Celia gets a make over!

"Celia Cruz" the sofa was bought from a woman moving back to Israel. It was a long, protracted affair that finally ended well. Consuelo, my Santiago assistant, named her after the famous "Queen of Valparaiso"...the Cuban salsa singer.

According to Consuelo, Celia was dark and ugly....but everyone loved her music because it made them feel good.
When we both flopped on the sofa, we looked at each other and knew without saying a word...even though it was old and ugly, it was the right one to buy!

"Ahhh.....you named your baby after me?"
"All I can say to that is... AZUCAR !"


Lo and behold...when Celia finally arrived...she was TOO BIG for the 31 inch wide euro elevator....

OH NO!!!

So for several weeks I debated about what to do with my big girl while she rested in the dark bodega downstairs. As I lay on her one night, it occured to me that if I unscrewed her feet and turned her on the short side, she MIGHT fit through the emergency stairwell door on the ninth floor.
YES!!  Celia's back was only 29 inches tall. The door at the top of the stairs was 30 inches. I could just squeeze her through. BUT, when I went to measure the door at the top of the stairs inside the penthouse, it was only 24 inches wide. CRAPOLA!
After hearing from Irene that she could not get out of the apartment after the last BIG terremoto, I decided to have this door reversed.... Now I can access the emergency stairwell no matter what falls out of the laundry room cabinets.

Narrow door, narrow stairs...

After all the construction I have done in my life, it never occurred to me to measure the elevator. I was a woman on a mission to get SOMETHING to sit on at night...so I overlooked that SMALL complication.  So, Celia sat in the garage another couple of weeks....while I pondered....wondering how my landlords got their furniture out of the apartment when they moved.
Ruth, the housekeeper "Nana", told me on her first day at work, that Helmut and Irene took out the big window panes on the ninth floor that overlooked the terrace....  They then had their movers lift their furniture up onto the terrace roof, through the windows and down the stairs.

Click on the arrow and enjoy a little Celia with me....

You have to give it to her....she made her life remarkable, despite everything. When you have time....Wiki Celia Cruz...you will be amazed.

Back to the story....With that news, Consuelo and I decided to go ahead and find a tapicera (upholsterer)....so we had Celia moved to a little shop close to the Penthouse...a tapicera whom Irene recommended. His price was astronomical...but then his shop was in the Alonso de Cordova district where Armani and other designers have their stores...  There are also many high dollar collections of designer fabrics along this avenida...mucho cara! Hay carumba!

 This is the view from my northside terrace.

High end...high price...mucho cara!

This local shopper is enjoying the view....











My penthouse is less that a quarter block off of Alonso....just around the corner from the Starbucks...yes a REAL starbucks.
See the top floor with the cactus, that is mine...I have the terrace walk around facing Alonso...

Ruth says that the food from Starbucks is muy terrible.....but it is next to the posh handbag store, so it thrives with $8/cup coffee. No coffee in Santiago tastes good...it is the water....tap, bottle, etc....

NO WAY can I afford this...








I decided to bring Celia home and sleep on her in the bodega. Yet the next morning Consuelo reminded me that there was yet a second tapicera on Irene's shopping listb, ut he was from very southern Santiago, where there are dirt floors in shacks.  I am so glad we called him.

When Afredo Bustamante looked at Celia and we told him the story of the upstairs windows, he immediately made the sign of the cross!

Ruth and I laughed and laughed...  He and I immediately bonded over color and texture as he showed me his photo collection of furniture he had made by hand...and the antiques he had restored.
His fabric choices and wood colors were of the best I have seen in a long time....  Alfredo assured me that he could re-construct Celia....so strong she would last a long time. Once he recovers her parts dissasembled, he can re-assemble her in the penthouse and no one would never see the screws or bolts. YEAH!  So, he loaded up my big girl and borrowed my netting to hold her in place in the back of his small pick em up. We had a deal....I would buy the fabric and he would re-build/re-cover Celia to make her more beautiful than ever. Celia was getting a makeover!

Today Consuelo and I decided to go to downtown Santiago...where one never goes during the week or at night. Blocks after blocks of shops and outdoor stalls line the alleys and streets. There you can buy ANYTHING you want.
So, we took a taxi to the fabric and notion stores...Telas....

You can double click on this photo to enlarge...
Consuelo is posing outside the door of one of the pattern shops where I bought three sizes of grandkids "elf costumes" for Christmas next year.

See her shopping cart? We stopped this morning at Home Center to make sure we didn't have to carry 100 pounds of fabric miles and miles....  All the old ladies wanted to know where we bought them, since I had bought one for Ruth also. It was the hit of the day for the Independencia market throngs.

Haggle...it's a way of life....








A colorful alleyway....see the towers on San Cristobal. We are behind the San Cristobal mountain.

Enlarge at will...
My new camera with the 18x lens works great!









Here are some shops...

And here is what I came home with....

I decided to give Celia a totally different look. I wanted her body to be one fabric and of her cushions to be another. I wanted to feel like when I sat on her, I was sitting on the beach in Appalachicola....white sands, blue green seas....aaaahhhhh.....calm......
We shall see how this turns out....