LAL#7: Inspired by Online Ruler Work Classes, Bathroom Tile Projects, and Chasing Butterflies

 Oh my gosh, you guys -- how is it Tuesday AGAIN?!  Last week, my big focus was on finishing up the quick and easy (NOT!) baby quilt top that I dreamed up in December of 2018.  It was for a baby who is now nearing two years old and who will become a big sister on or about October 1st.  I finished the curved piecing of these 9 1/2" giant clam shells last week and added a 2" outer border matching the background fabric, just enough so the clam shells float away from the binding when it's finished.  And then I went off chasing butterflies...

...Like, LITERALLY chasing butterflies, because I had this idea that I wanted butterflies to look like they were flying across the quilt top, as though the printed fabrics were flowers in a garden.  I considered machine embroidery and had a design all picked out to embroider, but I couldn't bring myself to do it for two reasons.  First, this is a baby/toddler quilt and form needs to follow function.  The 7" butterfly design I almost embroidered would have created large stiff areas in what I intended to be a smooshable, cuddly little kiddo quilt.  Second, I was concerned that machine embroidered butterflies might make the quilt appear more store-bought and commercial versus a handmade gift, and when I considered everything I know about this particular baby's parents, machine embroidery just didn't feel like a fit.  

And then I stumbled across this butterfly print online, took a chance and ordered a remnant of it on eBay, and then spent a ridiculous amount of time figuring out how to do a turned edge, broderie perse, blanket stitched appliqué.  I won't bore you all with the details.  I'm just glad the top is finally DONE, with nice, soft butterflies that are just as soft and supple as the rest of the quilt.  Edges are turned under for durability and to avoid the use of any kind of fusible web.  Backing fabric is trimmed away.  The butterflies were a much bigger hassle than anticipated, but the quilt looked like something was missing to me before.  Now it feels "done."

I love that big Monarch butterfly SO MUCH!!  The backing for this quilt is seamed and ready to go, but first I have that outreach top that I showed you last week, still waiting to be quilted.  Planning to load that one up and start quilting tomorrow, promise!

I also designed and ordered fabric for a second baby quilt last week, a quilt for the baby brother whose arrival is expected October 1st.  No curved piecing or appliqué in that one!  Oh, and I convinced my husband to rip up the kids' Jack & Jill bathroom and start laying new tile:

We figured that the pandemic is as good a time as any for a little renovating, since all of hubby's overnight work travel is on hold.  This bathroom was SO nasty before that I can't even bring myself to show you the before pictures!  White subway tile will go on all of the walls to just above the light switches, as well as on the side walls of the tub/shower.  Small black hexagon tile will go on the back wall of the shower, and the offending shower curtain that led to all of the mold etc. is getting replaced with a sliding glass door that will keep the water IN the shower, where it belongs!  I'm not actually in the bathroom with power tools (that would not be healthy for my marriage), but I am heavily involved in the selection of tile, shower doors, fixtures, etc.

Last Week's Quilting Goals:

• ❌ Quilt pantograph on Veteran's Quilt
• ✅ Finish borders & fix backing shortage for Modern Baby Clam Shells
• ✅  design for baby brother quilt & purchase fabrics

To Do This Week:

• Load & Quilt pantograph on Veteran's Quilt; drop off is next Saturday
• Piece another block for my Moda Modern Building Blocks sampler
• Load Butterfly Clam Shell quilt

Cheeky Cognoscenti is Now Rebecca Grace Quilting

Oh, I nearly forgot -- the other thing I've been working on is a name change for my blog and my social media accounts, from Cheeky Cognoscenti (that no one can pronounce or spell) to Rebecca Grace Quilting.  Because I'm Rebecca Grace, and I write about quilting...  It was time!  I still need to create a new banner image for the top of the blog with the new name.

