Concrete Floors- more progress
Oh how lovely the floors have turned out. Here they have been stained, sealed and coated with a polish. Lots of clean-up, and more work to be done before we can call this project finished.
Bottom line is I’m thrilled with how they turned out!
Here is a good before shot- we had wall to wall carpet throughout the house (with the exception of the kitchen and bathrooms) and underneath the carpet was this lovely linoleum in places, and the old VAT tiles in other places. Lucky us!
We opted to have the flooring removed for us, so we came back to a house that looked like this:
More on this later… but we removed all the dirty old glue from the floors with an enormous planetary grinder and a hand held grinder that made for backbreaking days.
All the pain was worth it when we uncovered these beautiful concrete floors underneath it all.
Here the concrete has been ground down to expose a clean layer. It has not been stained, or finished yet.
Well hello there. It’s been awhile, I know. I have a really good reason, I promise.
In my never ending quest for new projects, and new creative outlets I took on the largest project ever… and am just barely coming to the surface. You know, just now feeling caught up and somewhat organized, even though our house is currently in a state of disarray. Again.
Here’s the long and the short of it. Starting Dec. 26 my husband and I moved everything we own (save a few suitcases of our things) into our two car garage so that we could rip out the flooring in our entire house, and so that I could grind the floors down to expose the gorgeous concrete underneath. Patching thousands of little holes, many cracks, problem areas, staining, sealing, glossing… all to call it finished. All of this while our awesome friend and neighbor over at redneckmodern ripped apart our laundry room- moved the electrical, plumbing, and a couple of walls. I might have lost my mind if he hadn’t been here while I was working day in, day out.
What happened next you ask? Cleaning up the ginormous mess this process created in our house, in our backyard, atrium – painful. Recovering physically. Moving all our belongings BACK in and trying to organize our lives again, catch up on work, banking, emails you name it. Only to NOW decide that we could finally tackle really “finishing” this project by repairing the damage done to the lower portion of the walls, and install new baseboards throughout. We’re almost done with that last step as I type.
Photos soon.
This is a cropped in image of a group of paintings I was commissioned to do for a client in San Francisco. I have been working on this over the past few weeks, adding subtle layers every few days as it dries.
They originally contacted me looking to purchase a set of two blue pieces they found of mine online; Azul. I brought these paintings to their home, and they lived with them on the wall for about a week. They decided to move forward with this commission rather than use the bolder, brighter blue paintings in the space. We met again, and hand picked color palette, canvas sizes and multiple paintings as inspiration.
The paintings are ultimately going to be hung above the couch, in a newly renovated sitting room. Not all of the elements were in yet, so I made notes of the copper colored floor lamp from Room and Board that will be next to the couch, and possible other accessories they were looking at.
I also always carry my paint chip deck with me, so we went through and picked a color palette to use as my guide. Once back in my studio, I pulled the paint colors from my larger sample books and hung those all around the visible surrounding area in my studio. I feel like I can easily bring myself back into the inspiration room this way. I think I always fear that I’ll start to infuse the color palette of our house into a client’s painting, so I’m really careful to keep my studio walls white, and large color samples and inspiration paintings/ photos everywhere while I’m working on a new piece.
I think the paintings came out really nice, I’m happy to have been pushed in a slightly new direction with my work, and look forward to infusing this new look into future pieces. My client has viewed the photos online, and was thrilled with the finished piece. It will be delivered this coming week, so we will see how it all looks together in the same space.
All of my recent paintings are now available as Fine Art Prints! These have been printed on an Epson 9800, using Epson Ultrasmooth fine art paper (a slightly warm smooth 250gsm 100% cotton archival paper). If kept well these should last 100 years. Each image has a 1″ boarder on all sides.
The images came out beautifully, I am thrilled with the results. The smallest details show, the texture of the canvas comes through and the color is perfect and true to the original.
Contact me directly to purchase. They come in a variety of sizes and can be ordered in custom sizes. You can also head over to my Etsy shop to purchase online and pay via credit card.
I had some fun photographing the prints in these simple and inexpensive Ikea Ribba frames. I used my test prints, which are 5″ x 5″ and are perfectly suited to slip right into the 9″ x 9″ frame.
This is a photo of my easel, and the wall that is directly behind it. It’s what I draw my inspiration from while I’m working on a painting. It needs to be tidied up a bit, but I thought before I did that I could share it with you all. Crazy madness, I know.
This week has included a number of doctor appointments, x-rays and consultations. It turns out I have a stress fracture in one of my toes, where it moves on up into my foot. Ow. It also turns out that it’s possible that this happened in June or July. Whaaat? So that’s why I’ve been complaining about my foot hurting all this time. Oh my. There was a shock that ran through my body when I was shown a series of x rays of my own body. I know, who else’s body did I think they would be showing me? I guess it just helped hammer home the concept that I need to stay off my feet. For one month minimum. Ugh. I found no sympathy in my doctors or my friends since I fractured this bone while traipsing all over Europe for nearly three months. I understand, and I don’t feel sorry for me either. I do however, hate the painkillers they have me on… and will not be contributing much until I am off of them since they make me feel like my brain is in the next room having a nap.
Title: Operator
Size: 16″ x 16″
I feel like I took a left turn with my work this week. Like maybe I was off track, and I turned left and got back on the map. I put away the acrylics, pulled out the oils and just went for it. Pushed the colors. I wanted more drama. I wanted more feeling, more intrigue. I got it.
Two things happened – I abandoned my safe and oh so normal process, and I used black paint!!
For YEARS I have been using acrylics. Mostly for their fast dry time, but also because I painted murals in people’s homes for many years, and got really good at using house paint for my art. (Quite the cash saver!) I had always loved using oils, but would spend weeks on a painting doing multiple glazes. I have been longing for my work to have a more abandoned look to it, more messy, more painterly. I always feel like those works evoke more feeling. I realize now that clutching to acrylics for so long has left my work a bit light and soft. I pushed the dark today, maybe a bit further than I will in the future, but I just needed some of it. So glad I pushed myself.
My second triumph of the week was that I used black paint. Like, straight from the tube! I didn’t even know I had black oil paint still. Somewhere in my schooling (BFA in painting) I was taught to never use black paint. We were to always mix our own black… as we were to mix all our own colors using the base line of primary colors. It has made me stellar at color matching, and color mixing, which helped me for many years in my decorative painting business. It’s not so necessary now, thank goodness! I broke out that black paint, and enjoyed the contrast it added to my painting.
Title: Eames and Saarinen Organic Chair
Size: 10″ x 10″
Another day of drooling over furniture. This one’s a real beauty.
Laura Browning
Artist, Painter, Color Enthusiast, Photographer, Traveler, Wife, Mid Century Design lover, Eichler dweller.
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My work is inspired by the classic California dream and timelessness of modern design from the mid 20th century. I focus on luminous color interactions and iconic shapes that give glimpses of the idyllic California lifestyle.
Etsy
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