Passion!

Lovely, isn't it?

Ok, so you're saying, "Two white doors. What's the big deal?"

This. This is the big deal.

Our second bedroom, which we use as our office (plus guitar storage, cat accommodations, and occasional guest room), was apparently previously a teenager's bedroom. Or possibly a schizophrenic's. I picture a goth princess. When we first moved in, the walls were this awful dull coral color, but around the edge of the ceiling there was a strip of old paint where the last owners had failed to grasp how painters' tape works. So, before yucky dull coral, the walls had been bright vibrant red... and the ceiling had been black. On the back of these two doors (hall on the left, closet on the right), you could see distinct hints of this angsty expression beneath a hastily applied thin coat of white. You could clearly read the word "PASSION" in raised pink letters.

After ignoring it for way too long, I finally got to work with the sander. A couple of hours and two very numb hands later, a blanket of dust covered me and everything in the room, and the full glory of the artistry was revealed.

I was fifteen once, and I kind of get it; besides, I painted a few whole-room murals that I know were a much bigger pain to undo than this pair of doors. So I have a hard time being upset with the artist. Although really: shoe prints? This person dipped her shoes - Vans, specifically - in paint and then planted them on the doors. Multiple times. In different colors. (The vine is kind of nice, though.)

The shoddy job in covering it up - that part annoys me. I would much rather they'd just left it as is, and I would have a lot less white dust everywhere.

It took 4 coats of primer and two coats of paint, but the "passion" has been erased, now preserved only in photos.

Bookcase

Admittedly it's been a while since we updated the house blog. Don't think, though, that nothing has been accomplished since May. Actually we've been going full speed, especially the last couple of months. We are, in fact, rapidly approaching the end of our stay in our little cottage by the sea. That means right now we're working ourselves ragged trying to get everything finished enough to put the house up for sale. Of course, it will never feel truly finished, even if we get everything on the list complete. Even if we were going to be here for years. That's just the way it goes, I guess.

Anyway, I thought I might write a couple of posts to show some of the projects we've knocked out in the last couple of months. For starters: the built-in hallway bookcase.

When we moved in, the hallway ended in a door that opened to the kitchen. On the kitchen side, it was blocked by a crappy particle board shelving unit (since you can just walk around, with a scant few extra steps, from the kitchen through the living room to the hallway). When we remodeled the kitchen, they removed the door, put up a new bit of wall, and hung cabinets on the kitchen side. A tremendous improvement in the kitchen; not so much in the hallway, which now ended in wasted space.

But - no more!

Brendon gets all of the credit for the masterful carpentry. We found some nifty shelving strips (ok, I have no idea what to call them) at Home Depot that allow the shelves to be adjustable heights. Both of us worked on staining it. I will never again buy the gel-type stain with the protective coating mixed right in. The stuff is AWFUL to work with, and it isn't the prettiest staining job I've ever been a part of. It's a somewhat dark hallway, though, and we've declared it "good enough." The color is pretty close to the kitchen cabinet color, so it kind of ties the house together. And now our fiction/scifi books, Brendon's Navy and car books, all my library science books, and a whole bunch of lovely IKEA magazine boxes have a space-efficient place to call home, next door to the linen closet.