The Agony and the Ecstasy

Renovation is tricky business.  While I am deflated about the current state of the bathroom, I feel enormously successful in the main space this week. On Friday, the crackerjack team from The Shade Company arrived exactly on time to install the new motorized shades. Here they are removing the green fabric balloon shades (sayonara!):

And my friend, Steven Hammel, a ridiculously talented artist came over to review the "perfected brick" situation and return on the weekend to work his magic. Perhaps you think my obsession with the brick is a bit nutty but I can only explain it with a quote from Margaret Kilgallen.

 Margaret Kilgallen, a fantastic illustrator who left us too soon, said this:

I like things that are handmade and I like to see people's hand in the world, anywhere in the world; it doesn't matter to me where it is. And in my own work, I do everything by hand. I don't project or use anything mechanical, because even though I do spend a lot of time trying to perfect my line work and my hand, my hand will always be imperfect because it's human. And I think it's the part that's off that's interesting, that even if I'm doing really big letters and I spend a lot of time going over the line and over the line and trying to make it straight, I'll never be able to make it straight. From a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that's where the beauty is.

I, too, am comforted by the "part that's off." So I had Steven bring back what the original brick would have looked like had it not been repainted and re-grouted. 

Here's how that went. First, he chose a color palette and I thought it was beautiful:

Then he put a dirty wash over all the brick, mainly to deal with coloring the grout (I, of course, thought even that looked better than what was there):

Then he went to work on the brick:

And by Sunday at 2pm he was finished with the two walls.

When we took down the TV and shelves so Steven could work on the brick, I was immediately happier. I detest having the TV as a focal point of the room and now that the brick looked so beautiful, I realized that the space above the fireplace mantle should have a beautiful piece of art and not a dumb TV. That being said, I gave the TV to a good friend who needed one and bought a smaller set to go on a pivot mount in the nook between the fireplace and west facing windows, right in front of the bed:

Here's what I had (and it was mounted too high up anyway):

And here's the mantle now:

This is also the time of the renovation that everyone just wants to be out. The paper was starting to get torn up from wear and the floor was starting to get filthy.

So while Steven worked and we chatted, I tightened that sh*t up. You don't want to refinish floors only to have them trashed by a construction crew.

I also had a chance to replace the cabinet knobs. Another sigh of relief:

You can see the new kitchen light, backsplash and faucet. And here's the new hallway light:

Steven also changed the color of the lintels so that it looks like a big piece of concrete was shoved up above the window. That color also perfectly matches the shades. Here it is in progress:

Here it is with the west wall completed:

And finally, cue the James Bond music, here are the shades in action. Excuse the shaky camera work; I could not contain my excitement :)

Onward.