Happy New Year!

The garden sleeps ...

This past year was an interesting one.  A  lot of projects were started, many were finished.  And then, lots of ideas for a whole new batch of things to do.  During my last visit of the year, we had snow every night.  An hour or so after dawn, it would melt, but until then, everything was quiet and pretty.  Let's hope for snow and rain all winter, and less drought next spring.  I guess everyone in the desert wishes for water.  To everyone else, best wishes for a productive and peaceful new year.

frontdoor mosaic

The installation


As mentioned in previous posts, the doorways of this house are pretty ugly.  In this case, the doorway between the sunroom and living room was a series of cement blocks, open end up, filled with concrete and rocks, with a few tips of rebar sticking up for good measure.  Not fun to walk on, and not the least bit attractive.  I could live with it except the whole thing is also a huge dirt magnet.  I decided to do a simple mosaic to cover the whole thing.

View to the living room

The mosaic is made of basic ceramic tiles from Home Despot; two colors terra cotta and grey.  The hinge end of the doorway is plain, whereas the open end has a sun motif.  The main background is offset bars, simple but still quite attractive.  The whole thing was made in IL as usual, then shipped to NM for the install.  The process is the same as usual: adhesvie, slap it down, wait for set, then grout. In case you're wondering, the grout does not go to the edge of the brick, there is a hairthin space to allow for differential expansion of the materials. 

The final mosaic is attractive, smooth, and oh so easy to clean! Much better than the original.  Once the bricks are cleaned after the (endless) construction, the colors of the tile and brick will be more similar.  Very nice effect.