Highlights From Last Week's Linky Party

But some of you came here today looking for some legit long arm learning, so let's get on with that!  We had lots of great posts linked up last week, everything from free motion skill building projects to Julie Stocker's fabulous custom quilt job combining computer assisted motifs with extensive ruler work that was all done by hand.  Totally swooning over that one but not reposting her images here since her client will be submitting the quilt for publication.  If you missed it last week, be sure to check that one out on Julie's Pink Doxies blog here.

Next, I wanted to sprinkle some quilty love on Karin of The Quilt Yarn and CAMapleLeaf on Instagram (don't know her/his name!).  That's Karin's raspberry and plum block that you see above, and CAMapleLeaf's block pictured below.  They are both working through the same online ruler work class with Natalia Bonner right now, the 9 Patchalong.  

If you're looking for an online machine quilting skill builder, the 9 Patchalong Quilt Along looks like a really fun option.  It just started at the beginning of September and it's completely free.  You know, top notch quilting teachers like Natalia Bonner all around the world have had their teaching schedule upended by this pandemic and they are all being forced to explore new ways of leveraging technology to teach from their homes and studios.  This could end up being a silver lining for the quilting industry, because once these teachers have invested in the necessary equipment and worked out the kinks of this teaching model, I don't expect virtual quilting workshops to completely disappear once the COVID-19 crisis has passed.  And that means MORE options for quilting teachers to make a living with less time on the road and away from their families, as well as more opportunities for us quilting students to take classes with top-notch instructors.  

I know that Bethanne Nemesh and Lisa Calle are also experimenting with some different models for paid online classes.  Are any of you readers signed up for either of those?  Have you discovered any other terrific online learning resources for machine quilters that I should know about?  Please tell me about it in the comments.

I'm linking up today's post with the following linky parties:

TUESDAY

·       To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

WEDNESDAY

·       Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

·       Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

FRIDAY

·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

·       Peacock Party at Wendy’s Quilts and More

·       Finished Or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

·       Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

·       TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: http://tgiffriday.blogspot.ca/p/hosting-tgiff.html

Long Arm Learning Linky Party #7

Now it's YOUR turn to link up and share your machine quilting projects from the past week!  Remember that all machine quilting counts, whether it's a domestic, sit-down mid arm, or a long arm on a frame.  If you, like me, were busy doing other things last week, feel free to link up an older post about machine quilting that you haven't linked here before.  Have a great week, and happy quilting!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Completed Backsplash Tile, Utility Sink Relocation, & Kids' Bath Accessories

The backsplash tile was grouted and completed this week.  Because of the beveled edges on our field tile, the installer had to go back and wipe out the excess grout between each tile.

...and this is what the finished backsplash looks like.  Bernie installed the Brizo pot filler that coordinates with the Treso kitchen faucet.  The new range hood delivery was delayed by winter storms, so that won't be here until next week.  However, the under cabinet lights showed up on my doorstep today, so Bernie will be installing those over the weekend.

However, I have to say, THIS is one of my favorite parts of this whole project.  The ugly plastic utility sink with cheapo faucet and a heavy "patina" of staining and splattering with paint, stain, spackle, etc., has now been reinstalled in the garage, where it should have been in the first place!  No longer does this sink besmirch my laundry room! 

I've been waiting to show you the final touches on the boys' bathrooms until after their rooms were picked up:

This is the view from Lars's bedroom through his vanity area into the shared bath.  I found those adorable Alex Moody Monster Feet bath mats from Target, of all places, as well as the poison dart frog shower curtain and the orange striped bath mat in the shared bath.  I ordered each boy a few sets of monogrammed towels from Company Kids, dark blue with orange lettering for Lars, and bright green with navy blue lettering for Anders.  (No, I didn't monogram them myself -- I just don't have time right now to monogram 8 sets of towels!)  Now the inner bath transitions nicely into both open vanities and bedrooms, and it really feels "shared" since the walls are Lars's favorite color, Hyper Bright Home Depot Orange (?!), and the shower curtain is decorated with Anders' kindred animal spirit, the frog.

Here you can see how the Monster Feet rugs bring some of the colors of Anders' vanity wallpaper through into Lars's room, and how the blue in Anders' wallpaper ties in with Lars's wall color.

