Hall update

Huzzah! The floor, it be finished! I applied the final coat of Polycrylic yesterday afternoon.

It looks nothing like marble, but at this point I couldn't care less. 
I don't even care that this picture is crooked.

Now all that's left is to buy baseboard material and get that installed, and then buy something out of which I will create thresholds at each doorway.

I looked at marble thresholds today but they are too think and would be a tripping hazard. I'm thinking something very, very thin. I might go with pieces of laminate flooring in which case I'd have to cut off the tongue/groove nonsense and then paper and poly them to match the floor. Maybe I can find similar material that doesn't have the tongue and groove nonsense. 

In any case, as I said: Huzzah!

Women's March Sacramento

It's only 4:30 pm here and the news is still developing worldwide, but I am completely jazzed that I (we) participated in this peaceful global demonstration! There were 19,000 people expected but I'm sure that swelled to a gazillion!

Lydia and I, just prior to commencement of the march



There were a lot of children participating in the march. Some had made their own signs ...



and some were still drawing them while in the stroller...




Beautiful view of the cupola as we approached the capitol building. 

Very clever to bring sound! Everyone sang along.

 
My sign

#WomensMarch, #WomensMarchSacramento, #PussyhatProject

@PussyhatProject




#WomensMarch, #WomensMarchSacramento

Reality takes a holiday

Much to my chagrin, and the chagrin of most everyone I know, the Tweeting Cheeto will be inaugurated at the end of this week.

On Friday I plan to attend a group meditation downtown. The focus will be encourage wisdom, compassion, and loving kindness for ourselves, our neighbors, our government leaders and the world.

After the meditation I will join a group of like-minded protesters for the Not My President protest. I am trying hard to achieve "Yes, in fact he will be my president and I need to want him to succeed because if he fails we all fail," but I'm not there yet.

On Saturday I will be participating in the Women's March, Sacramento style. 

While I agree that protests won't prevent the Orange Ball of Anger and Lies from being sworn in*, I just felt like I couldn't sit still for this bullshit. If you feel the same, I encourage you to hit the internet and find your local events. Get out and participate!

*Think he'll have his fingers crossed?

And on that note...

I will miss the Obamas so, so, ever-so-much. Thanks, Obama.

#NotMyPresident, #WomensMarch, #ThanksObama

Zen Retreat

I was so grateful to be invited to join in on a zen retreat at Muir Beach this past Saturday. It's been a long time since I was at the coast and it's my favorite place to be: anywhere on the Pacific coast.

The weather was perfect and the group of people I met were great. There was meditation, food, sharing and brainstorming about coping methods, and a seemingly interminable lecture/lesson regarding the salmon and the watershed that is their spawning ground here. A long, emotionally exhausting day, to be sure, but I am so glad I went along!


Hall update

OK, let's see…

This phase of the project started several weeks ago, before everything got real dirty. I used concrete patch stuff to...wait for it...patch the concrete. Only where the carpet tack strips left holes; no need to patch cracks or anything before papering.

As you can see, this was before we mudded over the old paint and texture.

This past week I started the second phase: faux flooring. The first day I papered as much of the hallway as I could before my body gave me the finger. I had completed about two thirds of the hall at that point, and this was done with stain in the glue goo.

 Let the papering begin!

I thought I was very clever to paper the length of the hallway first down one side and then down the other. With at least one side dry at any given time, we would retain access the bedrooms and bathrooms. When I went back the next day to paper the bare side, however, I discovered that the dry paper on the first side absorbed too much stain on my second pass. This created a dark "trail" down the center of the hallway.

 Unacceptable.

At that point I decided my best course of action would be to cover that all up with a fresh layer of paper using glue goo with no stain. Just glue and water.

It took two layers to cover the darkness.

This worked great, but now I would need to repaper the entire frigging hall. Best to start with the whole catastrophe matching, I figured. So I did. The whole hall. With two layers. That took another couple of days. (Remember - I'm feeble.)

Then I mulled things over for a few days.

My brain was focused on achieving a marble-like finish, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to accomplish that. I watched a YouTube video on creating a faux marble finish on furniture and figured the floor inside the hall pantry would be a great place to test this out.

I gave it one layer of glue goo with the stain mixed in, then took a fine art brush and added full-strength stain at some of the paper seams. Once that was dry, I added another layer of glue goo + stain over the top of that. It turned out looking like crap.

An artist, I am not.

The pantry floor will be getting a mulligan at some point.

So aaaaanyway, after carefully vacuuming and then getting on my hands and knees with a damp washcloth to scrub off all the cat and dog footprints (storm, remember?), I started painting on the goo (with stain).

Here's the hall with one coat. 
It's looking pretty good, imo, but needs to dry completely 
each time before I decide if I want it darker.

2 coats

3 coats

4th coat of stain with lots more stain in the goo!

I'm probably going to apply just one more coat before transitioning to the poly finish, but I wanted to get this published. It's been sitting in my drafts for the past couple of weeks as I do the work and add the photos.

More to come...

Follow-up on door trim

I previously showed how I cracked the bejesus out of the trim around the kitchen door, and I promised to post another photo to demonstrate my killer wood putty skillz once it was all repaired and painted.

*deep curtsy

Lydia's brain

She liked Koby's so much she wanted one for herself!

In the rug