It’s been a while but I finally made it to stitch night with my friends last night and stitch I did! It’s coming along slowly but there’s a bit more progress on Autumn in my garden!
And tonight is a date night – a date to install baseboards – can’t wait! In the meanwhile I’m working from home while I hide from the snow. At some point I’ll go out and do some snow cleanup but for now it’s cozy warm in my office 🙂
Another early start today with the dreaded door hanging to do. The first step was selecting a different door (or hinges) that had the right in-swing we needed. Once we found one (that wouldn’t be needed elsewhere), I stripped down the edges of the door so it wouldn’t be a problem to hang it. I also cleaned all the paint off the hardware for the door by boiling it.
(Note: we didn’t end up using this door because it was too warped. Instead we used the attic door which didn’t need to be stripped before hanging.)
While I was doing this, Ryan was working on the door frame, getting it ready to hang the door.
Just in time to help install the door frame and hang the door, Ryan’s parents showed up! It took a few hours and a few doors but finally we got a door that was straight and fit and after some sanding down it hangs nice and even. After the door was up Ryan installed the plinth blocks while we got ready to head to dinner.
I started sanding around the edge of the floor while Ryan and his Dad hung the door. Tomorrow Ryan will work on the baseboards since he has the day off. I’m working from home so I can see the progress of the baseboards but I have a lot of work to do so I couldn’t afford to take the day off. We are installing the baseboards before refinishing the floor because there will be a quarter round in front of the baseboard which we will add last after the floors are re-finished. I am sanding around the edge of the floor before the baseboards go in so we won’t mark up the baseboards when re-finishing.
I’m so excited to see the gym coming together so quickly at the end like this. After baseboards we’ll just have to put up the door trim!
We made some good progress Saturday, Ryan was up very early and started working on removing the pipe for the gym radiator so he could patch the floor. So the first thing I got to do after waking up was to bag up the asbestos – fun 🙂
Once the pipe was removed he worked to patch the floor while I finished caulking the crown molding and spackling. We had some leftover oak flooring he used to patch the floor.
After lunch we made the door frame after picking out a door (we have since switched the door we picked but the same door frame we made still works.
Once the door frame was made I sanded and primed the crown molding before cleaning the house. We spent the evening over at Uncle Pete’s to celebrate Maia’s birthday with the girls.
So here are some pics and my updated gym project list…
Updated list:
It’s about halfway through Friday which means it’s almost time for the weekend and we have quite a weekend planned! Lots of family to see throughout the weekend and progress to make on the gym.
Current projects include:
I doubt we can get all of that done this weekend but Ryan has monday off so he may continue to work on projects after the weekend is over!
I went over to my aunt’s house last night after work and we had the evening to ourselves so we decided to work on one of the many project kits we have purchased at quilt shows over the years together. This one is all Japanese fabrics and it’s a very simple, small and elegant quilt that we both loved. We pulled out the kit to discover it was actually paper piecing which was pretty new, at least for me. It took a while to figure out and get the first block done but after that we were on a roll and we got 3/4 of the blocks finished last night. Probably one more evening like that and we’ll have the top all put together.
And we’re finally past the halfway point this week – getting towards the weekend! Lots of house work planned and family to visit and come visit – can’t wait!
I made a little treat Sunday – inspired by this blog: http://www.bakerella.com/a-valentines-day-gift-box-of%E2%80%A6/.
My version is definitely different, first i went with a pink box instead of red to cut down on the food coloring since I didn’t have any no-flavor red coloring and too much red can be bitter. Second I used chocolate cake and chocolate frosting for the cake and cake treats instead of red velvet.
I used a mixture of milk chocolate, dark chocolate and white chocolate for the candy coatings. I’m pretty happy with my results, it was the first time I ever used fondant and I had some fun making the chocolate covered cake shapes. I did learn one thing – to use the double boiler method for melting the chocolate instead of my candy maker – the boiler worked great for the white and pink but the chocolate dips were too thick using the candy maker. Lessons learned 🙂
Off to see my nieces today – can’t wait!
First – for future reference -be careful when buying moldings at home depot, these were marked at 53/37 angles however that’s not a standard spring angle (37) for crown molding, so we decided to actually measure the angle using some of the nifty tools Ryan got for xmas. Right on the dot it was 38 degrees spring. Which is standard, so that’s what we used.