...And here's the view from Anders' bedroom into his vanity area.  He has the same Monster Feet bath rugs as Lars.  Aren't they adorable?  I don't shop at Target often, but I was searching online for frog shower curtains and I just stumbled onto these things that suited my needs perfectly.

In the immortal words of Porky Pig, "Badeep-badeep-buh-That's All, Folks!"

Grab Your Sunglasses: Lars's & Anders' Bright, Happy, Blinding Wallpaper is Installed!

Since I last posted, I have successfully salvaged a disastrous wallpaper installation.  My installers were not to blame -- they are amazing and their installation was impeccable.  The disaster part was all me.

One of my two little tyrants clients sons, 8-year-old Anders, was unhappy with my wallpaper selection for his bathroom vanity walls from the very beginning and he voiced his objections in no uncertain terms before I even ordered the wallpaper.  He preferred this iconic Zebra wallpaper from Scalamandré instead:

Zebras wallpaper from Scalamandre

The red works, and I love this paper, too -- so much so that I have a Scalamandre umbrella with this Zebra pattern on it (great conversation starter).  Yet Anders has a serious tropical frog theme going on in his bedroom, incorporating the Froggy Quilt of Many Colors that I made for him when he turned three, as well as an oil painting above his bed that my mother painted for him.  He is as infatuated with frogs now as he ever was, and he insisted that all the frogs must stay.  I briefly entertained the idea of trying to incorporate some zebras, or even black-and-white graphics, into his bedroom to try to make the Zebras paper work, but I just couldn't see how it could possibly come together without making too many changes -- and spending too much additional money -- in Anders' bedroom.  Even then, zebras and rainforest frogs?  Zebras live in Africa.  The poison dart frogs and red-eyed tree frogs live all the way across the Atlantic Ocean in the rainforests of South America. 

Instead, I selected a contemporary, geometric handprinted paper from Printer's Guild Productions for Anders' vanity in bright primary colors that coordinated perfectly with what we'd already done in his bedroom, and I promised him that if he hated it six months after it was up, I'd take it down and put up the zebras.  I was banking on him forgetting all about the deal by then and no longer even noticing the wallpaper.  And I knew it was going to look great.

Ten-year-old Lars, on the other hand, had lobbied long and hard to have BRIGHT orange walls in his bedroom.  I compromised by selecting a bright orange wallcovering for his vanity area, as well as their tub/shower area, reasoning that it would function more like an accent color since we'd only glimpse a bit of it at a time from his bedroom.  The paper has a subtle texture to it that could either read like lizard skin or like the surface of a basketball, and although it seemed a bit overwhelming when it first went up, it gets broken up a lot in the tub/shower area by the fixtures, towels, and shower curtain (I'll probaby design a custom shower curtain with blues and greens when I get around to designing their window treatments).  I'm planning to hang some of Lars's own oil paintings in his bathroom vanity area, and that will lessen the severity of the orange as well.

So, after the first day of wallpapering, Lars came home from school and found this:

He danced around the house euphorically, loudly giddy with glee over getting the exact obnoxious shade of orange that he had wished for.

Anders came home from school that day and found something like this (the mirror wasn't back up that first day; I took this picture a day later):

Unfortunately, Anders forgot all about the try-it-for-six-months deal.  He said, "Where are my zebras?!"  Then he burst into tears, ran from the room, and sobbed into a pillow in the corner of the living room while I tried to console him.  At this point, a nagging little voice is whining away inside my head about how it's Anders' room, and why do I need to control everything, and who cares if the wallpaper "goes" with the bedroom anyway as long as he's happy!  Especially since the paper that I chose turned out to be extremely delicate and the installers need to come back tomorrow morning to put a protective top coat on it or else every time the cleaning service wipes splattered toothpaste off the wall, the bright colors will come off as well.

