KARABOUTS

Painted Chandelier

This is our new chandelier for the office.

I love the way it looks now, but when it started it looked like this:

This old brass chandelier was originally hanging in the bedroom. When we put up new lighting in the bedroom we took this down. Mike figured we'd put it in the trash. Mike was WRONG. He didn't know that I had a plan for this baby involving Dawn dishwashing liquid, apple cider vinegar and four cans of spray paint.  

First I took off all of the parts that were easily take-off-able and scrubbed everything down with dishwashing detergent. Then I soaked the loose pieces in a strong apple cider vinegar solution, and applied straight apple cider vinegar to the rest of the chandelier with a cloth. I let it sit for a day or two and then rinsed off the vinegar and gave it one more good cleaning with Dawn.

Next I took it out to the backyard and hit it with several coats of white primer spray paint.  I used Krylon because it was the only brand they had at the nearest hardware store.  It worked great.

I let the primer dry overnight and then put on the color - a nice bright yellow.

I sprayed the bits and pieces separately.  It took a number of coats of paint to achieve a smooth even color. 

I threaded the tubular candle sticks on a long strip of cardboard to keep them still while I painted.

After another day or two of drying time, I put the whole thing back together.

Because I wasn't sure I had done the wiring correctly, I spliced the main cord to an old extension cord and plugged it into a wall outlet to make sure it worked.  It worked!

Mike did the installation while the Karabouts dolls looked on.

And here's the final effect.

 

Our Big New DIY Project

Mike and I recently purchased our first home.  It's a two-bedroom garden apartment in a 100+ year-old building.  

On the broker's website the apartment looked like this:

But once we got in and started work we found many things like this:

And this:

One of the first things we did was paint.  We used Benjamin Moore Aura paint on our last apartment and I hated it.  It was hard to apply, I had problems with sagging, and it wasn't any easier to clean than other paints I've used in the past.  

This time we went with Home Depot Behr Premium Plus.  For the hallway, dining area and living room we chose Silky Bamboo. 

After we painted the walls we put down new molding that I'd painted bright white.  We also painted the odd, previously-black, strip of half-round molding near the ceiling bright white.  

It was a lot of work but it was worth it. The Silky Bamboo has just the right amount of contrast with the white molding.  The place looks bright, fresh and clean.  I haven't been this happy with a paint color in years.

Another thing we did before moving in was tear out the existing closets and build in new closets.  The old closets stopped two thirds of the way up and had cheesy sliding doors.  

Here's the old bedroom closet:

 

And here's the beautiful new floor-to-ceiling bedroom closet built by Mike and his friend Buddy.  This closet has 8-foot bi-fold doors and is big enough to hold all of our hanging clothes, our dresser, blankets, towels, boxes, you name it.

Here's the office closet before:

and after:

Mike and Buddy made the office closet a little narrower to give us more floor space.  What we lost in width we more than gained in height as this closet also now goes to the ceiling.  

In these photos you can see the bedroom and office paint colors (bedroom - Whitened Sage, office - Summer Moon) and the new doors Mike and Buddy hung to replace the cheesy (there's that word again) hollow core doors.

After finishing the painting, the molding and the closets the place was looking pretty good but it was still missing one important thing.

The fish tank!!!

Now that the fish tank is here it feels like home.

Thinking About Origami Today

Today is the anniversary of both the birth and the death of Akira Yoshizawa.  

Yoshizawa is credited with raising origami from a craft to an art form.  He created more than 50,000 models and wrote 18 books.  He also pioneered many techniques like wet folding. Last summer I learned more about Yoshizawa when I did some wet folding at the Origami USA annual conference held in NYC.  

This is the wet-folded luna moth I made in one of my classes. 

We followed a pattern by Michael LaFosse and we got to use LaFosse's handmade Origamido paper - what a treat!

During the conference I also made a cactus and a mouse.

The "Cactus in a Pot" by David Petty was a very clever design folded out of one sheet of silver paper. We laminated green tissue paper to the "cactus" area before folding.

The mouse is by Masashi Tanaka.  If you want to make a mouse of your own, the directions are here.

I thought my origami skills were looking great until I went to the exhibition space where some real masters had works on display.  

I was wowed by these amazing insects and spiders by the great Robert J. Lang.

I was impressed with this beautiful grasshopper by Brian Chan (see Brian folding the grasshopper here).

 

And I fell in love with the work of Beth Johnson.  Beth's models have a sculptural element that is so appealing. It was like nothing else at the exhibition.  You can see more of Beth's work here.

 

Thank you Akira Yoshizawa for your amazing contribution to this wonderful art form we call origami.