New Art Studio In Progress

There were a lot of things we immediately loved about our new house (which led to us placing an offer on it in the first place). The layout was just wonderful, with a small office (big enough for my husband, still currently working-from-home during the COVID-19 pandemic) on the main floor, a roomier kitchen than our old house, and a carpeted family room just off the kitchen, so I could easily see our daughter playing in the playroom from the kitchen. Then there were things we loved the potential of, but which just weren't quite right... yet. And the basement was one of those things.

The basement was already finished (which other houses we were considering did not have), and it had a walk-out to the nice, large, fenced-in backyard. But it was a completely open floor plan, and we wanted to divide the space into an art studio/office for me, a guest room, an additional playroom for our 1-year-old, and a "pantry"/storage space with room for the extra fridge/freezer the previous owners left behind. It took some doing to figure out how best to orient those rooms in the space, but we settled on a layout that worked well for us, and over the course of several weeks, we were able to see our vision realized with the help of a local contractor.

Here are some pictures of what the basement looked like before we had it sectioned off with more walls:

The previous owners had a couch in the space where my new studio would go (which we paid for them to leave behind for us, and which we moved upstairs into the family room). There is also an electric fireplace built into the wall, and two windows looking out on the backyard, in my new studio. I love the natural light! (Though I admit, so far I've only had a chance to come down here to work after our daughter goes to bed, which is after it's already dark out. Thanks winter!)

And here's the room after the contractor was done building us new walls (but before we moved in all our furniture/stuff):

I was really excited to have a single room that could fit all of my "projects" - both studio art and graphic design. In our old house, I originally had my computer all the way up on the top floor, and my studio in the basement, and packing materials scattered in both places. When an Etsy order came in and I had to print notecards, package them for shipping, and ship them out, I had to walk up and down two flights of stairs to gather everything I needed. I created my art in one space, and scanned the artwork on an entirely different floor of the house; I then stored finished artwork in yet another room/closet. (I wrote a bit about trying to figure out how to organize my artwork/art supplies in this blog post.) Then, once our daughter was born and the COVID-19 pandemic shifted my husband to all-online school and then work, we rearranged the house a bit, moving both his desk and my desk down to the basement. I liked having my computer on the same floor as my studio... so when we decided to move, that was one of the first things I tried to figure out - how to make it work so that I could have a COMBO studio/office, instead of housing my artwork and my computer/desk in two different spaces. My BFA was a double concentration in graphic design and watercolor, and a decade later I continue to do both. I combine "fine art" techniques and digital techniques when I design patterns on my computer, print them out, trace them onto watercolor paper, paint them with traditional methods, scan them back to the computer, and resize them for printable notecards. Or when I draw colored pencil artwork using the computer to help find source material of different types of flowers. Even just creating art and then writing about the art on this blog, or uploading designs to Etsy to sell, requires the use of a "studio" and an "office". The more I thought about it, the less sense it made to physically separate these two sides of my work. I wanted a room that would be both (which I've started to call my "studio" IRL just so it's easier to differentiate in conversation from my husband's "office"). 

I measured all the furniture I wanted to fit into "my studio" and made sure that it would all fit in a to-scale floorplan I made in Adobe Illustrator, before we had the contractor start work on the basement. Once I was sure the room would be big enough and everything would fit (and that it wouldn't detract from other things we wanted to also have in the basement to have my studio so big), we went for it. (Side note: I'm so lucky to have a partner who supports my artwork and my desire to have this big space all just for "my" projects. I felt a little guilty taking up so much of the basement for my studio (especially since, as a new mom, I'm not using it very much these days), but he was always all for it, even when it meant taking the cool electric fireplace/space heater the previous owners had installed in one of the basement walls.)

The room is 21' x 14', and fits 1) my L-shaped computer desk with iMac, HP Officejet printer, and three storage towers of printer paper, photo paper, notecard paper, and envelopes, 2) my easel (which never even fit in the basement of our last house, because it was too tall for the short basement ceiling height), 3) a small desk perfect for colored pencil drawings, 4) five bookcases to organize art supplies and office supplies, as well as extra wall space for organizing gift wrap supplies and other craft supplies, 5) a sewing cabinet (which I don't even use and is so far purely aspirational), and 6) my large folding table in the center of the room, which I use for watercolor paintings and large-scale projects. There is also (hopefully) room for a shelving unit/cabinet for storing large art paper (drawing paper, newsprint, watercolor paper, and unused canvases), but that it yet to be purchased and/or built.