The next day, while the boys were at school and the installers were finishing up the tub/shower area, I had an epiphany.  I remembered that I had a few rolls of the rainforest frog wallpaper border leftover from Anders' bedroom in our old house, and by some miracle I was able to locate them in the Armoire Full of Everything in my master bedroom.  And there was enough to go around Anders' bedroom!  It was definitely an afterthought, but the colors help tie in the vanity paper even more, and it's FROGS, for crying out loud -- I knew Anders would love it.

On the second day of wallpaper installation, Anders came home and found this:

Jubilation!  He loves me again! 

Next time, I'll show you the carpentry work that Bernie has been up to in the kitchen.

Remodeling Update: Lars's & Anders' Bathroom Granite

So, Happy New Year, everyone!  Aside from a nasty cold that hit me Christmas Eve and is just starting to wane, I had a wonderfully relaxing Christmas and New Year's at home with my family.  My idea of relaxing might be different than yours, though.  My kind of rest & relaxation involves demolition and remodeling progress!

Tile Collection came to install granite countertops in our boys' bathroom vanities on December 29th.  I got a fantastic deal on these because the vanities were small enough to be cut out of remnants left from other customer's projects, and my granite fabricator charges the same clearance square foot price on all scrap pieces regardless of how expensive the stone was as a full slab.  It's a great way to upgrade secondary baths on a budget, but you have to be flexible about your stone selection.  Doing a stone fireplace surround would be another project where you could get an amazing deal using remnants.

Lars and Anders have one of those partially-shared en suite bathrooms commonly referred to as a Jack and Jill Bath.  They have a shared enclosed room housing the toilet and tub/shower, but they each have their own separate vanity that opens directly into each of their bedrooms.  Because the vanities are so visible as soon as you enter the bedrooms, and there isn't even a door to close, I deliberately selected Pottery Barn Kids bedroom furniture in Rustic Sun Valley Honey because it's so similar to their bathroom cabinetry, to lessen the jarring "Why is there a bathroom sink in this bedroom?" feeling that I was getting before.  I've never been a big fan of the "cultured marble" plastic countertops with integrated sinks and the chrome/brass faucets, but my primary objective in upgrading the countertops and fixtures was to dress up the vanities and ease the transition between the comfortably furnished bedrooms and the stark, utilitarian bath area.

Here's Lars's vanity on the morning of December 29th, with the granite installer disconnecting the plumbing before removing the old countertop and sink:

Those orange and blue squares on the wall were just paint colors I was auditioning.  They will get covered by wallpaper.

Here's what Lars's vanity looked like a few hours later, with his Poseidon granite countertop and new Kohler undermount sink:

...and here it is the next day, after Bernie installed the new Delta faucets and reconnected the plumbing.  We had replaced the towel bars, vanity lights and cabinet knobs awhile ago.  Doesn't that Poseidon granite look amazing?  This stone is in the top tier "Customer's Choice" pricing category, but because we used a remnant we got it for less than what we would have spent on the least expensive entry-level granite.

Here is Anders' vanity right before the new countertop was installed:

...and here it is after:

Anders' granite is called Golden Splendor, although when he heard that Lars's was called Poseidon, he insisted that his granite needed to be called Zeus.  Although it doesn't have quite the dramatic movement of the Poseidon, I chose the Golden Splendor of Zeus granite for Anders because he is getting a bold, primary colored geometric wallpaper in his vanity area and I wanted to make sure the stone wouldn't compete with that.  Lars's wallpaper is a bright orange textured paper, so it's okay for his granite to be more involved.

Here's Anders' vanity with the faucet installed:

Can you see those silvery mica flecks in the granite?  It's really pretty in person, just subtler than Lars's.

Bernie's office is in a secondary bedroom and it has a private en suite bath with a tiny little vanity.  I've arranged with my granite company to save one of the larger pieces of my Baltic Brown kitchen countertop and recut it for this little vanity.  Although it looked like Baltic Barf in my kitchen, this stone actually complements the more contemporary, masculine feel of Bernie's office nicely, and it looks great with the brown knobs I put on his cabinet, the paint color, and even the existing tilework in the adjacent shower.  I'll just give you a little before shot of that one.

