We spent the weekend with family – sisters to be exact. Saturday after a trip to the dump (bye bye plaster!) we drove down to my sister’s house where I primed and painted one of their spare rooms with Aimee’s help. We also went fabric shopping for some curtains. They still have to paint the ceiling and trim but the chocolate color they picked for the walls looks great. The pictures don’t show the color too well but here it is all finished up Sunday morning:
It’s really between these two colors 🙂
Then Sunday we drove up to Ryan’s sister’s house to visit with her family. We spent hours playing with our nieces. They are so much fun, especially the two of them together. Finley just cracks up when Emily entertains her, it’s a blast to watch.
We got home around 8:30 to a pretty cold house so we spent the rest of the night upstairs where it’s warmer. Can’t wait for that insulation!
I’m not great at machine quilting but I’ve definitely gotten better than my first few tries! And only having to do 9 of these snow flake patterns is very doable. I’ll do some swirly/snowy type continuous pattern in the border when I’m done with the main blocks. This is a stencil that I’m tracing using a washable pencil.
Quilt for mom
It takes a bit of turning the quilt to make this single pattern, luckily the quilt is wall size, not bed size so I just start with the “hardest” side of each snow flake (with the most fabric folded) and move it around to the easier sides as I go along. I figure I can do a block a night next week and get this done by next weekend!
I’ve gotten a few nights now of working on crafts! It sure has been a while. Wednesday night over at Uncle Mark and Aunt Mo’s I worked on my cross stitch project while Aunt Mo quilted. Then last night I started quilting Mom’s quilt for her. I’m using my own machine and it’s not going too badly at all. I got 1 of the 9 blocks quilted 🙂
I’ll probably do a bit more quilting tonight but this weekend we’re headed down to my sister’s in CT to help paint a spare room they’ve been refinishing. I plan to hit Joann’s down there and get some new fabric too! I am definitely in a quilting/sewing mood!
And the snow is still coming down. We cleaned up the first 6 inches that hit this morning but it hasn’t stopped coming down yet. I’ll probably have to do another round of shoveling myself before Ryan gets home 🙂
It was a 3 nighter – and a good one, it was actually hard to choose where to start but I chose to start with the orange face. I left the pink face/flowers for last.
Puzzle finished
It’s been a long time since I did a puzzle, i rarely take the time to do them but I do enjoy them!
Nothing could beat Saturday, we got so much done. And sunday we didn’t even try. We slept later on Sunday, we played video games, we relaxed. It was great. I did run the vacuum through the house (including the shop vac/demo area) – to get any lingering dust. And I started a puzzle 🙂
Monday however was much more productive. First we got up early and went to the dump – it was closed – so we left and went over to get the truck serviced (oil change etc). Finally home we worked on the outside wiring, we put up the front exterior lights and put a wire for a porch fan.
Front light blocks are up!Wiring on inside for front lights and fan
Then I put 3 coats of shellac on ryan’s work table (throughout the day). That’s all ready to be used (although we have been using it already).
Ryan's work table for making cabinets
During the table shellacing, Ryan went across the street where the duplex was being auctioned – the bank ended up buying it for a crazy amount (they don’t want to lose anything) but I just don’t see how they’ll sell it for that much.
Finally we ended the evening watching some movies while I worked more on my puzzle – I got this one for Christmas and it’s very colorful!
After a nice long weekend (and it really did feel long for a change – which was great!), it’s back to work, although I am working from home today due to the snow – and it’s still snowing out! I think we’re past 6 inches now. I may have to figure out how to start the snowblower later and clean up the driveway before ryan gets home. Or I’ll leave it for him 🙂
We had a very productive day today, it started nice and early but at 8:30am it was only 3 degrees outside and a little too cold to tear down the porch ceiling. So we started with an indoor project first.
We made the blocks for the front exterior lights, then Ryan routed around the edges to make them look nice and I primed them.
Blocks being sandedRyan making the edges look niceBlock ready to be primedBlocks primed and ready to go up
Ryan even took down the siding that needed to come down while I got these primed so tomorrow or Monday we can install them (hopefully it’s a little warmer one of those days).
After the blocks were primed, we decided to do a dump run (cardboard has been piling up since xmas) and a home depot run. At home depot we bought some supplies to make a portable closet! An hour later we had this little contraption all finished up:
Portable temporary closet
I forgot to take a picture after we added the shelves to the bottom to store my shoes and our jeans. We got the closet emptied out completely and sealed the doors (closet and bedrooms) so we could demo our closet. We decided about a week ago that we should do our closet now so we could insulate the exterior wall it shares with the stair well. Also it moves our closet renovation up the priority list which we would both love.
