Pros and Cons

I am into my second week of working in Bourne. Bourne is about an 1 1/2 hour drive from my home in Watertown. Now, depending on traffic that particular day… it could take me 1 1/2 hours or 2 hours or more to get there. Fortunately, I have a wonderful friend who generously lent me the use of her vacation home in Centerville. This gives me a 22 mile commute each way… much better!

As you have seen, the Bourne House is in a lovely location, and no matter what room I am working in, I have some pretty spectacular views. It’s very quiet here since I am usually by myself here all day. The general contractor pops in once, maybe twice every few days to check on me and sometimes a painter shows up to work in painting the window frames and some walls in other areas. Once a week, Marc comes to visit me and check out the progress and every few days, Judy, the mother of the home owner, pops in. Judy lives a few houses away, and will be moving into the apartment which is located over the garage, when the house is finished. So, other than these few people popping in on occasion, it’s pretty isolated here. I have my radio/cd player to keep me sane. I do get a lot of work done, since I have little to distract me!

The down side is that the homeowners live in CA, so I only have contact via email or phone with them. I like my clients to see the progress and have input on the finish as I am working. That way I can make color adjustments if needed. A good example of this is my problem with the finish in the Kitchen/Breakfast Room/Family Room. This is all one area, with connecting walls, so it will be done with the same finish. The finish that was originally selected turned out to be too bold, too overpowering for the walls. This finish just did not translate well to large expanses of walls. I had previously done the finish in a small bathroom for another client. There it worked well because the wall space was minimal, with tile below. As soon as I got this finish on the wall in the Family Room space, I could see it was too much.

If you look closely, you will see a vertical "line" where the short wall meets the tall part of the wall. The short wall was were I began. I felt the finish was too busy, too blotchy looking to be on all of these walls. It would extend into that area beyond the half wall. So, to correct this, I softened the technique. I still did not like this. It looked too blue. There are 4 glazes being used in this finish, and one is a slate blue. That blue was just not working.

This is still the same room, just moving around to more walls. I then adjusted the glazes, but found these walls too yellow and too dark. That’s when I called Marc and asked him to come down and give his input. In the meantime, I created some new samples on a wall in the kitchen, that will later have cabinets and tile.

This is the new finish we selected. I omitted the blue and will use mainly 2 glazes with a touch of a 3rd. I also eliminated the veining, so it is more subtle. I had the gc, painter, mother, and Marc all give me input. Marc has met with the clients several times now, so he has a good sense of what they would like. We kept the homeowners informed and I emailed them some pictures.

This week I am doing this finish in the Kitchen/Breakfast Rm/Family Room. I will post those pictures when complete.

Without the contents of my studio nearby and familiar stores where I buy the supplies I need, a lot of improvising has to be done when something like this happens. Luckily, I had the Foyer/Hallway to move to while I was working out the new finish for this area and waiting for approval.

The plus side of working here… after work I was able to go back to the Centerville house, shower, change and walk to the beach to relax. Not a bad way to end the day!