finished...and a selfie

I woke up this morning at home, having finished the work in the shop, with the backache that tells me that I have been working too long and too intensely without taking the necessary breaks and stretches, the downtime, I need.

It was an unsatisfying last week. I got the work finished but I'm not completely happy with it. I decided to go with 1/2" tempered at the last minute because the client's glass man recommended it though I usually work on 3/8" laminated. It is more difficult for me to order that as the wholesaler has instituted a minimum and this did not meet it. I could still get it but they would add $50 to the total. Now I'm thinking I should have just done that. I wish I had done what I am used to.

Because I don't like the way the background came out. The four panels I did the two previous weeks came out great but they were annealed (not tempered) and laminated is made from two pieces of annealed.

two of the four cabinet panels

The point is that the cream etch I use for backgrounds sometimes reacts differently with tempered glass. I say sometimes because I know this has happened before but I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened every time on tempered. I don't think. We don't work on tempered that much.

Bored with the totally unnecessary details of my work yet?

Anyway, these last two panels are for the customer in Maryland for whom I was doing Chesapeake Bay flora and fauna. And I recommended doing the background (whatever you think is best, he said).

It looks OK, I guess. My grandson said it looked more like water but it wasn't the softer mottled tone I am used to. It was more varied in tone, more mottled, it doesn't fade into the background. It's too busy for the carved elements.

I wanted the last work to be satisfying and this wasn't. It was hot and I was tired at the end of a long slog in the shop. Instead of finishing with a flourish, I feel disappointed.

We still have to deliver the panels to the company that is going to crate them and deliver them and I want to take pictures with the tripod that we forgot to take with us this time.

But, we are done working in that shop. And we are done sleeping in the house. I think. We brought back the rockers on the porch and the birdbath. Still have lots to fetch.

Next week I think we are going to take down the Dresden porcelain chandelier. I don't remember exactly when my mother bought the chandelier but I can't ever really remember when she didn't have it. It always hung in parents' bedroom and I have always loved it. Still do. And when she died there was no question who was getting it.

It hangs nicely from a 10' ceiling in the old house.

It will hang from an 8' ceiling out here above the dining room table.