Art Therapy for Grown Ups

When I decided to start fixing up the Treehouse – before I’d even named it the Treehouse! – I started with paint.  Since there’s never a second chance to make a first impression, I began with the entrance hall.  Then my mom and I created the mural that ate my dining room.  Right smack in the middle of those two areas was the kitchen, so that seemed like the most logical next step.

My kitchen was the one room in the Treehouse I absolutely hated.  It was dark, pokey, long, and narrow.  I didn’t have any drawers.  The counters had been painted before I moved in, and were badly scratched and worn.  The walls were covered in awful flowered shelf-liner paper.  The floors didn’t look nice no matter how many times I cleaned them.  In 2004, I decided to see what could be done with it.

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My wonderful landlords offered me a new kitchen re-model, but when I saw that it would necessitate losing my mural, I had to take a pass.  But, since I knew they were going to rip out the kitchen after I moved out (a day that may now come only when I’m dead!), I decided to go to town with what I had.

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Because I don’t own, I reasoned that all my changes should be reversible someday.  I covered the flowered shelf liner with grey “granite” shelf liner.  I installed a long shelf above the sink, and added some other organizing tools to make up for the lack of drawers.

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Then I chose three colours of paint – a lime green, an avocado, and a blue – and also had a white tinted ever so slightly with lime.  I used a similar oil-based melamine paint to what was already on the countertops.

The avocado went there first.  The slow drying time meant being unable to use the counters for about two weeks, but it was worth it:

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Of course, while I was working on the second counter, kitten paw prints mysteriously appeared on the counter I had just finished.  I had to stop in the middle to chase down the little wretch and clean him up.

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Then came the sliding cabinet doors.

I gave the dark plywood panels two coats of lime-white, then set to work masking off the lines I wanted to stay lime-white. Getting the lines to curve required thin masking tape.  I used 1/8 inch, then made the lines thicker by curving a second piece of tape alongside each original strip.

I mixed each of my three colours with some of the lime-white, using a total of six colours to paint in the sections.

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I also decided to permanently remove one set of doors altogether, to open up the space.

With my mom there to teach and help me, I then covered the old floor in peel and stick vinyl tiles.  These can be removed with the heat from a hairdryer, with no damage to the floor underneath.  I chose a soft marbled grey, and used it through the entire entrance hall, kitchen, and dining room.

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At this point, I just wanted it all done (!!), especially since counters and cabinets had taken weeks with drying times.  So my mom also helped with the rest of the painting.

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On my first and only trip to NYC (awesome city!  \m/), I noticed that small, narrow places like shops and restaurants would often have  one long wall painted black.  This had the effect of making the wall almost “disappear,” causing the room to appear less claustrophobic than it actually than it was.

I didn’t want to paint black in my kitchen, but since I’d already started using cool grey tones, charcoal grey seemed an obvious fit for the cinder-block wall, as well as the range hood and the underside of the bulkheads.

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Right away, the grey broke up the long, narrow feel of the room, making it visually expand, and adding a slight industrial look.  Halfway between pure white and pure black (theoretically), grey also provides the truly neutral base for bright or vivid hues.

The rest of the walls and the ceiling got two coats of pure white.  Eight years later, this is how it looks today.  Like really today.  I took all these photos below today.  🙂

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I believe the way we shape our homes is a manifestation of who we are inside and how we live our lives.

I recently visited the home of a friend who just broke up with someone she’s been dating for almost a year.  I noticed the signs right away.  The objects she had once put out to accommodate his presence in her home had disappeared.  The missing objects, the empty armchair – they told the entire story.

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As we ate dinner and talked, it came out that my friend felt she had some anger she still wanted to express to the man in question.  I suggested writing everything out, without censoring or editing herself, and then seeing if she still felt she had anything to say to him.

Writing can be a great form of self-therapy.  So can drawing, painting, playing music, and even re-arranging your home.

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I think decorating and renovations have become popular because they offer opportunities for ANYONE to get creative, in ways that directly affects their lives.  How we live in our homes, the surroundings we create around us – this is a huge and important form of self-expression, and possibly one of the most satisfying.  In a Zen Buddhist sort of way, we get to work out our problems and frustrations through working with our hands and bodies, with sledgehammers and power tools and paint.  The result is the creation of a sanctuary for ourselves.

It’s a form of art therapy for grown ups.

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Being creative is a way to discover who we are and what we are capable of.  Whether we put brush to canvas or to the wall, whether we do it as a business or only for ourselves, any time that we spend doing something creative improves our lives.  Anyone can be creative.  All we have to do is pick up our tools and get started.

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Incidentally, never make the mistake of thinking you are finished your home!  This past winter, having touched my brush to every wall in the Treehouse, I started all over again in the entrance hall.  I can’t help myself.  It’s so therapeutic!

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Dodie Goldney

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related posts by Dodie Goldney:

The Mural That Ate My Dining Room

After and Before

Manifest Headboard

Looking at the Overlooked

Kali the Destroyer

Women’s Work is in the Home (Renovations)

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