Such a Lovely Word ~ Spring! Oh, and . . . Cleaning

This was such a lovely weekend in Seattle. Warm. Sunny.

S*P*R*I*N*G

'Course the thing about spring is the increased light and ~ what the hell! Cobwebs everywhere. Dust. Uck. I guess that's why it's call Spring Cleaning.

On Saturday morning, I decided to tackle the cupboard about my stove. Now, the thing about my kitchen is it's small. I like it very much, but, I don't kid myself. It's minuscule.

When I "remodeled" my kitchen several years ago, I clad the rift cut oak with bead board, replaced the doors of the cupboard above my stove with an old window with true divided lights. Luckily, it was exactly the size of the original doors. Popped right in.

Then, I painted the whole shootin' match the perfect "white." I had this romantic idea of having an interesting display cabinet in my kitchen. After I'd loaded up the cupboard, I realized it was missing visual interest. The cupboard holds my every day dinner dishes. While I'm very fond of celadon, there wasn't enough going on. Dullsville. What it needed? Flavour, please!

Which brings me to the beautiful solution. One of the things one buys when traveling in Italy is a calendar from the little kiosk in Piazza del Duomo. Of course, what do you do with that calendar when the year is up? The images are way too pretty to end up in the recycle bin. Mine ended up in my plan file.

While rummaging around for inspiration, I found my old calendar with botanical images of fruits. Perfect. I lined the entire interior of the cabinet with brown shopping bags turned inside out. Pawing through all my craft supplies in my studio shop which I laughingly call "The Well of Despair," I assembled all my half empty jars of matte medium, my brayer, sharp scissors and got to work.


I deckled the edges of the calendar pages and cut individual fruits to overlay the pages. When I was finished, it did everything I wanted it to do. It was visually interesting, beautiful, and utterly romantic. Best of all, my celadon plates coupled with oxblood porcelain made a show-stopping picture.


I covered the spice shelf with entry tickets and pensione bills from the places we visited and stayed during our trip. Now, when I pull out the sage or the marjoram, I'm reminded of that wonderful life-changing trip my sons and I had.

  

 

Friendly, beautiful, romantic and exactly what I had in mind.

Oh dear! My new home is completely Dead White wallboard!

A while ago, a client of mine moved up to Redmond to be near her children. She brought with her a life-time of wonderful antiques. To her horror, the new downsized home was all the "builder's special-Dead White" painted wallboard. Quelle horreur!

 And, the fireplace? Scary bad.

Rather than repaint the whole place, we decided to concentrate on the fireplace. She wanted a more Old World feel rather than the "Just Out of college" fireplace supplied by the builder. For tile that I turned to Architerra NW for a beautiful solution. Using a combination of their field tile and wonderful trim pieces, we turned to fireplace from "factory ordinary" into a beautiful focal point for her living room.

Often, when we see a lovely old tile job, what we are really responding to is the exquisite trim pieces ~ the crown molding, the ogee edges, the base, the v-cap, the corner moulding. In handmade tile designed by the tile genius at Architerra NW, you get the depth of detail not found in the big box stores and the type of detail that sets the finished project miles above the ordinary.

 

After the tile was installed over the existing fireplace, the change was dramatic. It was a fireplace that suited her French antiques. It made her new place feel like "home."