We also decided to start on a different side this time around, leaving the crazy bowed ceiling side for 3rd instead of second, and helping to hide our last coped corner behind the door in case it didn’t come out great. And without further ado – here are the pictures to show our work for the day…
Just a quick note about the piece above the window … this is where our ceiling bows down and also where our wall bows a bit. So to accommodate these curves we had to scribe and cut the molding along the ceiling. Finally in the left corner we had to just leave a gap (we could only bend it so much) and decided to spackle the ceiling down to match the molding in that one corner. We were actually quite happy with this piece when done but it was a lot of work.
After getting some cakes in the oven while ryan went around and added some nails and set them all to tighten it all up, I went around and filled all the nail holes and did some spackling (couple of dings in the walls to get too).
Since the spackle was out (for the ceiling corner and dings) we decided to touch up the bathroom a bit too. We got a crack next to the door so we put in a piece of wood behind the drywall and screwed along the seam. Then I spackled it to start the process of covering it up. Probably need 2 more coats on this seam.
Now I’m off to work on my valentine’s cake project… if it’s successful i’ll post pics tomorrow.
Finally back to working on the house!
First I had to re-vacuum the demolished area of the house to get up the rest of the insulation pieces scattered about. Then we took the leftover insulation to the dump (this time the insulation guy took as many bags as he could – we still have an attic full of bags of this stuff) – but the dump does take it for a small charge (and it turns out we can fit 7 bags in our truck at a time).
Once the demo area was cleared out we filled it up (with tools this time) – set up the saws and tables in the livingroom and moved the diningroom table out of the gym and back into the diningroom where it “belongs” 🙂
Once the gym was empty we got to work on the crown molding! We actually decided to change up how we were doing the molding entirely. Previously we were using a larger molding with a backerboard hidden under it to nail to. We decided to go with a smaller more flexible molding instead (the next size down) and use a piece of poplar as a decorative part of the molding and as a nailer. So the poplar is routed on one edge (the visible edge at the bottom) and it’s screwed in to the studs. Since the top is hidden it doesn’t have to hit the ceiling evenly, making it easier to keep at an even distance from the ceiling with our crazy bowed ceilings.
So it took all day but we got all 4 pieces ripped down to width, routed, coped and installed. Only one piece came out too small and we had to cut and route a 5th because of that.
Tomorrow we’re hoping to tackle the crown molding itself – oh goodie.
I feel like this has been the focus of my life for the past 9 months or so – but finally it’s over – we have insulation in our livingroom, diningroom and front hall/stairway! That’s most of the downstairs completed now – everything but the kitchen and backporch – plus a tiny bit of the upstairs. What a relief! We should notice a big difference in how long the rooms downstairs retain heat now, I can’t wait – I turned it up to 60 immediately to find out!
So without further ado – here is a walk through of our downstairs 🙂
Wow – can’t believe that’s done. I have some cleanup to do, they were having trouble with static making it hard to clean up too well so I’m going to have to go over it one last time, then move some of our stuff around to make the space more usable again. Maybe we can get the gym cleaned out this weekend to work on it again. *big sigh*.
Well this weekend went by pretty quickly. Since we’re on hold with the insulation we have to keep the livingroom/diningroom empty. This meant my plans to move the tables out of the gym to start crown molding did not happen (no place to put the tables until we can use the diningroom again). However Ryan had to work all weekend any how so we wouldn’t have gotten much done. He stayed home Friday to clear snow off the many lower roofs but had work to make up the rest of the weekend. The snow clearing on Friday went well though and the warm spell we had really cleared things up even more.
So I mostly relaxed, did some stitching and some sewing. Sunday I got started on the curtains for my sister. I’m making lined tab-top curtains with a white/green polka dot fabric. Then I’ll make a solid green shade that matches and a cute valance. First up was the curtains and I got one panel finished, the second one close to finished. There are 2 windows in the room so I still have 2 (and a half) more panels to finish up before I can start the valance or shades.
Anyway, here are my progress pictures from this weekend:
The curtains so far have been easy and fun. I haven’t decided on the style shade yet but I did decide I don’t need blackout lining or anything. If I hold the lining, curtain fabric, lining, shade fabric all up together they definitely block out the light. So I can use the regular lining I have for both curtains and shades.
This week – friday probably – we’ll get the insulation finished hopefully and next weekend resume work on the house. I’m looking forward to it!