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Pix:La Mancha:Work
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Old Window
Everything above the basement had nice new windows, but the basement windows are quite old.
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New Window
Except for this one, which Jerry has now replaced!
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Dragon, long view
There he is, lurking around the corner. (The white always turns this odd orange color in mixed-range flash photos).
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Dragon, medium view
I think his manner is sort of ambivalently fierce - he's very sharp and pointed and growly, but his hands give his body language a bit more of a dancing feel.
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Dragon, close up
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Dragon, more from below
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Dragon from below
I really like the shadow in this one. It gives a better sense of "flying dragon" than many of the actual pictures.
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Dragon, all the way below
This is at the foot of the stairs looking up.
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Stairwell Garden
(in progress)
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More Stairwell Garden
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Current State
I put in all the irises, which I really like. Then I started adding the little flowers in, and I am unsure.
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Without Little Flowers
Was it better before? Do the little flowers make it look muddled?
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Extrapolating
Of course, they're not all in yet. Would finishing help?
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Similar Greens
If the different-colored leaves is distracting, what if they were the same color? (Pier's suggestion)
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More Little Flowers
Attempting to have multiple beds of flowers. (Mikka's suggestion) I'm not sure how well they actually stack.
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Another Tack
Or would more irises have been better.
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Grass Instead
Jerry suggested grass instead of little flowers. It does have the greens-the-same-color bonus.
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Finished Wisteria
Taking pictures of tall things at very short range always makes them look funny.
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Drop Shadows
Eon has some ideas about putting drop shadows under things; this is a test in progress.
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Finished Drop Shadows
I think they don't work right with this sort of stencil, the one-layer kind that has a lot of white separation lines; the drop shadow color ends up filling in some of those lines, but not all of them (depending on the line angle compared to the shadow offset angle). On something like the leaves or roses on the riser, which are multi-layer and don't have those separations, it might work better. In any event, I think it's not worth the extra work for the flowers.
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What A Mess
Stencils really surprise me. You work on them and they look terrible, like this, like a little kid with a coloring book who makes a vague approximation to the lines.
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But Then...
...when you take the stencil off, suddenly you've magically colored in the lines all along.
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Finished Stencils
The risers are done, at least. There's more to come.
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Leaves closeup
I'm very pleased with the leaves. The different shadings turned out pretty well, and it was a good simple design for Laura's First Stencil Project.
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Rose closeup
I like the rose pattern; the little twigs and leaves are very pretty. But I never really got the zen of coloring the petals so that the rose had a coherent color theme and the petal sections were all distinct. Ah well.
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Stencil, First Step
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Close up
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Sky Stairwell
I added some blue "sky" to the upper ceiling. My sponge-on-a-stick was kind of amusing.
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Sky and Ground
Here's some sky and the brown treads.
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Treads, Take One
The risers got painted white for later stenciling; the treads are brown (oddly sticky). This looks kind of clean and tidy this way, but there's more to come.
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More Paint
Some darker brown sponging to make the treads look more like, um, dirt, or brown stone, or something. It mostly just looks speckly.
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Artist's Conception
You have to use your imagination and pretend that these are all stencils, but this is the plan.
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Jerry Cutting Drywall
The back porch is the drywall cutting work space.
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More Cutting Drywall
This is the first time we've used the awning! How exciting!
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Stairwell Project
This is what the stairwell looked like before the project started. Ugly stained green paint, crumbling plaster.
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Stairwell
I forgot to take pictures before we started, but this is still mostly a "before" area.
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Adding a light
There's no light at the bottom, so one gets to be added.
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Top of Stairwell
This is very high. It's basically getting to the top of the third floor, above the entry on the second floor. Look! Drywall!
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More Drywall
The high stuff got put on first, with help from Mike, Eon, Andrea, and Meg. And a lot of playing around on ladders.
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Framing
The next step after the high drywall - evening out the corners.
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Framing
Another one of those metal brace things for the corner.
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All done!
This is still without the flock of chairs, and the futon/sofa, but you can definitely see it's finally a room.
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Painted
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Painted
Here's that "framed corner" again.
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Painted
Obviously, the stairway hasn't been finished yet. That can be a project for another month.
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Ceiling
Look! The ceiling isn't all scary. And the lights work.
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Drywalled
This is the framed corner, now drywalled.
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And again
So is this, but a different corner.
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Drywall
This is the "second framed section" now covered with drywall. Yay!
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More Drywall
This is, um, it's that bit in "No More Dangles" with drywall strips.
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Framing
For the addition of drywall
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In close up
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Second framed section
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Another section
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Drywall
Before being put up.
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No More Dangles
The dangling light switches (see the "Third Floor" pictures) have been put back into the walls...
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Light Switch
...and replaced with more regular-looking switches.
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Deteriorating Bricks
A support column in the basement; the bricks have gotten kinda rotten.
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Lally Column Replacement
This one was worse. Now it's a "lally column"
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Cement Skim
This is the "less worse" column, now covered with a skim coat of cement. Our pillars are very unmatching. However, it's not actually bulging or tippy, it's quite square and straight. It's just the picture that's bulging and tippy.
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Third floor Floor
With the last of the threshholds taken out, and wood to fill in the empty areas a bit smoother. We could carpet over this now without falling into pits.
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New Bathroom Floor
Yay! It's done!
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Bathroom
They've taken out the linoleum and the bad wood, and put in new plywood to replace it. (I suppose matching the oak hardwood under the linoleum would be entirely too silly).
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Third Floor
Look! All the walls are gone! And everything is coated with a thick coat of white dust. Perhaps they disintegrated things? The dust is, I think, what's causing all the little blobs of light in the picture.
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Third Floor
Compare this with the old picture...
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Third Floor Before
Okay, I admit, it's a bit tidier looking here.
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Sistered Joist
Which means nailing another board alongside the board that had cracked.
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Replaced Sill
This had, a long time ago, gotten water damage and been infested with powerpuff beetles. All right, no, powderpost beetles. I'm the only one who thinks that's funny.
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Entry Hall
The early picture still had the carpet in the entry hall; this is with it removed. Hopefully it'll be refinished soon.
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Entry Hall, Refinished
After the refinishing. Also after the moving, which is why there's all this stuff in the hall. I am pleased with how it turned out.
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Computer Room
"Small Room" in previous pictures, this is a new rug. It's slightly textured and slightly patterned, not that you can really see that here.
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Living Room
More experimentation with photostitch. "Stand on a chair, sit on the rug" would probably work okay for rooms with less perspective than this one, but for this and the bottom picture, the edges are only minimally overlapping, while the center is nearly all overlapped. So you can't just run a parallelogram transformation or a rotation, to make them join up, you'd have to turn one into a U and the other into a, um, an upside-down U, to mash them together.
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Living Room
The bottom half of the previous picture, which, as mentioned, doesn't join. And, I nearly forgot to talk about why this is in this section, which is that the drapes have been replaced since the previous example. The far drapes are an experiment in progress.
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