It seems like yesterday...

...that I was writing the three-month anniversary entry, and now here it is past six months since I started this blog! 

My sister suggested that I lay out some steps for my tidying procedures, which I think is a great idea, but they're very loose as you have witnessed.  However, I think the best advice I could give is just to start with one tiny area and work out from there.  Just do a little each day.  My methodology has not solidified much.  At the start I had to make sure my area in the basement was safe, and the same goes for the upstairs rooms.  It gets like a war zone.  Don't forget stuff that falls on the floor.  I have brown carpets and I've found a myriad of tiny sharp objects: hairpins, screws, earrings, thumbtacks.  It helps to have a bright flashlight to shine in the corners and under furniture before you vacuum or step. 

As for the basement work that I've resumed, it's getting along slowly.  In fact, I'm not sure if the change is even noticeable.  Here's an update photo of the room:

 And, to alleviate the seeming moribundity of that area, I give you the jollier upstairs office, one corner of it anyway:

Basement Diaries

I've returned my attentions more to the basement in the last couple days, as it occurred to me that I could sell some furnishings that I couldn't fit into the car to take to the garage sale.  Which, in case I didn't make clear, was 100 miles away and not in the Portland city limits. I took them to Village Merchants' new location.  I have an overabundance of end tables since I got all the furniture from my mother-in-law last year.  I don't want to hang onto them until I move, whenever that is.  I traded the tables and other small things for some cotton curtains and other needed supplies.   The curtains can go across my new closet opening on the tension rod I got the other day, after I wash them.

I think it's time I found some new favorite thrift shopping places.  But then again maybe it's good that I'm not hunting too much.  

I went to IKEA on Saturday with a couple of lady friends.  I feel a little guilty shopping there, but when I think about how I only bought one stick of new furniture in years, I don't feel too bad.  I got a metal trestle leg thing to hold up one end of the desk I built for myself nine years ago. I tried looking for a sawhorse I could salvage, but nowadays the sawhorses are all beefy, almost pony-sized.  A lot of them are made of that heavy duty plastic too.  The trestle is dainty and above all, coordinates with the rest of the desk.

It looks like the old lady could use a new coat of paint.  I used a white stain when I made it and now it's covered with other kinds of stains.  The top looks a little lopsided here, but it's nothing a couple magazines (Oprah and Martha!) won't fix.

I'm glad that Portland is so fond of leaving stuff on the sidewalk for people to find and re-use.  I'm going to put the metal-and-particle board shelf unit that was holding up the left end of the desk out tomorrow.  I don't want to give out my address here, but if you know me and if it's a nice day tomorrow then you might find something outside my driveway!

New Is Old

I've been keeping scrapbooks since about 1997, with ideas that I clip from magazines and newspapers.  There are hundreds of pages with images of interior design stuff, as well as clothes and hair and such.  Here's a picture I took of some of the pages:

Scrapbooks are a really good idea, or even just folders of clippings if you are working on some kind of home renovation project.  Even if I really just like a color combination in a photo I'll cut it out.  The books I keep them in are the large blank sketch books with the black pebbly covers, but you can use anything.  These particular ones are pretty heavy now and don't fit upright on most shelves, but they hold the larger images very nicely.  As you can see my aesthetics are all over the place.  Maybe someday I'll put in some photos of my living room or office to give you an idea of what I surround myself with.

The "secret" project I mentioned in this post is done, at least my part of it.  I did a design for a friend's bathroom, which hasn't been renovated yet, but I wanted to use the drawings for my portfolio.  Also, the end design is going to be different.  So, what you are seeing here is my portfolio page layout.  I think I need to look at it tomorrow when I've had some sleep and see what I think.  I deliberately took out the name of the person whose house it's in, but maybe you can guess?!

I will freely admit that my InDesign skills need polishing, and that I realized as I was wrapping up for the evening some things that would improve a few details.  But overall I'm pretty happy with it.  The drawings were done in AutoCAD, a drafting program, then rendered in Photoshop.  A village of software programs made this 11x17 page.