Here are some pictures of the room thus far, as I've started to unpack and organize everything:

It's not done yet - obviously some things are still in boxes, unpacked. I have to figure out what exactly I'm going to do to store my art paper and other art supplies that are too large for the bookcases. My husband and his sister want to build me a cabinet, thinking that would be easier than purchasing one (they are quite expensive, and quite heavy, and we aren't sure how we'd get it down there if we didn't... build one in the room or near the room). So right now the going plan is to wait until the weather warms up, and then hopefully we can build some shelves or a cabinet, cutting the wood to size in the garage or on the back patio right outside my studio, and then bringing the pieces inside and assembling it in the room. But we will see what the warmer weather brings (assuming we ever get any... February in Michigan always has one feeling a bit pessimistic). :)

I'm so happy I got everything to fit. I just know having everything in the same room will really streamline my creativity/productivity - which is, as any parent will tell you, so important when your time to get not-parenting things done is so much less than it used to be before kids! :)

Recreating the Nursery

In October 2018, in between my two pregnancies (the first which ended in a miscarriage and the second which led to the birth of our daughter in January 2020), I spent a few days painting yellow ombre stripes on the walls of the room that would become our nursery. I wrote about the process in this blog post, but the "tl;dr" of it was that 1) it gave me something to do to transform my grief after miscarriage into hope that we would get pregnant again and use that room as a nursery some day after all, and 2) it involved a lot of painter's tape. Like, a LOT a lot. And then a lot of touching up once the tape was removed and we saw all the oopsies we managed to make despite the painstaking measuring and taping. But I loved the end result, and I loved it even more when we had furniture in the room too, and we started using it for our daughter.

(See more pictures of the finished nursery in this blog post.)

So when we decided to move... of course I had to recreate stripes again in her new bedroom. It was one of the things I was saddest about leaving behind in our old house, and something that I knew would make our new house feel like ours. I also hoped that it might ease our 1-year-old's transition - I reasoned that if her new room looked similar to her old room, it'd be easier to get used to living in a totally new house. On the other hand, we have a pretty easy-going child, and I think her general go-with-the-flow attitude about moving had more to do with her personality and her age (being just young enough still that she doesn't quite yet *expect* things to stay the same from day-to-day) than about me painting stripes. Saying it was "for her" would be a lie. She doesn't say any words yet (other than "mama mama mama" all day long) and I have no idea what her favorite color is, or what her feelings are about stripes. In all honesty, painting stripes on her walls for me, and for me alone. ;)

What I didn't anticipate about painting stripes the second time around was how much longer it would take, thanks to 1) the aforementioned 1-year-old, and 2) the fact that we weren't yet living in the house when I painted them. We wanted the room painted before moving our daughter's furniture (and ourselves) in, which meant I could only paint during the few short hours we would drive down to our new house on weekends. My husband did all the measuring and marking with a pencil, and helped with some of the taping. Those processes took at least a weekend in total (it was so long ago I don't remember at this point). Then once we were ready to go, I painted two stripes one day, another two the next, and then didn't get to paint the fifth and final stripe until the following weekend. And then the touch-ups... First the room was pink when we bought the house - light pink on 3 walls and dark pink on the 4th wall - and some of the lighter yellows I chose did not cover the dark pink wall very well, and required two coats. I also had to do white touch-ups on the ceiling, trim, and door frame. And of course the touch-ups along each "seam" where the paint changed color. All in all I was painting for 1.5 months - an hour here, an hour there, when we were in the new house for a short time between our daughter's naps (which we tried to time with the drives back and forth between our houses, since it was an hour-long drive each way, and it was convenient for her to be able to nap in the car). It was SO MUCH work. But again... I loved the end result! And I loved it even more when we moved in, added her furniture (and books and toys) and it really became *her* space.

