Week 5! And no, shut up, I did not manage to post before Sunday this week either. Leave me alone. I’m tired. And yes, I am time challenged. Give me a deadline and I’ll make it (most of the time), but it will be at the last possible moment. You could say I like to live dangerously. But mostly, I just procrastinate.
The ceiling on the porch got painted this week! We both rallied from old age and I was able to stand on a ladder to cut in the edges and the Man of Action was able to lift his left arm high enough to roll the rest of it. This is our separation of labor when it comes to painting ceilings. I have a really messed up neck—since childhood, so actually not an old age thing—and looking up while rolling a ceiling is something that will take me down FOR DAYS with splitting headaches and possibly trigger a migraine. I’m not sure why I’m telling you this, except that I didn’t want you to think I was being a brat and refusing to do manual labor. I mean that happens, just not in this *exact* instance.
We also jerry-rigged a new glorious very long couch this week. And hung the new pendant light (peek at top of post!). So let’s get it.
Here’s a reminder of where we started:
Bright sky blue ceiling and what looks like a piddly little bench in front of the very large window. That bench is actually 90 inches long. But the scale is wrong for in front of that window. And it is somewhat piddly in the sense that it’s not that deep—only 18 inches. I wanted to replace this bench with something I could actually curl up on and the Man wanted something he could take naps on with both dogs. Something like this:
I looked into sectional sofas, but maybe only half-heartedly because of two reasons: too pricey or too clunky. I wanted to keep the light leggy feeling of the bench, just deepen and widen it and add back cushions. And I knew that since we had taken two benches and cut the arms off and bolted them together, we could also do that with two deeper sofas. It’s really not hard. But you do have to purchase something that lends itself to this type of modification. And I found what I wanted at World Market two months ago. It’s no longer available, unfortunately. They do have a teak version still. (I would not paint that though.)
I don’t know why this picture from their website doesn’t show it, but this couch has two supports in the middle on the bottom, which makes it PERFECT for my purposes. So the Man took an arm off on each (one right and one left) and cut away the upper parts. And then bolted the two arms together and reattached them to the couches. It’s probably easier to show you. Here are the two couches without their respective arms:
The arms are there on the floor clamped together so the Man could bolt them together. And here he is putting the two couches together:
That’s his I’m-thrilled-you-are-taking-a-photo-of-me-doing-this face. Isn’t it cute? You can see where the arms were cut off in the middle there. Since I knew I wanted to paint this new gloriously long couch, it didn’t matter that the wood was cut. The Man sanded it smooth for me and I got to work painting it with my good old sprayer. That I love using OUTDOORS. Do not get me started on the fiasco it was using the sprayer on my office trim and doors. I still shudder at the thought of it.
This is a progress shot after I sprayed the bottom of the piece and flipped it back upright, but you can see a bit more clearly where the cuts are in the arms in the middle. And you can see that the couches have those middle supports underneath. Cutting off the tops of the arms doesn’t really jeopardize the stability of the couches, you can see the two legs are still there in the middle where the sofas now connect. But I do feel better with the middle pieces on there as well for insurance.
Here’s the new long couch painted black (are you even surprised?) in front of the window:
You can see it looks so much better scale-wise. It is almost exactly the width of the picture window, which is roughly 120 inches wide. Here it is straight on:
I love it. It has cushions, of course, but I am reupholstering them so they are not out here. You’ll have to be patient on that. The industrial rolling coffee table there is not staying. It is banged up and needs paint, but I decided the porch needed some wood on it, so I have a new wood coffee table that’s slightly longer too.
I know what you’re thinking! How ironic that you just painted wood black but want something wood on your porch. And to that I say: who are you? And why are you questioning me? Jk. I didn’t like the tone of the wood on the sofa—and I wanted something black against the white siding. Did anyone ever watch Candice Olson’s Divine Design on HGTV? (I’m super dating myself here, but it doesn’t matter, I already told you I’m old.) She was always talking about “DRAMA” in a room. And though my style is very different than hers, I agree about drama. Or we can call it tension. (I love tension in life and design. I’m Gen X, I never really grew up, my heart thrives on drama.) An easy way to get tension or drama is CONTRAST. And that’s what the black bench against the white wall gives me. Also, I’m here to tell you every room could use a shot of black, that contrast brings all the other colors to life.
Onto the ceiling. We had painted it super bright sky blue in 2006 or so. The ceiling was painted a dingy white when we moved in in 2002. It’s pretty rough but paint cleans it up nicely. I just didn’t want that zappy blue anymore. I wanted a quieter grayer blue. But not lighter in anyway. I am not a pastel person. I like saturated colors. Because the siding on the house is white, another color I do not like, I knew this ceiling is my only chance to get a deeper, calmer color into the space. Here’s a photo of the new paint going on over the old so you can see the difference:
Yes, the old blue is BRIGHT. But notice how the new blue looks SO GRAY against it. The Man freaked out when he saw the new blue. And by “freaked out,” I mean he frowned heavily and said, “So we’re really painting the ceiling gray?” It got my back up. And look, it’s entirely possible I am over sensitive to criticism, okay? BUT DO NOT QUESTION ME ON COLOR, pal. I shouldn’t have to explain color to him, he has a degree in graphic design. But yet, there we were.
I thought this might help somebody else out there though. Color as our eyes see it is so affected by what’s around it. That’s why you shouldn’t test color without a lot of white around it. If you just saw this…
…you see blue, right? That bright sky blue was fucking with the perception of the grayer color. Same photo, no doctoring, just the bright blue cropped out.
Here’s a pulled back shot of the new blue ceiling, with BONUS, the new pendant light:
Man, I love that color. It looks a little splotchy because it was still drying after touching a few spots up. Let’s talk about the light. Here’s the old pendant (with the old bright blue ceiling):
It’s not the right scale for the porch, and more importantly, it’s SO HARD to keep clean. We keep this light on from dusk to dawn as a security measure so you can guess how irresistible it is to spiders. They use every nook and cranny—and this light has a lot of those—to spin webs to catch the bugs that flock to the light overnight. So up close it looks like this, despite being cleaned off three weeks ago:
Yeah, ew. And you can’t even see the bottom, which isn’t enclosed, so it’s always full of webs all up inside the light. I am so excited to switch this light out for something larger and simpler. Something way easier to clean. Something completely enclosed. Here it is again:
And here it is at night:
Love it. See you next week!
