Month: August 2010

Quilting!

It has been a very long time but yesterday I spent most of the day just doing things for myself.  This included reading a LOT and quilting!

Before lunch I got most of the cutting done for Emily’s quilt and had started piecing the blocks.  The cutting was hurting my back though so I quit for a few hours and read.  Around dinner time I had an unexpected guest – my friend Sarah came up!  So we got dinner and chatted together and then spent the evening in my sewing room and I got the blocks all ready to be sewn together.

After Sarah left I sewed all 60 blocks together!  Then I laid them out to come up with a pleasing layout.  Since it was midnight I decided not to try sewing them together but they are ready to be put together!  Of course then I was up until 3am reading and woke up this morning at 9 to spend 2 more hours reading (finishing my book).

Today Ryan comes home after a weekend away and we can just about start our real vacation working on the house.  I’m going to get started on some projects now and save quilting until later.

And after days of fiddling with my eye-fi card it is FINALLY uploading pictures to my computer automatically again!  So here’s a picture of the 56 blocks of Emily’s quilt all laid out in what will probably be the final layout!

Emily's Quilt - blocks all done

This quilt makes me so happy – I just love playing with bright colored fabrics, now I want one like this for myself (maybe minus Dora) 🙂  In total i’d say it took 6 hours to get to this point so far.  Next I piece the blocks together and then I need to shop for a border fabric!

This is the largest quilt I’ve made to date – it will be a twin size when completed.  Then I need to figure out how to quilt it!

Vacation start – veggie update

Well it’s the official start to our anniversary vacation and I’m going to spend the day quilting and relaxing to start off right! I actually started that last night 🙂

I walked around the garden (took 2 seconds) this morning and noticed my pepper is almost ready to pick! It turned orange!

Orange Pepper almost ripe

Looks like i’ll be enjoying this pepper very soon!  Much better than the tomatoes I don’t eat we’ve picked so far!

And since I got a start last night on quilting I’m all ready to go start cutting the fabric.  Last night I ironed all the fabric for Emily’s quilt and finished piecing the blocks from my herb quilt (pictures later).  We’ll see how far I can get on Emily’s quilt while listening to the end of Anne of the Island (Anne of Greengables book 3).

Sunday with the girls

Not a lot of house progress this weekend, we spent Saturday doing chores around the house (cleaning, cleaning the cars, playing Starcraft 2 – all those important things) 🙂 Ryan also had to work a lot this weekend so I had some down time myself. I started taking some of the wood off around the back of the porch to see how much work this project is going to be. I’m not too worried about it, we’ll see if there are cement footings all around or not but the first corner had one at least.

Sunday my sister-in-law brought our nieces over for the day and we all spent the day playing with the girls. We went to the park and followed Emily around from one activity to the next. Her sister slept through the park experience but woke up later so we got to play with her too. It was a great day and I can’t wait to see them again! Emily liked all the fabrics I picked out for her quilt so now I can start on it for her birthday – finally a new sewing project!

Now that’s a busy weekend

Mom and Dad came out Friday night so we could get an early start on Saturday.  Friday night Ryan and I got some of the wood off around the diningroom windows and got the room ready to go.

I set up the camera on Saturday to take a picture every 10 minutes of our progress and I made a short video of the window install.  We managed to get the 3 diningroom windows installed and the last livingroom window closed up before dinner Saturday.  I’ll let the movie speak for itself 🙂

(note these may only work in windows)
Diningroom Window Install – click for movie

Then we moved onto the front door project – again I set up the camera to capture our progress.  The door project actually went through dinner, then wrapped up for the night and we finished it up just after lunch on Sunday.  The door looks amazing and tonight I’ll get the sidelight and frame sanded and stained if I can get off the couch again 🙂

Here’s our front door video:
Click for Front Door Install movie

What an amazing amount of work we got done this weekend and we never would have gotten this amount done without Dad’s help.  It was great that mom and dad could come out and help with these projects, it made everything go a little faster with an expert’s help.   I am hurting now though, my feet can’t even hold me up and unfortunately a headache is rampaging.  Time for some tylenol and a nap maybe and I can get back into some work.

Porch furniture

I finished getting the teak oil on the new porch furniture last night, then I got the rest of the second coat of urethane on the front door.  One more coat to go on each side!

New porch furniture

We got a table with 4 chairs and a bench for the porch.  Since we don’t currently have a diningroom we can eat out here when we get tired of the livingroom 🙂

A coat of urethane

Yesterday I got a coat of spar urethane on the door, one side done in the morning, the other at night. If i can sand and do a coat per side each night I should be doing the last coat on friday.

Unfortunately the door frame itself is still not done (and side light). But I can do that after the door’s installed. I just don’t want to have to take the door of it’s hinges later.

First coat of urethane all done

I actually got home at a reasonable time tonight, got to the grocery store, cooked some dinner (and ate dinner for a change). Even fit in an hour of StarCraft 2 before bed. Unfortunately I then stayed up reading much to late and I’m paying for it today with a headache 🙁

The new front door

Another update since I just got the stain on the second side of the door and some teak oil on 2 of our new chairs. Did I mention the new front porch furniture we got last weekend? It’s teak – a table with four chairs and a bench. I’ll take some pictures next time it’s light out. I need to oil them up so I got one coat on two of the chairs tonight just as it was getting dark. Hopefully I can finish those up some time this week.

Anyhow – the story of the door.

When we bought the side door a year ago we picked out exactly what we liked, it was a wood door, it has 2 glass panels that take up half of the door (not too much glass) and we got it unfinished so I could stain it a red mahogany color. The idea was that a year later we could buy the same door with a side light for the front door replacement.

So back to Lowe’s we went – and they no longer make this kind of door! Nothing like it, nothing with 2 glass panes on the top (rectangle, not rounded). So we hemmed and hawed and finally picked out a different door that has a similar glass pattern but has a large 3/4 glass panel and one side light. It doesn’t clash with the side door and since they’re not side by side it won’t matter but all that effort last year to pick something we could match! All for nothing 🙂

Anyhow I think the new front door will look quite nice and a larger glass panel will let more light in even if it means less privacy (although we can see who is at the door which will be a nice change). Plus more glass means less wood to finish 🙂 Just sayin ….

A weekend away

We had a wedding to attend up in Northern NH so most of the weekend was spent up there however we made it back home at a reasonable hour Sunday and since our new door had arrived (we picked it up friday night) we decided to start finishing it.

First came the unpacking – the door was supposed to come with no casing on it – however it came with some small casing that we then had to remove. We were not happy about this but it would take a couple weeks to get another door and taking the casing off wasn’t that hard.

Then we had to get the door out of the frame for finishing which was tough, the door frame has a sidelight so this is a little larger than our last door. Finally the door was free and we got down to sanding it.

A few sore fingers and backs later we had a door prepped and ready to stain. There was no way we were also prepping the sidelight and frame today but I think schedule wise that’s okay, I can finish “finishing” it after it’s installed – I’d like to have the door on it’s hinges though so it needs to be finished first.

Finally I got a coat of stain on the first side:

new front door - just got stained

Time for a quick game of starcraft 2 and then I’ll stain the other side. Tomorrow I can start the urethane procedure, one coat on one side each night. By Sunday it should be done 🙂