There is one big change I made from the first room - instead of doing 5 shades of a slightly greenish yellow, I did 5 stripes of warmer (slightly orangeish) yellows, and orange. In her old room, there was a brown hardwood floor, and we had a light green area rug that I had to coordinate the colors with; going too orange with that yellow was not an option - it just didn't look nice with the rug. But her new room has white carpet, which means the area rug didn't come with us (we had no use for it elsewhere in the house either), and I wasn't restrained in color choice trying to coordinate with it. Instead, I focused on choosing colors that would go with the artwork I created for her, and something that would pick up the browns in her wood furniture. I decided to branch out from just doing one color family (yellow) and used both yellow and orange instead. So the first stripe was a pale yellow ("String Cheese"), the second stripe was a slightly yellower/darker ("Vanilla Ice Cream"), the third stripe was a really saturated yellow ("Yellow Jubilee"), and then I transitioned to more orange with two shades of yellowish-orange, one lighter ("Solar Storm") and one darker ("Splendor Gold").

I won't write up the whole process again, since it was the same as the first time I did it - measure, draw pencil lines, tape alternate stripes, paint, take the tape off, put new tape up, paint more, etc. - but here are some of the in-progress pics so you can get a sense of the steps I took:

Doesn't the room just look so much brighter and happier with yellow and orange than it did with those pink walls? I have nothing against pink in general (though I do find it far too cliche for a baby girl's nursery)... but the pinks the previous owners selected were really "cool" pinks (meaning pinks that leaned more purple/blue than red) and it made the room look dark and a bit depressing for a toddler's room. I just LOVE how happy and sunny the yellows and oranges look! They fit our daughter's personality so much better.

Finally, here are some photos of the finished nursery, once we moved in:

Lots of work? YES. Worth it? Also yes.

Moving!

I already mentioned this in a couple other recent posts, but the reason there have been less frequent posts lately is because we've been very busy moving! My husband got a job working for a non-profit in Ann Arbor, we found a house we love in a neighborhood we love, bought it, and then have spent the last few months trying to move as safely as possible during a pandemic. 

Because we wanted to avoid frequent and/or unnecessary contact with others outside our bubble, that meant 1) we couldn't live in a house while any large-scale renovations were happening on it (a.k.a. we couldn't move into our new Ann Arbor house until the projects we wanted completed were finished) and 2) we couldn't live in a house while it was on the market (a.k.a. we couldn't list our Rochester Hills house until we were fully moved out and living in Ann Arbor). Thankfully, we were able to purchase our new house before selling our old one, which made that plan possible... But it was a long, drawn-out process, which was frustrating at times. We put down our offer on the new house in September, bought it in October, had work done on it starting in December, finally moved in mid-January, and our old house is finally being listed in 5 days, on February 17.

From when we got the keys in October until we moved in mid-January, we made the 2+ hour round-trip at least once a week (usually on weekends as a family, but also several solo trips in the evenings some weekdays after our 1-year-old fell asleep). We used that time to do some painting (mainly painting yellow and orange stripes on the walls of our 1-year-old's new nursery, which turned out to be a very long and labor-intensive process when only able to be done in short bursts), and to bring down carload upon carload of stuff - furniture small enough to fit in our cars, and boxes and boxes of the random assortment of junk one accumulates over the years.

We also hired a contractor to do some work for us in the basement of our new house - to change the open floor plan into a large pantry/storage space, a guest bedroom, a playroom, and an office/studio room for me, as well as to finish a basement bathroom that the previous owners had started but not completed. Three walls had to be built, some new flooring put in - all in all, it was a rather intensive project, and it took about 5 weeks to complete. Initially, we hoped it'd be done in December and we'd be able to move before the end of 2020, but then there were some COVID-related delays that postponed our timeline... First, the contractor had to finish up another job before starting ours, and couldn't finish that job without a city inspection - and because the city inspectors were running behind, so was our contractor. Then he was possibly exposed to COVID and had to quarantine two weeks from the exposure date. But once he finally got started on our project, it went pretty quickly (even though two of the 5 weeks coincided with the holidays - Christmas week and New Year's week), and we were very happy with the work he completed, and his transparency and professionalism with regards to COVID safety protocols (something we can't say for others we've worked with on this moving process). 

