Thursday, August 15, 2013

A Deal With The Devil

Here's the scenario: yesterday, I was dying to tackle a handful of quick, fun painting jobs for a series of projects I've been working on.

However, in order to get to the right place to do those tasks, I needed to wade out into the overstuffed, scary place that has been my garage lately. Between me and my work area stood:  

bags of clothes and housewares to be donated, 
books to be sorted, 
shoes to be reshelved, 
cartons of college stuff to be repacked, 
fifteen or twenty half-used cans of paint to be sorted out,
an avalanche of cardboard boxes to be recycled,
overflow boxes of Christmas goodies that needed to find space on the appropriate shelf,
a tower of board games to be more effectively stored,
and all my supplies for art classes who are spending the summer at home with me.

I'll admit it. I was frightened of that overwhelming heap of rubble and I didn't want to deal with it.

So I negotiated myself into a corner and came up with a very sneaky plan. 

I would allow myself to sidestep the mess and start my day with some of the fun projects, and I was also permitted to experiment with some abstracted shots of the work in progress. But in between the coats of fresh paint and photo ops, I would be required to toil away on the mountain of mess. 

Boom. I had made myself an offer that I couldn't refuse. So I shook hands with myself to seal the deal and got down to business. Here are a few of my shots from the day:

This is the bottom half of a little pink side table from Target; I'm hacking it with an orange paint job, and still pondering my options for the top.
My big red balls need some TLC. Here they are in their shabby 'before' shot, chipped and worn and ready for a scrub-down.
More Target hacks. These two cute turquoise stools - one for me and one for my second-born - are getting wooden tops, shown here before they are stained.
A set of four IKEA stools that have been loved hard for the past ten years. They are all sanded down and ready for a fresh coat of stain.
Water drops on a freshly scrubbed storage container. This is a sight that makes me very happy as it represents not only a clean container but also an empty one! Yay for getting rid of stuff.
Stained version of the table top for the turquiose bases. This color is Red Oak, and it's spunky.
Fresh stain drying on the old IKEA stools. I have big plans for these fellows.
Ah, the 'after' shot of my big red balls. They kind of remind me of old rustic terracotta water jugs and I love them.
The afternoon sun created magical shadows, and my old paint-covered drop cloth looks like a work of art.
All in all, my strategy paid off. I thoroughly enjoyed all my interesting projects and I made a pretty good dent in the garage chaos. My fourth-born was a party to this madness and rewarded my hard labor with a lovely mid-afternoon snack.

And that is the story of how I tricked myself into cleaning the garage.


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Some other stories about my big red balls:

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