Winter projects
It's almost time to withdraw into the warmth of our homes - at least in this hemisphere - and get to those pursuits for which we were too busy working or cavorting outdoors to start.
Repurposing or redecorating a room? Learning Mandarin, or the bassoon, origami or advanced physics? Reading that doorstopper of a book you've been putting off? Weaning yourself off a bad habit? starting a Bonsai forest? Cleaning out the basement? Painting a portrait of your soulmate or writing your memoirs?
Does anyone have a winter project they would like to brag or complain about? Exchange experiences? Talk about while putting off doing?
Repurposing or redecorating a room? Learning Mandarin, or the bassoon, origami or advanced physics? Reading that doorstopper of a book you've been putting off? Weaning yourself off a bad habit? starting a Bonsai forest? Cleaning out the basement? Painting a portrait of your soulmate or writing your memoirs?
Does anyone have a winter project they would like to brag or complain about? Exchange experiences? Talk about while putting off doing?
Comments (35)
It is complex to explain, but it is precisely in autumn and winter that I feel more motivated to do something. This is weird behaviour according to common sense, supposedly.
Quoting Vera Mont
I will change the curtains of my bedroom. They are red and black, and now I want them orange or yellow. I would like to repaint my bedroom as well. It is just white and maybe another colour would be better to my emotions. I would like to paint in dark blue or grease.
Quoting Vera Mont
Keep reading more books in English, rather than translated into my language. I think this would have a good impact on my knowledge development. I always read literature, but I guess it is time to read more about philosophy or linguistics.
That is an excellent choice! Especially if the fabric is not to heavy, so that light comes through it, you have an illusion of sunshine, which lifts one's mood on a gloomy winter morning. Could be repeated in the bed covering or cushions. Dark blue walls can be quite restful, but I suggest you relieve it with some brightly coloured pictures or fabric wall-hangings. Sounds like a pleasant room for reading Bill Bryson.
Quoting javi2541997
Not at all. I never seem to start anything in summer: summer chores in garden, yard and kitchen are always urgent. In fall, when there is no produce to harvest and preserve, no firewood to stack or weeds to chop down, I can think longer term and plan a bigger project.
I wish I could relieve it with pictures or fabric wall-hangings, but the walls of my bedroom were painted by gotelé - in English, it is said 'popcorn ceiling' -. acoustic ceiling
It was a common practice in Spain back in the 1990s, and it is very difficult to get rid of this. Well, it is actually possible, but I have to tear the walls down, and colour them again. I am not in the mood to do all of this because it is very messy, but my parents and I have agreed to do it one day in the house, and I promised to stay and take over the project alone with the painters... Whenever I wanted to put some stuff on the walls, it ended up falling down because they didnt hang on too well. Some folks say this is because my bedroom cross a beam, but I guess it is gotelé's fault...
Have you tried sticky putty? Once you have a new coat of paint on, that might stick - maybe just for posters or unframed prints, or a panel of fabric that doesn't weigh too much?
Of course, there is also the option of extending the curtain beyond the sides of the window with a longer rod. Or putting another curtain over the head of the bed. That would cover some wall surface with a cheerful pattern. (I like yellow/green/blue for curtains.)
Quoting Vera Mont
I agree, those are good colours for curtains. I would go for orange too.
Then you'll have to be careful with the choice of blue for the walls, so they don't cancel each other. I'd go to a darker shade, edging into aquamarine.
Too bad about sticking things to the wall. Mine are covered with photos and paintings and plaques on every wall where there isn't a bookshelf (I have to keep patching the nail holes when I move them around). Of course, you can do quite a lot with a shelf-unit - say bamboo, wicker or ironwork, maybe painted orange - to brighten the mood of a room.
I've got giant tapestries of Hasui Kawase prints on my walls. Wonder how kitsch this is for someone who has a more sophisticated sense of decor. They aren't hung very professionally. I'd like to cycle them out with something new.