Once he was finished, we finally got to move! We'd brought nearly everything we could in advance already, and had professional movers scheduled for a week later to bring the furniture that was too bring for us to bring ourselves. So on the day of our official transition from Rochester Hills residents to Ann Arbor residents, we brought the last-minute furniture essentials - such as our daughter's crib (disassembled for transit, then quickly reassembled in the new nursery in time for her next nap), rocking chair, and dresser/changing table - along with some of her books and toys (others didn't fit in the car and were picked up over the next two days as we made a couple more solo trips back-and-forth to our old house). My husband and I slept on an air mattress until the movers brought our bed the following week, but our daughter's nursery was pretty much all set immediately, which I'm so grateful we were able to achieve. It was important for me to make sure her nursery felt as much like home as possible, as soon as possible, with all of her familiar things in it, to help with the transition for her.

On the day the professional movers picked up the last of our remaining items in Rochester Hills, I stayed in Ann Arbor with our daughter and dog, while my husband went to the old house to meet the movers. They were only mildly respectful of our wishes that they wear face masks (one of the two movers kept pushing his mask down to his chin, completely defeating the purpose), but we were able to keep our distance from them, and now that three weeks have passed since that day, I think it's safe to say that we didn't catch COVID from them. I stayed in the nursery with our daughter and dog while they moved the furniture into the other rooms of our new house. Our daughter did not take her afternoon nap, and the dog was Very Upset that we wouldn't let her out to go jump on the movers, after so many months of depriving her of visitors during these Awful Pandemic Times, but we made it through the couple of hours we were stuck in the nursery. In a parallel universe where there wasn't a pandemic, I wouldn't loved to have let our daughter see the movers in action, and get the stimulation of seeing something new and exciting, but we felt it was better to be safe and hidden away from their masklessness.

We've spent the last month living in our new house finishing up some other painting projects - the en suite bathroom upstairs, the new basement bathroom, the new basement guest room, and an accent wall in the dining room - all of which I'll post about in future blog entries. It's also been, as you can imagine, a lot of unpacking and organizing, deciding where furniture and items should go, hanging things on the wall, and just generally trying to make the space ours. We've finally crossed off much of our massive to-do list now - not only does the space feel like home already, but now I'm starting to feel like I can breathe a little, and pick up on other projects again. I have plans for artwork in particular (after months of having my art supplies packed up in boxes), and hopefully that'll translate to more frequent blog posts about said artwork as well... though with a 1-year-old (and still that pesky ongoing pandemic), no guarantees I'll have time for much other than chasing her around the house!

As for our old house, there were a couple things our realtor suggested we do to get it ready to sell, so we've been focusing on getting those projects completed as well over the last month, now that we were no longer living there. We had someone come and install a new fireplace hearth, and a painter come to neutralize all the beautiful paint colors I'd picked out over the years (including the OG yellow stripes in our daughter's first nursery, which I'd painted just after my miscarriage in 2018 and meant a lot to me). We also had the kitchen countertop replaced. And this past week, my husband and I have been making more of those 2+ hour round trips (when Michigan's winter weather allows) back and forth between our houses - this time to clean the old one: removing our daughter's fingerprints from the windows, getting the kitchen cabinets and bathroom fixtures to shine, etc. In two days we have a stager coming to put in some furniture (now that the house is empty and boring), and a photographer taking some professional photos of the rooms for the official listing, and then the listing will go live on February 17! 

It was a wonderful house, and one that we envisioned staying in for the rest of our lives. We put a lot of work into it in the 8.5 years we've owned it - new roof, new siding, new insulation, new patio, new windows and window treatments. I love our new house - it's perfect for our family in ways the other one wasn't, which we didn't even truly realize until we found it and saw how great it was - but I will definitely miss the old house too, and all the memories. It was the house and backyard that our dog Ginny knew for the first 5.5 years of her life. It was the house our daughter was brought home to - the house where she first rolled over and sat up and crawled. She won't even remember it - it's been only a month away from it, but already I wonder if she remembers it at all. But time marches on, and this move is definitely for the better for us. I am relieved that this long moving process is finally wrapping up and that we can really start our new lives in this new house now that we're settled in and unpacked. It would've been so much easier (and quicker) of a process if we 1) hadn't decided to move during a pandemic, and while taking as many safety precautions as possible, and 2) hadn't had a baby limiting the time we could spend packing and unpacking and making trips to-and-from the houses all the time, but we made the best of it. :)