....A lot of work!!!
After months of planning and working and worrying, Ella and finished the first phase of the window. With a goal of not purchasing anything new to use, we were definitely challenged to find/use things we already had and up-cycle as many items as we could.
For me, the challenge was to find something big enough to become the "doors". In the past, I have purchased large 4ftx8ft panels of insulated foam board for projects like this. It's inexpensive, lightweight....weight....wait! That goes against everything we are trying to do!
So I looked around my garage and found that I had 3 panels of thin plywood that I had used in another project. They were all warped and stained, and the corners were a bit ragged, but I thought I could make it work.
Ella and I had to do a lot of "mathing" in this design. In order for the doors to work out perfectly, we had to measure the size of the windows and then work backward towards the size of the doors. We decided to keep it simple and make the doors each 4ftWx6ftH, and use the space surrounding the doors as a bit of a buffer.
Since the panels were not painted on either side, I needed to find enough paint to give me a good first coat to start. After looking around my house, asking neighbors and fellow artists for paint and finding none or not enough, I decided to head to Sherwin-Williams to see if they had any samples or returns I could buy for cheap.
Once I explained my plight and project to the very nice salesperson, he immediately said they had just got a can of white paint returned and they wouldn't be able to resale it. I offered to pay for it, but he handed it to me and told me good luck on the project. WOW! Sometimes things work out just perfectly!
Luckily, the weather this winter has been mild and I was able to paint all 3 panels and let them dry outside.
I designed the look of the panel in Photoshop to make sure the scale and size were correct. Although I was planning to hand-painted them without tape or stencils, I wanted them all look the same. Ella let me use her projector which made the job of transferring the basic design to the panels much easier than expected! With a few simple pencil marks I was able to decipher and draw out where the design was. I've never used a projector before as I thought it was a little like cheating (for me only...not for anyone else who has used one in their art). But, if needed I'll consider it again!
The last issue I had was with the actual paint on the panels. As I mentioned before, we didn't want to buy anything new. After looking over the paint I had, and stalking the Idea Store for particular colors, the color palette was based on the options I saw before me. Each color was created by often mixing more than 2 colors, adding white and black as needed until I was pleased with the final result. It wasn't until I had nearly finished the first panel I realized that I needed 3 times the amount as I was thinking so I had enough to cover all 3 panels! Luckily for me I was able to stretch it out (with a little bit of extender).
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