I Made Some Art

I had an old, broken dishwasher in my back yard. I tried to see if someone would come and haul it away for scrap metal or something. No takers. So it was just sitting there being ugly. I also had two toilets I’d replaced sitting on my side yard. So I decided to make something out of them.

I learn a lot when I take on new projects. And then there are things I still haven’t managed to learn. Like how long a project will take. I thought I would get this done in four or five days. That didn’t happen. It always takes me longer than I think. But I got it done by 8pm the night before I needed to go back to work for the school year. Phew!

I did learn, when working with large projects, be very careful where you place them because you won’t be able to move them when they are complete. Luckily, this is roughly where I wanted the piece to go. I do wish I’d oriented it differently. Too late now! It weighs like a thousand pounds.

Basically I made a bowl first. That was harder than I thought. Things don’t really stick to wet cement and stand up on their own. Wet cement likes to move down into a horizontal position like other liquids.

Noah helped me smash the dishwasher initially, and he helped smash the toilets. That was a lot of fun.

Toilets smash in a very satisfying way.

It was probably around this point where I was learning another valuable lesson: Concrete does terrible things to your hands. I wore gloves, but they were not water-tight, and the silt would get inside, dry out the skin of my hands, and then the skin would just split like crepe paper. I had so many little cuts. At the end of the day, my hands would ache like they were on fire. In addition to a lot of band-aids, Chrystal advised me to put on dishwashing gloves under my work gloves. That worked like a charm, and most of the cuts are healed already.

Then, the moment of truth:

And there was enough porcelein to make a matching ring around the fire pit!

Oh, and the jeans I wear to paint and work with concrete didn’t fit at the beginning of the week. I couln’t button the top button. But by the end of the week, they fit fine. Art is good for the waistline, folx!