Category: Home improvements

If I wait till it’s done… It will never get posted!

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Yes friends I am just that way.  I want it all to be perfect, but it is not.  I think it will take quite awhile for it all to shake out, and settle into where it goes.  That aside, here is the basic layout.

The window quilt is whole cloth, and was a practice piece for machine stippling and binding the edges.   It also instantly and dramatically warmed up my room!  The handbag collection was my Mother-in-laws.  The little bed by where I work is Tucker’s place.  🙂

So, it’s all here, and like I said it still needs a bit of fluffing and folding, but it will sort itself out as I use it and find the logical places for it all.

And this is very special to me…

The vintage telephone table was a recent purchase.  The vintage telephone belonged to Bob’s parents and still has the old phone number on it… the one I dialed so long ago and he answered…  AND IT STILL WORKS!  😉

Things I learned how to do:

  1. Use a pneumatic nail gun
  2. Use a radial miter saw (and didn’t hurt myself!)
  3. Build and install a sewing counter (it’s there on the left in the first photo)
  4. Lay and cut in vinyl flooring.
  5. Miter and nail in shoe to hold flooring

Bob painted the ceiling and helped me carrying the heavy stuff.  He also helped me with hanging the wire shelving and the peg board (it takes two for those jobs).  But the rest of it was all me.

Can’t you just feel me smiling?

Now, what else can I tear up fix around here?  OH, I know, the laundry/mud room!

Ta-Daaa…! (things that make me happy)

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It took me a long time and not a little frustration to finally get this job done!  I have been working on the guest bathroom for months, in between other projects that is.

You will have to imagine the before picture because I can’t seem to find it.  So, imagine if you will… powder blue walls, hospital white cabinets and bead board, and all of it chipped.  The ceiling had been taped when the fan was installed, but the tape was lifting too.

But the most frustrating part, yet satisfying when it was finally done this morning was this!

(“Pay no attention to the [wo]man behind the curtain!”  The Great Oz, in The Wizard of Oz.)

I finally got the mirror installed, more or less, correctly!

Old Mr. Gains, the man who built this house in the early 1950s, was a cabinet-maker.  He built this Olympic-sized medicine cabinet into the wall and it is 42″ wide, by 37″ high, and 9 inches deep.  It’s huge and there was no way we were going to be able to replace it with anything new.  That said, I really kinda liked it and saw that it had possibilities.  So I made the one side into a shadow box!  I have far to many trinkets and this gives me a dust-free place to display some of the more interesting ones.

Steps taken to get here:

  1. Fill, sand, and paint every surface (porcelain objects excepted) Bob helped me with the ceiling by painting in the Kilz and then cutting in the two coats of ceiling paint.  (He also gave me lots of ‘atta-girl,” and a few pep talks when the going got tough.  I love him for his support when I can’t do it myself.)  🙂
  2. Have three different plumbers out to fix leaking toilet base five times, yes FiVe!   Seems the flange was broken and someone had screwed it down to the floor.  Oh, and while the last one was here, he removed the Yeti sized hair ball that was clogging the sink drain (it was hiding way down deep in the line).
  3. Clean out four layers of old contact paper from the over-sized medicine cabinet.  Two of which were painted, and one of which someone had spilled Tigress perfume!  Trust me, it does not get any better with age…
  4. Send out doors of over-sized medicine cabinet for professional stripping, and prepping for painting.
  5. Paint said doors and install glass into one side.  Install mirror on the other side, now REPEAT.  (I broke the mirror, trying to install it, the day before my friends came to visit from California.)  😐
  6. Get frustrated and bent all out of shape securing said second mirror into frame, finally give up, and use contact cement to just glue the lath onto the back for fear of having to repeat the frustration AGAIN.  (thankyouverymuch)

So now that it is all done we need to replace all of the porcelain, but do not have a budget for that.  So, maybe by the time we can finally afford it, we can pay someone else to do it?

A job well done, makes me smile even on a gloomy day.  I will smile all winter I think.

~*~

No obvious signs of the Christmas spirit

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It’s just the two of us here, Bob and me.  Christmas is neither bought nor made, decorations are nil due to mass reconstruction on my craft room, whose contents BTW, have currently taken over the living room.  No tree, no trimmings here…  Oh wait, does the wreath on the door count?

The project was supposed to be easy-peasy:  Paint, hang shelves, pull up the old carpet and lay out new vinyl floor.  (insert sound of car crash here)

Nothing is ever easy when it comes to repairs in this house.

It was supposed to be easy, oh wait, I think I am repeating myself.  But it was supposed to be easy…

You know, like roll back the carpet, vacuum the floor and roll out the new vinyl.

NOT.

There was the carpet and pad, the old vinyl floor, the old 8 inch glued down tiles, and then it was the 4 by 8 ft piece of 3/4 inch rotten, smelly plywood that had to be lifted and replaced first.

My 13.5  X 9.25 future quilting/sewing space.  The pictures on the wall are photos of how I want my space to look…  I’ve a long way to go and they help keep me motivated.

It is all supposed to be done and moved back before Dec. 25th so I CAN decorate.   We’ll see!  In the meantime, I have my Christmas music to keep me motivated and in the spirit of the season.  I want this project DONE.  😉

~*~

Oh yeah, and  did I forget to mention the six holes I punched into the wall with a wonder-bar when I took out these?

A pair of sorta cute, but totally non practical corner shelves.

~*~

NOTE:   After  our best friends left to go back to California, I had given myself a week to enjoy our clean and tidy living space, then it was back to work!  I have made much progress since the picture above.  I hope to be posting completion pictures by this Friday, or Monday!  STAY TUNED!  😉

It never rains but what it…

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… POURS!  As in water gushing from the water main, and the geese are screaming  like they are under attack, so you rush out the door to find them flapping their wings and paddling in the puddle it had made!

Glad they are enjoying it!  We just spent over $1,000 to replace the electric water heater last month!  Since this is the third break in the line it seems prudent to replace it…

I asked the plumber if his company offered stock options.  It took him a minute, then he chuckled and said,

“No.”

!!!    😐    !!!