Quick Updates

DH has taken some more vacation to work on the house in order to get the Ancient Ones moved into our home.

The pantry is done, so everything from the pantry cupboard is now in the walk in pantry.  I am going to eventually get a pantry door. 

I still need to figure out where to put everything.  I still have another 4 foot wall I could put more shelves on.

Sorry for the mess, it is a work in progress.  The refrigerator was moved from the right side of the room to the left where we removed the weird wall, the flooring is very inexpensive vinyl strips which look like wood which is temporary, a little dark for my taste.  The island is actually two cabinets placed back to back with the counter which was on them previously cut down to size.  This is our make do, for a more user (translate walker) friendly space. 

The little boys helped me get my sewing room moved, they really were a huge help.  But when I look at it I just get discouraged right now.

This is where the quilter is located and miscellaneous piles.

Where my cutting table, and table, where I sew piled high with stuff including my bulletin board, and coat hooks. .  You can see the sitting room where part of my stash is now housed as well as some of my computer equipment.  Part of my problem right now is that these rooms are electrical outlet challenged.  These 2 huge rooms only have 4 electric outlets total!  Also the sitting room has no light, and I can't seem to find one that suffices to light it up adequately. 

Unfortunately some of my sewing stuff is in one of the guest rooms, and there is still some in the hallway too.

Tomorrow will begin the great painting escapade.  The kitchen, the area that will be our sitting room, the ancient ones' living room, the old sick room/sewing room (which will be the ancient uncle's room) and the ancient aunt's room.  Then on to find carpeting and arrange for it to be installed.  This is only the beginning of our adventure.

Pay to Play

Yesterday I was doing the happy dance because I had a chance to sew.  Yep I am now paying for my playtime.

This was my kitchen before.  I know I have stated over and over how much I truly hate this kitchen.  The sink is on the far right size right by the dishwasher which stares at a blank wall.  The only cupboards to store dishes and glasses are directly over the dishwasher, and the upper corner cabinet, both which are a complete pain in the patootie to get to when the dishwasher is open--to empty dishwasher take everything out, set on counter in piles, then close the dishwasher to put away.  I love handling things over and over again to complete a task.  Add to it that if someone is cooking at the stove you can't get anything out of the dishwasher either.  To the left of the window is a pantry cabinet.  It has lovely pull out drawers but you barely have any room to pull them out because it is right there by the window and you can't get the door open wide enough to pull out the drawers.  Then there is the wonderful eating bar which is at a dogleg.  Did I mention that there are only 6 outlet in the whole kitchen?  None anywhere easily accessible to use a toaster, blender, or waffle iron.  Oh the most favorite of all parts about this kitchen?  The wall that the pantry and cabinets are on  is 22 inches from the load bearing beam that goes across the back of the house.  So I have a beam hanging down about 8 inches then 22 inches away is a 4 foot wide floor to ceiling wall. 

 The pantry, 3 lowers, and the upper are now gone as well as the "wall" which is about 22 inches from the load bearing beam.

Here you can see the wonderful angle that the cabinets were on.  That angle wasted a ton of space.

All opened up.  You can see the room we are building for the aunt to the right.  The new walk in pantry will be along the same wall and will be approximately 5ft X 8ft.  I started laughing when I took this pictures.  I told DH that I could never cook in a galley kitchen, then OMG we look like we belong on an episode of hoarders.  Oh and since I started this post the dogleg hole in the floor has been fixed, all of the flooring removed and the floor will be primed so that we can put in press and stick vinyl temporarily until we do the real remodel which will be further down the road. 

I think I paid for my playtime the other day. 

Gotta Sew!

All I could think of when I fired up my sewing machine today was this song from Singing in the Rain.  I had a chance to sew today, between moving my sewing stuff upstairs. 

I finished the August In Our Garden Blocks finally.

Chunky churndash.

 The garden trowel.  While the bird was very cute, I had been dodging dragonflies all over the yard so I was in the mood to make one. 

DH found this really cool table heading to the garbage pitt.  It was a drafting table, well actually it was 2 drafting tables that were broken, but the parts together made one big table.  It ended up being a great set up for a machine to be dropped in to quilt.

