Interior design trends

The hole in the ceiling over the dining room table finally got to me this week. Its been there ever since we removed the glorious 70's chandelier that came with the house, when we first painted the ceiling.. ~July? Purchasing a new one was a real challenge because picking out anything is a challenge for me, and it only gets worse if I involve August.

The trouble is that there are 10,000,000 choices available to me via the Internet. In all shapes, sizes and colors. Early on I noted that oil-rubbed bronze (read: brown) was the most prevalent and the most popular. So I got to wondering what the deal was.. And finally it occurred to me: you need oil-rubbed bronze fixtures to complete your Tuscan/French Country/Old World style, and that's what's all the rage these days. I won't lie: I like the look myself. However, it is not the style we are going for in our house. I think it would be a little at-odds with the original 70's split-level intent of the place.

Anyway in my meager understanding of interior design and popular fashion, I began to wonder something about this trend. In 20 years, will we be laughing at those ugly brown fixtures and hardware? The big chunky "hand-carved" vent hoods? The use of different materials for cabinets and countertops? I suspect so... "Ah ha ha that's so 2000's..."

Case in point: the picture to the left. I believe those oak-trimmed melamine cabinets were called "euro-style" in the 80s. And the lighting, well there are no words for that. See I can talk bad about the 80s for several reasons. One, I was born in the 80s. And two, I actually do own pickled furniture as well as pastel-colored poufy window valences.

So, what light fixture did I chose? Well, not oil-rubbed bronze. It matches nothing in our house. Not pewter/nickel/brushed chrome. Just not feelin' it either. The final selection is black. Classic right? Maybe it won't be laughed at in 10 short years... maybe it will...

Abby's Opinion of the Kitchen Renovation

She's thinking: "When is all this nonsense going to be over?!? What happened to hiking, swimming, playing fetch..."

No time to blog

Sorry for the prolonged absence - we've been so busy trying to work out staining issues. First of all, the originally chosen stain system turned out to be a dismal failure. Being a poly-stain it was already finicky, but combined with the low humidity we had a total disaster on our hands... Spent the better part of last weekend selecting a new stain. Here is the result of much testing:

+ + = GOOD! (good enough...)

That means the stain alone is 3 coats, plus another 3 coats of water based polyurethane, several rounds of light sanding.. Its a time intensive-process. At least these water based products dry on a scale of minutes rather than hours.

Here's some pics. PS We have a lot of cleaning to do before company arrives in a week!

FYI for travelers arriving at DIA

This is a special side-note regarding the Denver International Airport. If any of you come to visit us (or have in the past!), you will want to know this history of our blue devil horse... One thing the journalist left out: the horse has glowing red eyes, but you can only see that at night.

Denver Airport's Blue Mustang Draws Wild Reaction

Sunday, February 08, 2009

AP

DENVER — Rearing 32 feet high, the metallic blue mustang sculpture demands the attention of every traveler through Denver International Airport.

But the wild look of "Mustang" is prompting some to wonder if the sculpture installed just a year ago should be moved somewhere less prominent. Alternate monikers suggested for the horse with the glowering eyes include "Bluecifer," "Satan's Steed" and "Blue Devil Horse."

"What exactly was the deal with that horse?" said Rachel Hultin, a Denver real estate agent who's behind a Facebook site that derides the sculpture.

About 28 million travelers last year passed by the rearing blue horse, located south of the main terminal.

"It's not the image you want in your head as you're about to board a plane," said Christie Carlson of the Denver suburb of Thornton. "My daughter asked me 'Is that the devil's horse?'"

Stan Ryland, a business development manager from Huntington Beach, California, isn't bothered by the horse's look.

"That's what horses in the wild look like," he said as he waited to board a plane Saturday. "They survived the wilderness and the mean ones led the pack."