I feel a little less wasteful knowing that at least some of the original granite will be reused.  Plus, it will be fun to be able to say "...And this is what the original kitchen countertops looked like when we first moved in."

 Meanwhile, since these pictures were taken, my wallpaper installers have been busily working in the kids' bathrooms, and they should be finished by the end of today.  Bernie has already started in on the carpentry aspect of our little kitchen remodel project, and that's looking amazing as well.  The granite guy came out to do the kitchen templates this morning, and we're scheduled to approve the layout of the templates on our slabs this Friday. 

I highly recommend asking your granite fabricator about approving your layout in person prior to cutting even if they don't suggest it, by the way, especially with granites like these that can have so much variation of color and pattern from one part of the slab to another.  I could have had them move the template over a few inches to the right and Lars's countertop would have been primarily black, for instance.  There's no way the guys at the fabrication plant can read your mind and know which parts of the stone you like best and which parts you'd like to minimize unless you go there in person and make your preferences known!

I'll try to post another update in a day or so; right now, I've got to get back to the master bedroom drapery design that I'm working on for a client.

Update: Master Bath Makeover

Since I last posted about this project, my Master Bath and Master Closet trim, walls, ceilings and cabinetry have all been painted and all of the cabinetry has been glazed by my amazing decorative painter.  It looks SO much better now!

Here's another shot where you can see the whole wall of newly configured cabinetry with the custom mirrors and sconces:

My pictures look kind of weird; the walls aren't yellow at all, they are Sherwin Williams Believable Buff.  Trimwork is Sherwin Williams Dover White, and cabinetry was base-coated in Dover White and then glazed with a taupey brown to soften the cabinetry and give it a little warmth and character.

I hate that horrible little stool with the pea soup colored Waverly floral fabric, but I need something to sit on until I come up with a replacement.  I've fallen in love with this embroidered linen/silk blend fabric from Lee Jofa for the bathroom and/or bedroom window treatments:

...but it's ghastly expensive and I haven't had time to find any coordinates yet.  I need a window treatment in the bath, a vanity seat, and a small upholstered bench or chair next to the tub (so Bernie can sit there and say things like, "Why are you putting all that crap on your face?" while I'm getting ready to go out).  Also on my list is replacing all of the cheap brass plated door hardware with oil rubbed bronze, but I haven't had a chance to order the new hardware yet. 

I have been working longer hours than usual because one of my clients had a house fire last week and I've been scrambling to get her paperwork organized so I can estimate current replacement values for everything for her insurance company.  I worked on this client's home for over a year and a half, and I'm almost as devastated as she is to see all my beautiful designs covered in soot and smoke.

Oh, and I seem to have screwed up my back pretty badly again.  It's been bugging me since my daylily weed-a-thon and I've been trying to ignore it, but it's getting worse instead of better.  Apparently ignoring the pain and running on the treadmill yesterday was not a good idea.  Today, my back hurt when I tried to sit, stand, or walk, and I can't straighten my spine all the way to stand completely upright, but as long as I'm laying flat on my back I'm pain free.  Who has time for this nonsense?!  I have way too much work to do to be an invalid!  So in case you're wondering, no, I haven't gotten a chance to get back to Princess Petunia's pettiskirt yet.  Hopefully I'll feel better in a few days so I don't have to waste time at the doctor's office.

In Progress: Master Bath Facelift for My Most Demanding Client -- Me!