I have lots of room to work, and the bed of my machine is now flush with the table which makes it a bit easier.  I have it set up on the sunroom/mudroom for right now. 

On Transitioning, Pirates, and Non Quilty Things

The decision has been made.  The Ancient Ones will be moving in with us. 

In order for that transition to occur I need to move my sewing room, and the overflow which has taken over the great room, upstairs to the master bedroom.  The master bedroom would move to the old "junk room" which we were fixing for the boys at one time.  I decided that I wanted to paint the floor, and finish up the trim.  It took me about 5 days with the weather, humidity, and drying times. 

This was the last original room to the house to be updated.  In fact the room had belonged to the Ancient Aunt next door when she was growing up she is 86 years old. We didn't want to lose the beautiful curved corners at the ceiling so when we started to work on this room we took down the lathe and plaster on the two outside walls attempting to maintain the ceiling so we could insulate.  We managed to save the mop boards, painted the ceiling white, the walls are Behr Cowgirl blue which almost has a violet tinge to it, the floor Churchilll Hotel Hazy Yellow by Valspar, and the trim is Cream Delight by Valspar.  The sheers I found at Lowe's on  closeout for $4.00 per panel.  While this room is much smaller than the master I think we found a way to make it work. 

We started to move the bedroom and actually purged 2 huge bags of clothes for donations and another large bag of just garbage.  Feels nice to have it gone.  The master bedroom takes up over 1/2 the upstairs so I will have a lot of room for my sewing area, it is just trying to transition.  We pulled up the old carpet down to the bare floor, but don't have time to paint the walls, or put new flooring down, because getting the oldsters moved is priority one.  The quilter made it upstairs with the help of the youngest daughter and a bucket truck.  Several trips have been made to take sewing things upstairs, and many more will follow to get the sewing room, and great room cleaned out.  Right now everything is just piled.  Hopefully once we get the AO moved I can get that area in order.

While getting ready for the AO we have also moved one couch upstairs to a bedroom, one couch to the sunroom/mudroom, chairs have been stored, a bed taken to the dump,and we are paring down furniture.  The house is looking kind of empty getting ready for the big final push, of painting, installing a wheelchair ramp, a french door for their privacy, adding another bedroom, a pantry to the kitchen and installing carpet through the downstairs. So unfortunately not much quilting going on. 

Now I don't know about you, but watching the neighbors at times can be quite entertaining.  The McMansions have created a wee bit of a drainage problem for us when they decided they needed to be on a hill, and dug out the ginormous pond which is a stone's through from the back of the AO house.  Well then the next house did it, and so on---anyway they are higher than us, but they seem to be having lots of problems with their basements flooding every time it rains. They have been running drain lines for sump pumps all over.  To the ditch at the back of our property creating a huge swamp....told them, "Um no fix it!"  Maybe they should run it out to the ditch on their private road in front of their house instead?  But what is very funny is every time they try to fix it, they create an even larger problem.  Not counting their trucks getting mired in mud and muck in the swamp they have created and tearing up their beautifully manicured lawns.  My only comment during all of this is nature has a way of getting back on course.   So while watching the 3 closest houses fighting the flooding problems, a structure started to emerge.  I told DH originally it looks like they are building Noah's Ark.  It was finally completed last weekend and christened.

Yep there is a pirate ship in the back of one of the neighbor's houses.  They are using it as a swim and dive platform for their swimming pond.  It is complete with sails, a crow's nest and a Jolly Roger flying.  I will tell you it is kind of freaky early in the morning to see it rising out of the mist. 

Since so much work has been happening inside, my outside yard has had to take a backseat.  I had started to build a small pond with a small fountain, but was having problems with my repurposed liner (old swimming pool) so I was taking it apart when everything came to a screeching halt.  Now I have a swampy, slimey pool in my garden and it has been taken over by this guy.

I have also had a plethora of snakes, and toads too.  Oh well there is always next year if the weather doesn't hold. 

Life is never dull around here, but is always completely amazing.