I’ve felt really good these last two days, with yesterday being almost pain-free the whole day. After about ten days in bed (or on the floor) experiencing the most pain I’ve ever had in my life with sciatica, I was so elated to get up yesterday with no pain, go to lunch with my family and sit for four hours with no pain, come home and host my Wednesday evening group with no pain, then putter around in the studio for a while with no pain before going to bed with no pain. And this morning is another great start to what I hope will be another great pain-free day.
Today will be my first full work day in exactly two weeks, so while I’m not quite ready to do anything really strenuous, or climb on tall ladders, or anything like that, I am looking forward to getting things done in the studio.
So this morning, I headed in there just to assess the situation, and plan my strategy for moving forward and getting this room finished. And let’s just say that while I’m so glad I have one wall completely finished…
It really hit me just how big this room is (plus the storage closet, plus the half bathroom, plus the back entryway), and just how much there is left to do. It can be a bit overwhelming. This room isn’t anywhere even close to being finished yet.
I have two doors that need to be trimmed out. First, there’s the side exterior door, which is currently covered up with an extra French door (which will eventually go between our master bathroom and our future master bedroom, and I have nowhere to store it in the interim), ladders, etc….
I still have yet to build steps leading to that door, so for now, I just have concrete cinder blocks as steps.
And the other door that needs to be trimmed is the one between the studio and the breakfast room.
Both of those doors will be painted black, and trimmed out just like I trim out all of the other doors and windows in the house.
This office area of the studio is the area that I had hoped to work on next, but in order to work on these, I need access to the carport so that I can sand and paint. But right now, the guys are here working to finish the carport, so I don’t want to get in their way. I’ll have to figure out something else to work on while they finish up their work.
What I need to do is work on organizing. I have so much stuff that can go into the cabinets on the mural wall. My sciatica brought me to a screeching halt almost as soon as I had that wall finished, so I was never able to get around to organizing things in the cabinets and drawers. Now is probably a good time to start on that so that I can clear out lots of this stuff and make room for the rest of the projects I need to do.
I still have so much painting that needs to be done! I only painted the parts of the ceiling and walls that needed to be painted in order to install the cabinets. So the ceiling and walls in the entire rest of the room still need fresh coats of paint.
And this room is big, so there’s quite a bit of wall and ceiling left to cover. I had to do it in sections like this because I have so much stuff that I have to work around. With this being the last room in the house to finish, there’s not another unused, still-to-be-finished room where I can move things (except for the sunroom, which is already at capacity). We use all of the other rooms, so it’s not like I could box everything up, move everything out, and paint the whole room at once. That would have been really nice if I could have done that, but it wasn’t an option. So my only option was to paint in sections.
The biggest disaster in the room is on my two work tables, which are piled high with stuff. So much of this is tools and supplies like caulk, but then there’s a fair share of art supplied mixed in there that need to stay in the room. A lot of it can go in the cabinets and drawers on the mural wall. It would sure be nice to have these tables back in usable condition, and painting them a new color would be a fun and easy project I could tackle very soon.
And then there’s this section of cabinets just inside the room from the breakfast room door. I was surprised at the feedback I got from y’all about these cabinets and my idea for the “paint swatch” look on the doors. I expected quite a bit more pushback on that, but most everyone who commented loved the idea! So I’m going to go for it. It’s just paint. 🙂 If I don’t like it, or it looks too busy, I’ll just sand it off, re-prime, and start over again. Y’all know I don’t hesitate to change things if I’m not pleased with the outcome. 😀
Next up is the back entry. I can’t wait to get this back entry painted! I’ve selected a color (although I can’t remember what it is right now). The new color will still be green, but it won’t be quite this in-your-face green.
The new color is the softer green that I pulled out of the mural and included in the wallpaper that I designed for the bathroom walls.
And I’ve decided that I am going to gold leaf the black parts of the ceiling light fixture. I’m pretty excited about that project, although I might be cursing myself for that decision by the time I get halfway finished. 😀
The storage closet is currently an absolute disaster. There are boxes in here that have been in here for probably five years, and I have no idea what’s in them. And I’ve rummaged through here several times in an attempt to find things, which just leaves things in even more of a disastrous state. So while I dread clearing out and organizing this space, I know it’s going to feel so good to finally get it done.
This is the closet that houses the HVAC for the studio, and as long as the closet is piled full of stuff like it is now, and there’s no room for air flow around the unit, I can’t turn it on. And it’s looked like this ever since I moved things around to start sanding and painting the floor. So I’ve been without air conditioning in the studio all summer, and if I don’t get things in order very soon, I’ll also be without heat in the studio.
And that leaves the bathroom. I got about halfway through adding the new dowel rod accent row, but that’s where I stopped. That will be the most tedious and time-consuming part of finishing the room. The rest, like installing the wallpaper, won’t be bad at all, especially since it’s such a small room.
But getting that yellow tile off the wall has proven to be quite a challenge. It hasn’t been fun, but I only have about half left to remove. (And it literally just dawned on me that it would come off easier if I used a hair dryer or heat gun since it’s stuck on there with the double sided sticky stuff for tile installation. Ugh! Why didn’t I think of that before?!)
So that’s the status of all of the other areas of the studio, and what I’m working with right now. It’s a mess, and it’s a bit overwhelming, but I just need to pick an area (probably my work tables for now), and just focus on it and get it done. But I’m just so thankful and relieved that I can actually get in there and do the work today! I’m hoping it’ll be a very productive day.
Unrelated side note: Several people asked me for pictures of the shades (both the unlined and lined) from the outside of the house yesterday. I was able to take pictures last night and this morning, and I’ll be adding those to yesterday’s post later today. So if you wanted to see what the shades look like from that view, be sure to check back on yesterday’s post (you can find that here) this afternoon.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.