Quirky Portraits and More

While we are in the middle of trying to renovate our condo, we decided that a very quick weekend trip was in order. As I have mentioned in prior postings, I collect portraits. I found two I wanted – or absolutely had to have in Connecticut and NYC so we made the trek last weekend to pick them up. In less than 24 hours we came home with three new portraits, LOL.

We started our trip on Friday night after work; drove to New Jersey, stayed the night, and then on to Danbury, Connecticut. Quick side note, tolls are insane! I think we spent $40 on tolls. Thank god we have an E-Z Pass, otherwise the tolls would’ve been even higher.

Ok, so here is what all of the fuss was about.

Meet Priscilla. I found her on Marketplace about a month ago. I asked the seller if she would ship the portrait but it is quite large and probably would’ve been cost prohibitive. So, I checked everyday to see if the painting had sold. Finally, Adam and I decided to make the trip and get her and we are so happy we did. I absolutely love, love, love this portrait.

I had my eye on another portrait in NYC. I have been watching it on Marketplace for about 6 months. I think it was fate because she was still available when we made our trip and I picked her up too. I don’t have a name for her yet. As you can see, there is a little bit of damage to the portrait but I think it adds character. And, we only paid $9 for it.

We had some time to kill while we we were waiting to pickup our New York gal, so we parked …we found street parking right outside the apartment of where we picked up the New York portrait. We wandered around Hell’s Kitchen and stumbled upon a street market/garage sale/flea market and found another portrait! I move much slower than Adam when we go antiquing so he was way ahead of me. He spotted another female portrait. Long story short, we bought it too. I don’t have a name for her yet either.

So, you’re probably thinking I’m crazy, and yes, that is probably true. But, i just can’t help myself.  I am up to 7 portraits; 6 female and 1 male.

Ok, enough about our wacky travels but I will admit, that was such a fun, exhilarating trip. We stopped in NYC at 10:30 am, picked up our portraits, ate lunch, and were home by 6 pm.

Here’s an update on our condo remodel. We thought we found the hardwood floor we wanted but the more we looked at it, the more orange it looked. Thus began our quest for non-orange floors. I posted a picture of the floor in a previous post but here is a refresh. This is Toffee Oak. It doesn’t look orange in the picture because the lighting is bad, but it definitely has an orange tint to it.

We have been to multiple flooring stores now. This is just a sampling of the samples we have. Part of the problem is we have a tight deadline and most stores don’t keep hardwoods in stock. I think we are leaning towards the wood on the top right but don’t quote us!

We have painted almost every room in our condo. I swear, we are constantly painting. I’ll give you a sneak peak of the guest bedroom (before photos below). The prior owner put some weird treatment on the wall. It looks like multiple paint colors and then the paint was scratched off to add depth. I had to take a sanding sponge and scrape everything off all of the walls  and then we had to prime the walls before we could paint. If you look closely, we were blessed with a stencil on the ceiling (yes, that was sarcasm). So, lucky us, we get to repaint the ceiling too.

It’s hard to tell how dark the paint is in the pictures above because of the camera flash but with only one window in the guest room, we definitely had to brighten it up. We liked one of the colors we put in Spotswood so much we used it again in the condo. Of course, we’re still not done. Need to cover a few outlets, paint the ceiling, and the closet. I think I’m going to try removable wallpaper in one of the closets.

We have been at the condo every night after work and all weekend long. I can’t wait until we finish round one of renovations (new kitchen, new hardwood floors). Stay tuned for more updates.