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Monday, January 17th, 2011
 Further progress in improving the look of our dining room: Ellen found a great deal on reupholstering the chairs, from the McGowen Fabric Outlet in Elizabeth. Very reasonable price and excellent work, though perhaps lacking in customer service relations -- at about 5 this afternoon Ellen answers the ringing phone, listens for a minute, says "Jeremy, we have a situation" -- the chairs are finished and the fabric outlet manager wants them picked up right away so he does not have to hold them overnight. So me and John quit practicing and took a road trip to Elizabeth.
I find the sheer extent of the urban area around here disconcerting. I often don't notice it because I will get on the highway to drive any significant distance; but the city, the neighborhoods, keep going beneath the highway in between the exits. There isn't much of any way to get to Elizabeth by highway -- it is just surface street after surface street, and you never lose the impression of being in the city. The chairs are probably nearly as old as I am -- they and the table are Ellen's parents' old dining-room set. The old leather upholstery on them was looking really bad; the new fabric is utterly transformative.
posted evening of January 17th, 2011: Respond
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Friday, November 27th, 2009
This morning, the most recent installment of our home redecoration saga is complete; we finished painting the dining room, and have put the room back together. Look! The painting is "Autumn Rhythm", by Jackson Pollock.There are a couple of other views at the READIN Family Album, just click on the photo.
 (Later on:) ...Such a pleasure, moving through this room and the adjacent two rooms, now that they are back in a proper state, not all chaotic as they have been the past couple of weeks. It feels like a stubbed toe or a sprained ankle, healed back up.
posted afternoon of November 27th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, October 18th, 2009
Ellen and I spent most of the weekend setting up our dining room to paint it: covering the floor with newspaper and drop-cloths, taping edges and corners, and applying primer. It's not a huge room but it's a fairly intimidating job because of how the room is put together: lots of molding everywhere that requires attentive care and the use of a brush instead of a roller, including an insane crown molding that has 12 surfaces -- besides the crown molding there is a chair rail and a baseboard, and three doorways and a window. There will be a whole lot of taping, too, which we have not even started yet; for now we are priming everything together. We made pretty good progress! Finished off a can of primer, we've done everything except one section of crown molding and most of the ceiling. we'll finish that up tomorrow night and then the fun of applying the actual colors begins. Ellen is primarily in charge of the color selection, with input from her friend Lisa and (a bit) from me -- she has settled on some colors from the Benjamin Moore catalog that look pretty nice to me, I will try and find them online and link to a sample.
posted evening of October 18th, 2009: 2 responses
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Sunday, March 22nd, 2009
Ellen decided a couple of weeks ago that we should repaint the main hallway of our house. We've been slowly getting going, doing some taping and picking colors and painting some sections of the big wall next to our staircase -- today suddenly it seems like we're really underway. I built a platform that will support a stepladder on the staircase, for taping the intersection of that large wall and the ceiling -- I did this taping and pretty much finished painting that wall. Next we have the first-floor hallway, the second-floor hallway, and then the molding... Hopefully we will be done with this by May and we'll post some pictures.
posted evening of March 22nd, 2009: Respond
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