It can be dangerous when interior designers go house-hunting.  When most people tour homes on the market, they notice everything they don't like about the property and discount their offer accordingly.  Designers tend to see all of the possibilities of what the property could be, with a few minor changes...  Those are the Famous Last Words.  Fortunately, when we bought our current home three years ago, it had been sitting on the market for awhile because other buyers weren't able to overlook a handful of goofy flaws, so we didn't overpay for the property even though I was seeing it through my rose-colored glasses of design optimism.  We immediately began ripping things out and replacing them, and those "few minor changes" were inevitably followed by a few more minor changes...
This is what our master bathroom looked like when we moved in:

Yuck!  At first I couldn't figure out why there was a blank space between the his and hers vanities on this wall, and I know this was one of the reasons why the home wasn't selling.  Prospective buyers were looking at this and thinking, "What do I do with that?  When I located the original plans for the house, I discovered that the entrance to the master bathroom was supposed to be between the vanities.  When the original homeowners asked the builder to move the door to the adjacent wall (so you enter the master bath directly from the bedroom rather than from the hallway), no one thought to reconfigure the cabinetry.  Mystery solved!

What's more, the doorway was moved right next to the vanity seat, so that if anyone is seated at the vanity when her husband comes sailing into the bathroom, she gets smacked in the back of the head by the door.  Ouch!  You can get a much better feel for the size of this room from the second photo, too.  I loved the soaring vaulted ceiling and the spaciousness of this bath, but the scale of the cabinetry was way too small for the space, like it had been reclaimed from a couple of secondary bathrooms somewhere.  The effect was kind of depressing.  I also hated the fluorescent vanity light fixtures (which created all the ambiance of a mental institution at night), the "cultured marble" plasticky countertops, the cabinet knobs...  But oh, the possibilities!  Cabinets, light fixtures, and hardware can all be changed, but the bones of the space were perfect.

Here's one more "before" photo before I move on.  Eventually, I'd like to replace the floor tile with something on a diagonal set, run the same tile in a smaller size up the shower walls, and replace the aluminum framed shower enclosure with frameless glass doors, but that's going to have to wait for Phase Two of this project.

We finally got around to starting the master bathroom project just before the holidays last year. Bernie didn't know we were starting the master bath.  He thought we were going to redo the master closet, and I kind of snuck the bathroom in with the closet, much like pork barreling in Congress. Here's how the master closet started out:

It's way too small for a master closet in a house this size -- but the only way to enlarge it would be to take away from the master bath or from my sewing studio, and I'm not willing to sacrifice the space in either of those rooms. However, the existing wire shelving was hardly maximizing the available space. Since the master bath is spacious and the closet is disproportionately small, I decided to do built-in cabinetry storage in the closet, centered on the door to the bathroom, that would match the bathroom cabinetry. The idea was to give the impression that the master bath and closet are one spacious whole. I also know that, someday when we put this house on the market, prospective buyers will be comparing our home to others in the neighborhood with larger closets, and I know that many of our neighbors have done California Closet type systems.  Stepping it up a notch with true custom cabinetry in the closet turns one of the home's flaws into a selling feature, because other homes at our price point will not have anything like it.

Here's the completed closet.  I wasn't using a wide angle lens so I couldn't get much in each shot; the first photo shows the built in cabinet and my slanted shoe shelving; there are hanging clothes units on the far right and far left as well, and the second photo shows the view of the closet from the bathroom.  Much tidier!  I couldn't resist the semi flush mount fixture with dangling chandelier prisms.  The empty space beneath the drawers is for a fabric-lined basket that will be used for drycleaning.

I would be a very cranky lady if I got smacked upside the head by my bathroom door every morning, so Bernie came to my rescue by building a new vanity area in the no-man's-land between the original cabinets.  The vanity lights in this photo were a temporary solution to save me from fluorescent hell; they were castoffs from a client's project that we later donated to Habitat for Humanity.

You can see that we raised the original vanity on the far right to the same height as the sink countertop.  This photo was taken before the new drawer fronts and doors came in.  My original plan was to match the new cabinetry sections to the existing cabinetry, both to save money as well as to remain consistent with the door and drawer fronts used throughout the rest of the home.  I was able to locate the source the builder used for the door and drawer fronts and ordered the exact same style, but unfortunately the supplier had changed router bits or something because the new drawer fronts were just different enough from the old ones that I couldn't use them side-by-side.  So the old cabinet doors stayed, but all the drawer fronts ended up getting replaced. 

