Raw City Home Lounge

C’mon… You know that you’re wishing you thought of this.

Body mods can be fun!

It was very late in the night on the day before the family was to return, which meant we were in for a long night.

I was working on a family room in Boston; it was freezing and late and frantic, and I was struggling to learn how to do a crazy paint treatment on the walls that, turns out, I wasn’t very good at. But a local artist named Lakshmi was helping me and things were going well.

We were painting and putting up moldings and doing the usual last minute stuff. The worksite was always completely crazy then, sometimes a thousand people still working, landscaping going in, painting trim, furniture moving around, pictures getting hung; it’s an impossible amount of activity packed into a ridiculously small space.

When the build is in full swing, there are always a bunch of charities and “awareness” groups on site; they are volunteering or helping out however they can and generally are very helpful. In addition to the ubiquitous blue shirts that everyone wears on site (except us) they usually wear hats or badges or something that identifies them as part of the American Lung Association or the Red Cross or the Autism Awareness people and so on.

At any rate, very late in the night, a young and pretty woman came into my room and said, “Hey, I’m with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. What can I do?” So Lakshmi hooked her up with some paint and a can and showed her how to do the wall treatment and she dug in.

Of course, we all got to talking as everyone tried to keep their energy up and their mood high and sometimes in those situations things would get sorta personal and Lakshmi asked the pretty woman, “So what do you do for Make-A-Wish?” The woman (whose name I’m not saying for the sake of her privacy) looked at us with a quizzical expression before she smiled and said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess I wasn’t clear.” And I’m tired, let’s be honest, so I put my brush down for a second and turn to her, and the young woman continues, “I don’t WORK for Make-A-Wish. I’m a client. I’m here because this was my wish.”

And then what do you say? We nodded and went back to work and after a few minutes of silence, I figured I’d go ahead and poke the elephant in the room and so I asked the only question that made any sense, the one that everyone was thinking but couldn’t say. “Whaddaya got?” I said.

She didn’t even pause, “Leukemia. The bad kind.” And then she laughed, “you know, not the GOOD leukemia…” and she kept right on painting as if she were completely unaware that she had just changed our lives.

We finished up the room, the family came home, everyone cried, they always do.

Turns out Nancy Hadley (the show muralist and one of my favorite people ever) had experienced nearly the same moment with the pretty girl while they worked together on Ed’s room. We talked about it for a long time afterwards and tried to make sense of it: how the world could be so cruel and so miraculous at exactly the same time. We hugged each other the next day and sobbed out of exhaustion and emotion (both are abundant at the end of a build) and we both knew that we’d never see the pretty young woman again; how could we?
I don’t know what the specifics of her wish were, maybe it was “I want to be on TV!” or maybe it was “I want to help a family in need” or maybe it was exactly what she said, “I want to work on a build for Extreme.” But either way, that was five years ago and remains one of the most moving moments of my life, and often serves to bolster my faith in the world, or at least for its children.

No good deed goes unpunished....

This gives whole new meaning to the term “Periodic Table.”

'cause geeks need furniture, too...

The top is poured concrete which comes in at about 18 pounds a foot, so this one weighs about, oh, a gazillion pounds, give or take.  The base is reclaimed lumber.

Can someone help me load it onto the truck please?

Anyone?

Tete a tete (noun)

A.  A term for a hair pulling fight that occurs predominately in females.  Similar to mano a mano in males.

B.  A slang phrase used in the plastic surgery circles for breast implants.

A small, curved sofa on which two people can face each other.

ANSWER:  C

Etymology

French tête-à-tête (“‘head-to-head’”)

[edit] Noun

tête-à-tête (plural tête-à-têtes)

1. A face-to-face meeting, or private conversation between two people, usually in an intimate setting; a head-to-head.
2. A bench or sofa that allows two people to talk face-to-face
   
3. 

What is Negative Space?

Negative space in action: do you see a vase or two faces?

Image: ©2006 Marion Boddy-Evans. Licensed to About.com, Inc.

Negative space isn’t the place your mind retreats to when a painting isn’t going well. Negative space is the space between objects or parts of an object, or around it. Studying this can have a surprisingly positive effect on a painting.

In her book Drawing on the Right Hand Side of the Brain Betty Edwards uses a great Bugs Bunny analogy to explain negative space. Imagine Bugs Bunny speeding along and running through a door. What you’ll see in the cartoon is a door with a bunny-shaped hole in it. What’s left of the door is the negative space, that is the space around the object, in this case Bugs Bunny.

Is It a Vase or Two Faces?

The classic example of negative space or shapes is the brain-teaser where depending on how you look you see either a vase or two faces (as shown in the image above). It becomes very evident when the image is reversed.

courtesy of http://painting.about.com/

Nancy Hadley was the muralist on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition when I was there and working with her often made the whole thing bearable.  She is smart, funny, crazy talented and way more fun to paint with than just about anyone.  Since then, she has been active all over design TV.  We’ve also worked on murals and designs for lots of different clients.    Here is a quick story from Nancy Hadley.   -Daniel

I bolted the front end of this motorcycle to the wall, Nancy made it fly!

I have been working in reality television for five and half years.  My first show was Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on ABC.  It was one of the highlights of my professional life.  The workload and deadlines were brutal but I expected and loved it. I had not anticipated the incredible friendships I would make while working on the road.  A typical schedule for work would go as follows.  Get up at 4am, shower, eat breakfast, lift two little girls out of bed and take them to the car, coax one larger 8 year old boy into the car and wake my husband.  With a car-load of very sleepy people I would drive to the John Wayne airport.  My husband would pull out my enormous suitcase, hand me my backpack and kiss me goodbye.  With the kids it was a little more emotional. There were many many hugs and tears and I would have to peal off little hands to start my journey. At the check out counter the attendants recognized me.  They would always ask where the house was going to be this time.   I had the security check down to a science that is until liquids were not allowed.  Computer out of bag – check, shoes off – check, jacket off – check, boarding pass and id in hand – check, avoid line with strollers – check, make joke about athletes foot risk – check, walk thru and pack it all back in my bag.  In the terminal I would frequent a snack stand that sold muffins but as I did not drink coffee, I ordered it with hot chocolate.  Next I would find my way to the gate and search for a seat till my boarding letter was called.  Just one year prior to my travel for the show I was an extremely nervous flier.  I would pace while waiting to board and roll airplane disaster stories through my head before surrendering to the fact that the plane was just going to crash. I would count seats to the nearest exit and take a baby census because maybe they could save us.  Always astounded to land safely I would exit thankful to be alive.