Most of the work I've been doing in my own house has started in my imagination and then led to massive amounts of furniture being moved.  I did a little sketching for the office but I really just visualized things as I went along.

Sleep in heavenly peace

Today was an anniversary of sorts and I didn't even realize it until it was almost over.  I spent part of today with my dad at the Clark County Fairgrounds walking around an antique show.  A year ago I was at this same antique show and I began thinking how fun it would be to do a blog about thrifting and the old stuff I use to decorate my apartment.  A few months later Fitzrovians was born.  As I think I've said before, this was going to be a different type of blog at the start.  I'm glad it's come as far as it did!

For now, the basement is just a basement and I'm using it to store stuff while I work on the rooms upstairs.  It's been so cold, I don't even like going downstairs for long.  The time I've put into my bedroom and office have paid off and here is a look at my new sleeping space, before and after:

The perspective makes it look cramped, but it's very comfortable.  You can't really see it but the walls are a very pale yellow now.

A peek at another corner:

I proudly showed a small group of friends around, partly to explain to them why the living room and kitchen are such horrors.  They were very appreciative, but after they went home I noticed I had left a box of feminine products on full display. ¡Estupida!

You'll be very interested to see what I got at the antique fair: this fabulous cuckoo clock made of solid ceramic.  It doesn't tell time and frankly, the cuckoo doesn't even look much like a bird.  I got it partly because I thought it looked like a moray eel shooting out of the door.  If you have ever seen Robert Altman's movie Three Women, you will understand why it's perfectly appropriate to have these items together on my bathroom wall.

Down in Hayes Valley

I've been back from the Bay Area for a few days now.  It was one crazy, fully packed trip!  I saw so many good friends and family members.  Alameda, California is a second home to me and if I didn't love Portland so much I might move there.

I had a great time visiting a part of San Francisco with which I was until recently unfamiliar: Hayes Valley.  It's the kind of place where I couldn't afford most of anything that my friend and I saw in the stores, but I'm going to mention them all because we had fun and got a lot of good ideas.  I'm still searching for the perfect bedspread, and we stopped in Reliquary to see a quilt I had looked at on my last trip.  If you follow the link, you can see many of their colorful quilts on a shelf.  Alas, it was too small but at least I have another reason not to spend money I don't have on it.  We paid another visit to Lotus Bleu to see their rugs and textiles again.  It's such a beautiful store, the kind of place I tell myself I'll come back to when I have the money.  One of my favorite places that day was Nancy Boy  , a store with vintage furnishings and their own line of bath products.  The guy that worked there was super nice.  One of the reasons I decided to blog about the place is that he told us that they get business through word of mouth, so I wanted to make sure I did my bit.  He also recommended that we try mixing tea with "cawfee" sometime for a surprisingly refreshing and delicious beverage.  I haven't tried it yet but I will, though for now all I have at home is herbal tea and instant decaf so I don't think it'll be as good as promised.

Ah, San Francisco

I'm attending a convention here in the Bay Area, and it happens to be in the Design District of San Francisco.  It's not an interior design convention, but the Alternative Press Expo or A.P.E.  I'm getting inspired by a lot of creativity here.  I'm lucky because I parked in an area where there are some great stores, such as Roche Bobois, a European furniture place.  These are some very high end shops!  My tastes aren't really expensive (as you can probably tell from the pictures you've seen so far) but I can appreciate good quality when I see it.

I'm looking for a really great bedspread I saw in a book called Paris Style vol. II, it was in the bedroom of Christian Louboutin.  I can't find a picture of it at all on the net, so here's a photo of a chair in his living room to give you an idea of his aesthetic.  He's the shoe designer, in case you don't know who I'm talking about.

The bedspread doesn't really look like this, but it's very bold and colorful and exotic.  I think I stand a chance of finding something to fit what I'm after here in the Bay Area, don't you think so?