The Piano Obsession

For our 2nd anniversary, Ryan bought me a baby grand piano off of craigslist. I have been trying to get back into piano and have been obsessed with learning 2 songs written by Michael Nyman (the songs are on the playlist)--both from a movie called "The Piano". I haven't seen the movie, but the music is mysterious/intense/passionate. It really is an obsession since I play it everyday, trying to get further and further through the songs.

As I play, I often wonder what the history of our piano is. For instance, who played on this piano? How often was it played? What was the hardest piece that was played? The person we bought the piano from said that it was 90 years old. I don't know if that is true since I did some research about Steinert pianos and came across an article about various clues that date the piano. On our piano, there are 2 stickers on the back by the National Association of Music Merchants, which dates this piano to 1919 at the earliest. And then there is another clue about the tuning pins base section alignment, which may actually date our piano post-1925.

At any rate, the haunting pieces are an obsession not only during the waking hours as I relentlessly work through the pieces, but the melodies even seep into my dreams...

Extreme Home Makeover--Jamison Style

Since we are now homeowners, we have been immersed into the world of home improvement. Our new favorite stores are The Home Depot and Lowes. The people there in both stores have been such a help for us novices/"weekend warriors" (seriously, a Lowes employee in the paint department called us that). The first two areas we worked on were the garage and bedroom.

For the garage, we have put an epoxy coating on our garage floor and primed and painted the walls and ceiling. Here are the "before" and "after" pictures of our garage:

Before After

Ryan has grandiose plans to put in movable cabinets and a huge workbench and tool cabinet, but that will be a gradual process. We had to have a professional come out and install the water softener since we have really hard water out here. Ryan and our neighbor took a shot at it, but after hours of trying and countless trips to Home Depot and Lowes, we had to call in the professionals.

For the bedroom, my first project was to make a tuffed headboard. I saw this project on HGTV and they made it look so easy (as always). It took about 1/2 a day and it went much more smoothly with Ryan's help (the tuffed buttons were a pain!). Ryan was also able to install his first ceiling fan (more ceiling fans to install later in other rooms...). The pics above our bed are beach scenes (which I really miss) and were taken by my brother, Ben, who claims that I need to wire him money for his photography services. Ryan kinda thinks our room looks like a hotel room and wonders if I am having traveling withdrawals...

Before
After

I am in process of tackling the huge 2-story wall in our entranceway. This has been a decor issue for me. Any ideas??? I ordered a 47" console table to put there and I bought 3 huge canvases (24"x48"). I was thinking of painting them as an abstract triptych to break up the white space. However, I am struggling to find inspiration for these canvases as well.

Empty entranceway :(