The fish swim around the corner

It was only a matter of time before I tackled the side door to our garage, once the front garage door mural was done. After all, our plan is to paint the entire garage to appear “underwater” – eventually.

The side door is around the corner from the front, beneath our two story deck. The paneled side door was in pretty bad shape, so I replaced and primed it for a mural. The side door has vertical proportions and is much smaller than the big horizontal front door. After considering many options, we decided that the side door would be a continuation of the front door theme, using the same elements and colors.

I thought it would be fun to introduce a really big fish, much bigger than any on the front. Small door, big fish – makes sense to me. Because the side door is narrow, a big fish could only peek in from the side. I decided to enlarge one of the red fish we’d used on the front door (love that color) and strengthen the red.

The side door is open most of the day, so we decided to paint the mural on both sides. This presented a problem – should we paint the door as if it was two sides of an aquarium (showing the same fish from front and back), with the fish swimming from the door knob on both sides (alternate A)? Or should we paint it so the fish was always swimming in the same direction (rear is mirror image from front), whether the door was open or closed (alternate B)? This is hard to explain, but the collages below show the two alternates.

Stay tuned for the next article to see what we picked

Top                             mural design
Second from top         mural “rippled” for underwater effect
Third from top             rippled mural with door recessed panels, knobs and layout grid
Fourth from top           “transparent” door – big fish at the door knob side-alternate A
Bottom                        big fish swimming toward stair open and closed-alternate B

Unscheduled redesign

Unbeknownst to me, our cat walks under this bench on the way to one of his favorite spots – a sheltered area he likes when it rains and he just has to be outside. My first design neglected to provide MCC-minimum cat clearance. The braces blocked his path.

And so I went back to the drawing board. I had to take out the bottom horizontal and still create triangles to brace the legs. I made diagonal braces that meet in the middle, at a block. This detail reminds me, for some reason, of steel bridge connections.

I am happy with the new design, and I was able to reuse all the wood from the first bench. Most importantly, our King Cat has his path back.

Which design do you like best, the original one in the previous post or this revised one? Add a comment and vote for your favorite.