane luck would have it, he was taking a SQL bootcamp-type course in Fort Worth and would be within walking distance of the MAM. Holy crap! He's a great friend (truly) and agreed to take some time during his lunch break to go to the museum and take a picture of the painting for me. He's awesome, and he did just that, as well as snag me a 7.5" x 7.5" post card print of it (Phat, you're awesome). Behold, the splendor:
Every time someone asks me what I'd do if I were insanely rich (like, won the $200m+ lotto or something), after I list off the family-focused things like buying houses, paying off debt, etc and then philanthropic enterprises of establishing scholarships and micro-financing etc etc etc etc, I say that I will hunt down and buy the Richter painting. And the painting will have an entire sun-bathed wall all to itself, where I can enjoy it all by myself.