December 21

December 21, 2000

A Western Washington Winter Funk

This is the time of year where those of us in Western Washington have been subjected to endless days, and days, and days, and days of

icky

nasty

dark

over-cast

Dreary

rainy wet weather

There are those among us that are too quick to use the term "depression" to describe what I prefer to call a FUNK.

The trick is to shake it. I keep busy working on some FUN project. Fortunately, our "cabin" is full of um'. Here's the ones that I have been working on for the last couple of months! None are totally complete, but you can see some good progress.

Master bedroom before Master bedroom After

We also have "regular" drywall-type walls that need a fresh coat of paint, shelving and carpeting to do.

It's a good start! When we purchased our "cabin", the daylight basement had piles of potting soil on the concrete floor. There were walls and electricity in place, but it was in poor condition.

In the first photo, you can see the "stucco effect" I created on the concrete wall in the early stages.

How you can do it too!

	I began by spackling the seams of the concrete wall, to create a smoother over-all appearance.
	Next, I painted the wall a bright glossy barn red color. Any deep color would work. We just had a number of "collections" that had tones of red, but no place to display them.
	I went over the area with spackling compound, until I achieved the texture of a stucco wall.
	Then, it was back to the barn red paint, water added to go over the entire wall. This gave the wall lots of depth. I had to really stand back and look at it to add deeper color in some areas.
	The final step was to rub the whole wall with a watered-down buttercup yellow (flat finish) paint. The secret to a chalk-like finish is in the flat paint, instead of semi-gloss.
	I used the same yellow color applied with a brush to the fake 1/2 bricks behind the stove. They weren't fooling anybody anyway and will be replaced with tile and a pretty fireplace mantle at a later date.