I designed a much taller triple mirror spanning the entire wall, framed with trimwork and topped with heavy crown molding for a custom built-in look.  (The mirrors you're seeing in these photos are still temporary; we'll have custom beveled mirrors made to fit once everything has been painted).  I switched the overhead vanity lights out for a pair of dramatic, oversized sconces for several reasons: the overhead vanity lights drew attention to the fact that the sink on the right wasn't centered on its cabinet, overhead lights cast unflattering shadows when you're trying to apply makeup, and I wanted to emphasize the new large vanity as the focal point on this wall elevation.  Three new can lights were added in the ceiling to supplement the light provided by the sconces.

The cultured marble countertops (which were neither cultured nor marble) were replaced with dark brown Emperador marble, and I fell in love with these pricey bridge faucets from Brizo in Venetian Bronze finish.  Again, the larger scale and drama of these faucets was well suited to the space and complemented the over-the-top sconces nicely.  I also liked that, since Brizo is the high-end subsidiary of Delta and both lines share the same finishes, I was able to purchase less expensive towel rods from Delta that match the faucets perfectly.  You can see the new iron and crystal chandelier I added above the tub reflected in the mirror here, as well:

I love, love, LOVE my faucets and my cabinet knobs, and I was really pleased with the marble countertops as well.  However, I'm sorry to say, my bathroom has looked like this, half-finished with naked drawer fronts and mismatched mirrors, for several months now while I've been busy with clients' projects, High Point furniture market, and the IWCE Vision '10 trade show in Atlanta last week. 

I finally got around to scheduling my painter to come in yesterday to paint the walls, ceilings, trimwork, and all the cabinetry in the closet and bathroom.  I should point out that this is the first time Bernie has ever had professional painters working in our home -- usually he's the painter, but he didn't want anything to do with painting the cabinetry and he doesn't have time to do it, anyway.  But I have fabulous painters that I've used over and over again on client's projects, so I know they will do a great job for me.  Here's what my master bathroom looked like yesterday evening, after a full twelve-hour day of three professionals sanding and priming away like madmen:

Yikes!  Can you see why Bernie didn't want to tackle this paint job himself?  That's my newly-toothless first grader showing off his missing front tooth in the foreground, by the way, and that's just primer that you see on the cabinets and drawers.  As you can see, this is a lot more work than your standard run-of-the-mill interior paint job.  Things to keep in mind in case you're eyeing some outdated cabinetry in your own home: You can only paint your cabinets if they are real wood.  The white thermafoil cabinet doors that builders have been using over the past 10-20 years or so cannot be painted; the paint won't adhere to the plastic coating.  Also, if you're repainting existing cabinet doors you will need to sand down almost to bare wood to get the primer to adhere -- talk to your paint store about the best products for your situation.

After a great deal of hemming and hawing and multiple changes of mind, I opted to have my cabinetry, doors, and all the trimwork repainted in Sherwin Williams 6385 Dover White, which has just a hint of ivory to warm it up.  I pulled the shade from the not-quite-white veining in the countertop marble.  I almost went with more of a beigey antique white with a brown glaze for the cabinetry, but then I'd have to go darker with the wall color in order to get a good contrast and I really wanted to keep the light, bright, cheerful feeling.  If I feel like the cabinets are "too white" when they're finished, I can always add a little glazing.  The walls are going to be Sherwin Williams 6120 Believable Buff, and 50% of that color is going on the ceiling.  Of course, if this project was for a client, I would have finalized fabric selections prior to specifying a paint color, but I haven't gotten that far for myself yet.  The cobbler's children never have any shoes...

Meanwhile, the painters are upstairs working away, and I need to call the glass company and schedule them to come out and measure for my custom mirrors sometime next week when the painting is done.  The Hungry Caterpillar quilt is also on today's agenda, as well as the never-ending laundry and some work I need to wrap up to prepare for a client meeting tomorrow afternoon.  How did it get to be noon already?!