So a few hours of demo later including cleanup, a truck full of wood, 6 bags full of plaster and our closet is no more:
Closet all demo'dAnother view of our closet
We plan to move the door so it’s centered and we can put bars on both sides of the closet with shelving along the back when we refinish it. We also got some cedar from my dad that we plan to use for the walls. Plus taking out the ceiling gives us a couple more feet of space in there (it was a low ceiling).
All this was done by 6pm (including cleanup). So we’ve settled in to relax for the night. Not too much left to get done this weekend, the electrical but we got the blocks already done which was the hardest part. Hopefully the dump is open on Monday because we have a couple loads to bring over!
I think we’re taking most of tomorrow off to relax (maybe some quilting??) but if it’s warmer we may do the outside electrical wiring to get it done. And we still have Monday off to enjoy!
Well this 3 day weekend to work on the house couldn’t come along soon enough! We should be able to wrap up the electrical now that the exterior lights arrived and we’ll be ready for insulation. And none too soon because we just filled our oil tank after one month of using the heat consistently and that was 344 gallons of oil over December – yikes!
We have someone coming today to give us a quote, hopefully they can do the spray foam when it’s this cold out. If we can’t get it done soon I may be convinced to put up some fiberglass insulation temporarily – anything to keep the breeze down in here 🙂
On a side note – hello winter – we got a raging snow storm this week. And of course our snowblower wouldn’t start! So all day Ryan tinkered on and off with it and I shoveled on and off a bit (front walk and bottom of the driveway). Finally we went and got a new sparkplug and that fixed the problem – we also changed the oil as it needed it. So by 5pm we were snowblowing the 2 ft of snow that had fallen – not an easy feat! But alas it was done and now our snowblower is happy again (we hope).
So 3 day weekend here we come, got some old projects to wrap up (wiring) and some new projects (demo the closet) all in prep for insulation. Hopefully we’ll get a little relaxing time too. Man my hands are cold – back to work!
Quick weekend recap – we didn’t really do anything this weekend 🙂 On the flip side we did get lots of relaxing done – can check that off the list! My work holiday party was Saturday night so we did at least get out of the house a bit – even dressed up.
Also – no picture yet but my carport is up and bungeed to the back porch stairs because the ground was too frozen to really stake it down well. 🙂 Bring on the snow – well – Wednesday – wait till Wednesday when I plan to work from home… then bring it on.
Today I got up early and got into work nice and early like I used to. That meant I could leave before 5, get up, put away all the rest of the xmas ornaments (of course I forgot one!), then go to the gym with Ryan. We’ll see how long this productive streak lasts – any bets for a 1 day streak???
And now it’s just about time to play some StarCraft II with my brother before heading to bed early – hoping I can get up at 6am tomorrow but not counting on it.
Today was our last day off and it was a day full of wrapping things up. In the morning we ran errands, after lunch I spent some time setting up our new router which arrived.
We finally dragged ourselves into action and got some wiring done. We wired the the cable/ethernet lines in the livingroom, the switch for the recessed lights in the cupola and ran a feed line to the sconce lights in the stairway.
livingroom cable drop and subpanel line run to basementRecessed light switchSconce light feed
After I got all the wires secured I hooked up the tvroom ethernet lines to the patch panel and put the new router and modem in the basement. Finally I hooked up our new Roku player (wired through the patch panel) so now we can watch hulu plus and amazon movies on TV without hooking up my computer. The Roku player was a gift from my brother for Christmas.
Hopefully our exterior lights will arrive before next weekend so we can get the boxes up for those. In the meantime I need to find someone to get an estimate on insulation – very close now!
Two trips to home depot today and we made some good progress on the electrical. We got the front hall light circuit feed run.
Front hall feed goes to a triple box
The blocks for the outside lights put together (Ryan got to use his pocket hole kit).
Blocks for the outside front lights
We also ordered the front outside lights (the one we bought originally for the side was discontinued so we had to pick something new). We went with these:
Then we put up boxes and wired the sconce lights in the stairway. We still need to connect them to the center light at the top of the stairs but that involves getting up in the attic so we put that off until Sunday or Monday.
Sconce light boxes installed in stairway
The checklist is finally getting smaller. Sunday we’ll remove the porch ceiling in the front that’s still up, that way we can run the wire for the exterior fan. We may wait to put up the exterior light boxes until the lights show up to make sure we get the right type of box installed. We still have to run the cable/ethernet lines in the livingroom as well but they’re pretty short since they’re right above the patch panel. We ordered a new wireless router too that I’m hoping to put in the basement (it’s much stronger), can’t wait for that to come Monday too!
A good New Year’s Eve day! Now I just need to bake a pie and clean up the house a bit since my brother is coming over Saturday night after our family Christmas celebration. Then we’ll watch a movie until midnight (very exciting) 🙂
It’s really between these two colors 🙂
