Considering The Possibilities

Although it's clearly still a work in progress (and there hasn't been much work on the house lately due to a pesky thing called real life), I can't resist posting this picture of the living room. Something about the afternoon sun streaming in through the little plastic windowpanes reminds me of a real house being fixed up for a new tenant.

On the left, you can see the hole in the wall where my iPod "television" can be seen - I still need to make a painting to fill the frame (I do have an image chosen, it's just a matter of printing it onto canvas). My purple sofa will be in this room, but I'm still undecided on the rest of the furniture.

My Un-Fitted Kitchen

I have a confession to make: I am not a fan of fitted kitchens.

I've never lived anywhere that didn't have a fitted kitchen (the oldest building I've ever called home was built in 1950, by which time they were a standard feature), but I still don't care for them.

Overhead cabinets make me claustrophobic...I haven't had a dishwasher in years and would rather have more space, thank you...lower cabinets can be too deep (which means back pain when trying to locate and retrieve less-used pieces)...I can't imagine ever needing so much cabinet space anyway so it's a waste of room...somehow, the prep area is never big enough...and what do you do about a hopelessly inefficient work triangle?

Having traveled a bit (and having seen lots of Apartment Therapy house tours), I have serious kitchen envy. If you have an older kitchen without anything built in (beyond the sink, stove, and refrigerator)...can we trade houses? Please? Small size is not a deterrent.

This kitchen suits not just my visual style, but my cooking style as well.

When I get home with a week's worth of food, I tend to do all the prep work in advance, then store it in the fridge and have it ready to go when it's time to actually cook. Hence the sink on one end, prep table between the sink and stove, and the fridge on the other side (and the pantry across the room).

It's still a work in progress, but I like how it's coming along.

The Not-So-Big Apple

Once again, a much better miniaturist than I will ever be has made me feel like a slacker.

Take some time to peruse this Flickr set. It's the work of film/television model maker Randy Hage, who makes models of real New York storefronts to document the city's character (before it's all remodeled away). Even the garbage piled up outside a miniature donut shop is handmade and looks exactly like full-size garbage.

And do check out his other Flickr sets - how I wish I had seen the Martin Katz Jewelers model before I built the roof on my French townhouse.

Front door

I am not good at scratch-building anything too detailed. But, I think the porch overhang turned out fine. There's not much to it - just scraps of very thin wood glued together, trimmed with more scraps, accented with a cherub plaque, painted the same way I painted the roof, and supported by a pair of Sue Cook brackets (which I admit look a bit big - I'd planned to use three pairs of these brackets under the balcony, but wound up only using two pairs, so the extra brackets were moved to street level).

The door is Palladian-style, with a half-circular window at the top, but somehow it just didn't look quite right on the outside. Realistically, houses in cities that have actual rainfall tend to have some sort of overhead coverage just outside the door. So, the window is there, you just can't see it from the front.

I couldn't find a sidewalk effect I really liked, so I made my sidewalk by applying a mixture of plaster and wood glue to the base, scoring it with a big wooden sandwich skewer, sanding it down (after drying) to make it somewhat uniform in height (but not TOO uniform, since I do want it to look as old as the house), and then applying a mix of gray paints.