Feeling Groovy

RACING STRIPES: So, what do we at MPA do when we're mostly snowed in for a few days?

We get crazy and paint retro racing stripes on our dining room wall, that's what we do.

When we heard the forecast that big snow was coming, I made sure to get to the paint store to order supplies, so that we had something to work on while house bound. In our case, the supplies consisted of a gallon of glossy white paint, and three poppy shades of green. ("Oh, the Kermit colors," as the manager at the paint store referred to them when I picked the order up.)

I love space/atomic age decor, and we have been incorporating it little by little into our new-ish MPA 'campus.' This project wasn't so little. It involved re-imagining the main wall in the dining room.

Once upon a time, a perfectly nice piece of furniture occupied the space.

This great old mid-century modern cabinet offered lots of storage and had nice bones. But it was more mid-century than modern, and the dining room needed some punch. :) So we sold the cabinet to a woman who was SO thrilled to have it (she had one exactly like it and her adult son wanted one so badly and she was over the moon when she spotted my ad on Craigslist - happy to the point she offered to pay more than the asking price [which I declined]).

Anyway, once it was gone, we could get to updating the space. 

For months and months, I'd looked for something to put in that space. I wanted wall hung cabinets and was dead set on them having to have curved corners. Let me tell you, that's not easy to find. But lo and behold, one Saturday morning I was browsing the website of our favorite salvage yard and there was the answer!  They had two used upper kitchen cabinets - each with a rounded corner on its end. Hooray! We went and bought them.

They had a little water damage on the bottom, so that required some sanding and filling. Actually, we had to sand the whole darn things, because we were going to be painting over the birds eye maple veneer. 

We also had to add some veneer where there was none, on each end. Then we had to carefully fill the transition from new veneer to old, and camouflage the center seam between the two cabinets. 

Christian crafted a new top to the cabinet out of A-faced 3/4 inch plywood. He routered the edges, because they just *had* to be round, like the corners. 

Once the cabinet was mounted, it was time to talk racing stripes. We had to decide on the scale of them. We messed around with various configurations before deciding on three stripes, all green, in 4-, 5- and 6-inch widths.

The project also involved mounting five floating shelves. We bought them at IKEA but had to cut them down to size for length, so they'd fit between the stripe and the end of the cabinet.

 Then the real fun began - painting!!

 The middle stripe was first. 

 Even with just one stripe done, I was already loving it!

 The curves were the trickiest part. No way to tape those off, really, so they had to be free-handed.

A few days later, the project was complete!

I know it's not everyone's style, but we're super happy with it.

It was a fun, rewarding way to spend Seattle Snowpocalypse 2019.