The city of Denver commissioned the fiberglass sculpture from New Mexico artist Luis Jimenez in 1993, two years before the airport opened. His 1969 sculpture "Man on Fire" and 1990's "Vaquero" have been displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

In 2006, Jimenez was killed when a section of the unfinished horse fell from a hoist at his Hondo, New Mexico, studio. Jimenez's sons, Adan and Orion, completed the sculpture, which was installed Feb. 11, 2008.

"We worked very closely with the artist's family," said Erin Trapp, director of the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs. "I don't think that anybody ever considered not finishing."

Jimenez's widow, Susan Jimenez, said the original proposal was for a sculpture of a buffalo stampede. That was rejected because buffalo were hunted to near extinction in the West.

Jimenez then proposed the mustang — wild horses that symbolize the West and provided long distance travel, like airplanes today.

Trapp said any petition to move the sculpture would not be considered until 2013, a city policy designed to give people a chance to get used to new public art. "People's relationships with art change over time. It's something you have to live with before you really appreciate it," Trapp said.

Hultin hopes Denver will move the sculpture to another part of town where anyone can learn more about it.

"It's not a piece of art that people are going to shrug off," Hultin said. "It's sparked a pretty passionate conversation."

That's exactly what Jimenez wanted, his widow said.

"That's what art is supposed to be. It's supposed to be memorable and it has to evoke a feeling," Susan Jimenez said. "The worst thing for him would have been to be ignored.

Semi-productivity

This weekend was a little frustrating for both of us because we had a lot of free time and big plans, but we didn't get a lot of results. We are struggling with decisions related to the router, router table, router bits, etc. This is something required for making doors, and honestly we have no real need to worry about the doors until all the carcasses are complete... EXCEPT that we decided to put FAKE doors on the back side of the peninsula and that's all that's keeping us from staining and installing the face-frames that were shown on the last post. Here is a play-by-play recap of the router table saga:

Last Week

• Purchase cheap router table and cheap router bit from Sears
• Decide that they are both very poorly designed
• Pick out a nicer model from Tool King
• Return purchases to Sears

Saturday

• Drive to Tool King ~ nearly an hour away
• Get convinced by older "wiser" sales person that the router table route is too expensive and opt to try to make all the joints using a dado set (already own that)
• Get home and realize that we actually need to know what type of hinges we're going to use in order to properly size the fake doors (which will not have hinges...)
• Sift through the 93pg Blum hinge selection guide - its very thorough. Pick out these puppies:

• Cut out pieces for 2 fake door frames.
• Make some test cuts on scrap wood.
• Realize that there's no possible way we'll get the accuracy we want using the table saw. (Thanks wise old salesman....)
• Decide we will still need a router table

Sunday

• Drive to Loveland after church to buy the router table we originally intended to buy from Tool King.
• Get there and realize its not much better than the $80 Sear model purchased on Wednesday.
• Leave the store confused and put out by the whole situation.

That's this weekend in a nutshell... agh! Sometimes these things just don't go as smoothly as you would like them. Actually we did get a few other things done: We did try using the router without the table - this will enable us to limp by on these first two fake doors. Also we did get a nicer router bit from the second store. So stay tuned for more information about WHICH router table we'll end up with!

Couple of Pics

More progress - only one face-frame remains

We take pocket-hole joinery to the extreme!!

Quick Update

Just wanted to make a quick update to the world. First of all, the winner of the stain contest turned out to be "Maple". I realize that, technically, "Pecan" won the poll by 2 votes, but I'm pretty certain you all would have voted for Maple had you had access to the real-life samples they have at Lowe's. The Maple looks great with both the floor and the mantel. Also, August did the staining this time and it looks much better than my work. I suppose I will remain in my roll as "assistant", all the way to the end.

The cabinets are coming along as well. We lack two face-frames from being done with the construction part of all the floor cabinets. We'll probably crank those out today and tomorrow. After that, we have to route a groove into some of the frames, which will require us to first setup and learn to use the router. And then the sanding/staining, and then assemble.

And that means we are roughly approaching the half-way point. That's no so bad, eh?