This big one probably not Kawase though.
True. I didn't realise that they cancelled each other. Thanks for the recommendations. If you do not mind, I will keep posting here my advances on the scenery of my bedroom. I am interested in 'interior design' but I am lost regarding this topic. I think it is very important to have a bedroom which accompanies your mood. What I am going to do quickly is buy new curtains. But it is important to buy transparent curtains, not opaques. I mean, the ones that, when the sunlight hits, reflects the shine - or spectrum - of the colour in the room. This is why my bedroom is red in the afternoon, but now I am tired of this colour, and I am looking for dark blue, as I said.
The physics of popcorn walls in Spain sounds like it requires a post doc analysis.
Look at pairs of paint chips and see which combination is most pleasing to your eye.
It sounds like a room that will turn out very pleasant. I'd be very interested to hear about its progress. Architecture and interior design are my "alternate reality" - I've lived in and altered so many spaces, I dream about them.
Quoting Nils Loc
It gets worse. If they ever decide to scrape it off, they may have to take special precautions, because many of those walls were made with asbestos. Might be safer to keep covering it with paint.
For hanging things straight and true, the best option might be a picture rail: a heavy wooden molding at the join of walls and ceiling, or all the way across a wall lower down, screwed on securely. That will hold regular picture hangers and small lights, if desired. Failing that, individual curtain rods. It all depends on the original construction method.
Quoting Nils Loc
I quite like them. But they would benefit from more precise horizontality.
We don't really have a cold season down here, it is more of a dust and mud type of thing. And the temperature rarely gets too low that you need more than a sweater or a light jacket .
The list I have is too big to mention all of it, I will just list the larger ones.
Finish building fence.
Paint roof and rest of outside walls
Replace ceiling in main bedroom.
Finish tiling and plumbing in new bathroom
Some of these were started before the covid lock-down and could not be finished, then last year I had an accident and have not completely recovered still. There are about another dozen things on the list, but money and time will keep them from being done before next year.
Maybe you're up to some less physically demanding tasks this year. Tiling isn't too hard... just ridiculously difficult sometimes. Painting a roof sounds like a bigger job than I'd ever take on! I can just about manage three rungs of the ladder to wash the top windows.
I feel so unaccomplished reading this. I've always wanted to build a whole house,
Quoting javi2541997
Funny, we seem to have the same location of project -- the bedroom. I work a lot these days, so I no longer turn on the lights in my bedroom when I get home because my mind wants to be away from the lights and I just want to cocoon in the dimmed chambre. So I started looking at stained glass. Something warm, but artsy. Yes, I ache for art pieces. Sadly, I do not (these days) yearn for nature or the wild -- rather, I desire something that's built, by hands.
Making it? That's a terrific craft to learn. But no, not if you work from dawn to dusk; it's too time-consuming. Might be able to find some nice windows at a salvaged building supply place....
:lol:
Quoting Vera Mont
That's my main project. My bedroom is the place where I spend a lot of hours reading books, and I want to make it a pleasant place to be. I will be posting more comments in this thread, and let's see how it progresses on.
Quoting L'éléphant
Good choice! I have stained-glass in the living room. Basically, my parents put it just to prevent the savage heat of summer days, and it works pretty well, because the sunlight doesn't go through the living room.
Quoting L'éléphant
Dimmed chamber! Good point. I couldn't find the exact word yesterday. That's what I am looking for in my bedroom. A dimmed atmosphere, I don't like 'vivid' colours.
I have designed and built three, mostly with just help for the heavy or excessive time consuming stuff that I could not get done inside the time frame by myself.
The house I have now was originally a wooden framed building that I built. I renovated it by changing the framework to metal. I was lucky that I did because we had a bad earthquake,7.2, and it came down from its original 2 meters in the air to sitting on the ground on 2 sides. I was able to lift back to one meter and all of the damage it received was in the siding panels and a couple of minor bends in the frame.
