Let me level with you. (Sorry I couldn’t resist.) It’s been a bit of a crazy month so far. My wife and I just about finished the master bedroom upstairs (I’ll post about that when it’s done) and we’re getting ready to rip apart the bathroom. Monday our new counter tops for the kitchen finally came, but there was a problem. I didn’t level the old cabinets. Our house is 100 years old this year and the cabinets though they aren’t as old as the house are no spring chickens themselves. They were so off level that the installers took the counter top back and told me I needed to level everything before they could install. Feeling a bit embarrassed and disappointed I’ve spent my evenings this week getting the cabinets ready so that the installers can come back next week. You can see how off the cabinets are in the photos. My plan once I have all the wood in is to sand down the sides, fill the gaps and paint it all to match so that it looks seamless. At least all this has helped me get good at cutting freehand on the table saw.

To see previous posts about our DIY “renoing” click here.

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I’ve seen a lot of time lapse video. What sets this one apart are bright colored running suits, geese and a sweet catchy song. I’ve been slowly working on a catchy song mix to listen to as I paint the house and this is definitely on the list.

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I have to thank Andres Guzman for sending me a link to his site a couple weeks ago and apologize for not posting about it sooner. Andres has a great body of work that’s right up my alley. I especially like the movement in his drawing. He’s got some great subject matter as well, from Zombies to reporters to skateboard related stuff. Check out his site here.

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Just saw this video the other day and thought I’d share. The song is pretty good, but the video is a lot of fun.
You can check out the site here.

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One of the reasons posting has gotten slow lately is because summer is here and I can work on our house again. This summer/fall we have four goals, we are renovating the kitchen, the bathroom, the upstairs bedroom and the putting in a new new fence outside. We are doing as much of the work our selves as we can, which I’m finding very gratifying but slow. Still I’m happy to learn new things. The image above is one I did in photoshop to help us invision what we are looking to do. We’ve already refinished the cabinets as you’ll see in some of the photos below. We have also redone the floor, pulling all the old laminate layers up (about an inch of them), sanding and refinishing the maple underneath.

Here’s a look at where we started. Check out the door handles under the sink. Must have been so the mice could reach them.

We picked out lights and I built a kitchen island and put a temp countertop on it made out of plywood.

We finally ordered our new quartz countertop last weekend and immediately after I started pulling the old tan tiles off the backsplash so when the dude comes to make his template he can go right to the wall and we can tile on top of the counter with our new matte white subway tiles which we also ordered. The counters will have a one bay under-mount sink. We went to a plumbing show room and picked out what we wanted but them found everything online for hundreds less and often tax and shipping free. The Lenova Zero Radius sink we liked was quoted at over $600 but we got it for a fraction of the price online.

Popping tiles off ended up being quite a mess. More than just tiles came off the wall. Horse hair plaster had a pesky habit of coming off too. I ended up almost removing all the plaster on one wall as you can see in the photo above.

In order to keep posting and working on the house I’m going to start posting a bit more about the house work. Hopefully everyone will enjoy it as much as I do. All you DIY’s out there are welcome to chip in with comments and advice.

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Another Memorial Day weekend at Art All State. The 2010 Art All State at the Worster Art Museum was another great experience. For those who are not familiar, Art All State is a like the high school championship for art students in Massachusetts, only instead of competing students break into groups of 18 with two artist mentors (one being myself) and work together to build an installation exhibited in the museum. This year my fellow mentor and I choose rice and string as the materials students could use for their installation. We were also given a huge bolt of charcoal felt as a surprise material for the piece. We looked at three pieces of art from the Museum’s collection to create a concept for the project:

• John Farnham’s Gentleman Pensioner to Elizabeth
• Do-Ho Suh’s who am we?
• KTICIC Foundation
  

The student quickly got to work. Their concept played with the idea of individualism and community.

Students review as a group and plan their next steps.

Pouring rice. They made some hands too.

Final installation.

The students did a great job it was a pleasure to work with them. What an amazing piece of art.

See the Art All State work form 2008 and 2009.

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