On a cold snowy day last winter, we were inspired
With all the snow I was getting anxious for a "warm, sunny day" in Lindley. Then I entered my dining room and found the day I was looking for and thought I'd share it.
Last winter, just after Christmas, Lar and I were pondering about "re-doing" the dining room. A room we had been using as a living/TV room. We have lived in this house for 12 years and managed to "re-do" several of the rooms except this one. Why? We were uninspired. Any decorating idea I had just wasn't "the look" I was after.
The room's walls were wallpapered in very large white dogwood flowers on a dark-green background from out of the 1940's era. It wasn't horrible to look at, but I couldn't come up with anything that would inspire me enough to spend the time and labor to strip off the wallpaper. If anyone out there has ever stripped 17 layers of wallpaper, including the ceiling, knows what I'm talking about. You're looking at a month long mess and a bad case of carpal tunnel in your wrists.
So we put it off until the night it all came together.
We turned on the overhead light, a flying saucer shaped light from the 50's that Lar kept banging his head on, and walked around the room. We decided whatever we did with the walls, we would continue the "trimming style" we used in the "middle room", which was to drop down 2.5 feet from the ceiling and attach a "chair rail" to break up the 10-feet high ceiling look.
Then we began to discuss with the room being a dining room we should hang our old pictures in the 2.5 feet area above the chair rail molding to give our dining guests something to look at when they sat at the table. In the next instant, I swear, the idea of the mural was born. We had always talked about Lar doing a mural in the house, but always thought he'd paint it going up the stair well. I said, and Lar gives me full credit for the idea because sometimes he doesn't and we argue about it. (Many of you couples out there know what I'm talking about)....let's do a mural!
And both of us knew what the mural would be---it would be a panorama of landmark buildings in Lindley from a hundred years ago.
I grabbed the Lindley History book and started to choose the buildings and "land"locations that best represented Lindley from the past. The difficult part of the design was to place the buildings in a "continuous order" because the buildings were from all over Lindley. So I decided to make the clusters of buildings "representational" instead of trying to follow an "exact placement" view. I split the 17 buildings and landmarks I'd chosen into a quadrant, north, south, east and west and placed the buildings according to their compass direction. The result was interesting. When people view the mural they get a sense, just a sense, of where they are in relation to the town.
I was so excited, I had the wallpaper stripped off in 24 hours! I'm kidding, of course, but it didn't take me long. Once the walls were re-plastered and primed with a base coat, Lar went to painting one panel at a time. We figure it took him almost a month to finish the mural, although he still has some "details" left to do.The mural, from end to end, is 56 feet long.
The best way to view the mural on the blog is to: Click on the accompanying photo in this post and it will take you to an enlarged view of it in "flickr" and when you're in the "flickr" page, click on "Sallyann's photostream". On the left hand side of my photo page you will see "Sets". One of them is called the "Lindley mural". Click on that and it will ask you if you want to see the "Lindley mural" set as a slide show. Click on the slide show option to watch the photos of the mural. I've set the photos of the mural so they go "by in order" as you would see them if you were standing in the dining room.
I've posted the mural for three reasons: To show off Lar's talent as an artist and to keep from having to clean house everytime someone wants to come and view the mural, and to share them with you on this snowy day.
Last winter, just after Christmas, Lar and I were pondering about "re-doing" the dining room. A room we had been using as a living/TV room. We have lived in this house for 12 years and managed to "re-do" several of the rooms except this one. Why? We were uninspired. Any decorating idea I had just wasn't "the look" I was after.
The room's walls were wallpapered in very large white dogwood flowers on a dark-green background from out of the 1940's era. It wasn't horrible to look at, but I couldn't come up with anything that would inspire me enough to spend the time and labor to strip off the wallpaper. If anyone out there has ever stripped 17 layers of wallpaper, including the ceiling, knows what I'm talking about. You're looking at a month long mess and a bad case of carpal tunnel in your wrists.
So we put it off until the night it all came together.
We turned on the overhead light, a flying saucer shaped light from the 50's that Lar kept banging his head on, and walked around the room. We decided whatever we did with the walls, we would continue the "trimming style" we used in the "middle room", which was to drop down 2.5 feet from the ceiling and attach a "chair rail" to break up the 10-feet high ceiling look.
Then we began to discuss with the room being a dining room we should hang our old pictures in the 2.5 feet area above the chair rail molding to give our dining guests something to look at when they sat at the table. In the next instant, I swear, the idea of the mural was born. We had always talked about Lar doing a mural in the house, but always thought he'd paint it going up the stair well. I said, and Lar gives me full credit for the idea because sometimes he doesn't and we argue about it. (Many of you couples out there know what I'm talking about)....let's do a mural!
And both of us knew what the mural would be---it would be a panorama of landmark buildings in Lindley from a hundred years ago.
I grabbed the Lindley History book and started to choose the buildings and "land"locations that best represented Lindley from the past. The difficult part of the design was to place the buildings in a "continuous order" because the buildings were from all over Lindley. So I decided to make the clusters of buildings "representational" instead of trying to follow an "exact placement" view. I split the 17 buildings and landmarks I'd chosen into a quadrant, north, south, east and west and placed the buildings according to their compass direction. The result was interesting. When people view the mural they get a sense, just a sense, of where they are in relation to the town.
I was so excited, I had the wallpaper stripped off in 24 hours! I'm kidding, of course, but it didn't take me long. Once the walls were re-plastered and primed with a base coat, Lar went to painting one panel at a time. We figure it took him almost a month to finish the mural, although he still has some "details" left to do.The mural, from end to end, is 56 feet long.
The best way to view the mural on the blog is to: Click on the accompanying photo in this post and it will take you to an enlarged view of it in "flickr" and when you're in the "flickr" page, click on "Sallyann's photostream". On the left hand side of my photo page you will see "Sets". One of them is called the "Lindley mural". Click on that and it will ask you if you want to see the "Lindley mural" set as a slide show. Click on the slide show option to watch the photos of the mural. I've set the photos of the mural so they go "by in order" as you would see them if you were standing in the dining room.
I've posted the mural for three reasons: To show off Lar's talent as an artist and to keep from having to clean house everytime someone wants to come and view the mural, and to share them with you on this snowy day.
posted by sallyann | 12:36 PM
2 Comments:
That mural is an incredible work of art!
I was lucky enough to watch Lar in action developing the mural and it is truly a work of art. I made several visits over the course of his work to view the progress. What a real pleasure to see a true artist at work!
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