Thank you. I am just short of 70, if I leave things much longer I will not want to do the the work at all. I plan on retiring in the next couple of years and need to spend the money to do the work while I still have some coming in.
Impressive!
Quoting javi2541997
Yeah, that's the effect I'm after, and of course the beauty of colors.
I am hoping to have all of the major work done in the next year or so, that will leave me with just maintenance and damage costs for the future. Fingers crossed on that one. :lol:
There's no smilie for that. I'm shocked and appalled! All the same, I'm rooting for you.
It'll allow me to set up periodic notifications to myself. I'lll use that for spaced repetition, helping me expand my vocabulary and learn the names of all these damn philosophers and movements my curiosity has entrapped me in :lol:
Quite an undertaking! I never quite mastered the list of 19th century novelists when I was younger: after Turgenev, when I input another one, a previous one fell out. (Happily, Trollope made it) At my current age, when I learn a new name, some random datum falls out and I spend half an hour searching for the flashlight I put down five minutes before or forget to turn off the stove under the beans until I smell them burning.
I sealed the front door. Have to do it every winter, because both the outer and inner door fit poorly into the frame. We meant to replace it some time ago, but no standard door will fit, and it's too big a job to replace the whole frame.
And I cleaned and defrosted the chest freezer. That has to wait for cold weather so I can put the bins of contents on the back porch. The damn thing is always full! It's a job I absolutely hate, but I do enjoy the extra space without 2" of frost buildup on the walls and being able to find things again.
Update on the change and decoration of my bedroom.
I finally got the new curtains. My mother helped me in the process of finding them, and it turns out that the colours are different from what we thought in the first place. We made a big effort to find blue or dark blue curtains, but I didn't like the ones that I saw. Then, my mother and I saw a beautiful pair of green apple curtains. I must admit that I wasn't very satisfied with the colour of the curtains, but they have what I was looking for: They are transparent, and the sunlight rays are reflected. So, a good choice. I took a picture. I hope they can be well seen in the photo.
I do like those; very delicate and sheer. Bright mornings will be like a cool forest glade; gloomy ones, like a melancholy reflection. That would work very well with a darkish blue wall - it's not bad, next to that bright blue, but that shade would be way too much for a whole room. Of course you could go deep burnt orange for the wall colour and that would be reminiscent of sunset.
Good idea, I will keep it in mind. But, before starting to buy paint, I have to remove all the 'popcorn ceiling', and the mess this causes, as we debated with @Nils Loc. So, I started to think of a better idea: keep the 'acoustic ceiling' and painting it with an intense orange colour.
That would save time, effort, money and a possible health risk, depending on the age of the building. Anything before 1977-80 is likely to contain asbestos.
:up:
Quoting Vera Mont
The building is 30 years old. The construction started in 1993 and ended in 1994. I was born here, and I wish I can keep living here. There are a lot of memories, and if one day I leave and live in another city, I will suffer from nostalgia.
Yes, but it's a bittersweet suffering. I've lived in many places and had many different lives, so I have lots of colourful memories for my old age. You don't want to deprive yourself of varied experiences and environments. They make staying put for the last 25+years acceptable - otherwise, I'd feel I missed out on everything.
I still don't understand your popcorn ceiling issue. It's all very mysterious. If it isn't on your walls, and you want to put things on your walls, what does that have to do with the ceiling? It looks like you have orange peel textured walls, same as I do, which I'd surmise is less challenging to deal with than popcorn texture.
Slap some picture pins into it and tell it who's boss. Those adhesive velcro strips for picture hanging we've got in U.S. (possibly Scott's brand) also work very well on orange peel texture. They didn't want to come off when I took down an eraser board I had on the wall, taking a bit of orange peel with it, even when stretching the release tabs.
I try to always have a math project I can explore - one that no one else has worked on. That makes my leisure attitude pleasing, no matter what the outcome. Math tends to be a very competitive activity.