7 Layer Studio

In the Middle

I'm in the middle of a LOT of projects right now, and I keep hoping to get at least something all the way finished so I have something to contribute to my sadly neglected blog!  Due to various time constraints, weather issues, material availability, and a host of end-of-the-school-year events, my progress has been, um, sporadic at best.  So this will have to be yet another work-in-progress post!

My kids have been longing for a treehouse their whole lives...and since we don't have any trees suitable for a real treehouse I wanted to build them the next best thing.  It doesn't look like much yet, but I promise it'll be totally kid-worthy when it's finished! 

Steve helped me put all the posts in the ground (16 footers are a bit unwieldy to handle in windy conditions by myself) and he helped with a few of the horizontal pieces, but since he's at work all day I've done all the other stuff, including the 2x6x12 floor joists and the big plywood rock climbing wall - boy, was that fun!  I used the decking from our house that had to be ripped off (to fix the rot issues) for the clubhouse floor, sides and roof.  I really want to get this finished soon so they can enjoy it before the muggy summer heat descends upon us and drives us all indoors.

 

Here's another project that I'm needing to finish SOON before it gets too hot and muggy...our huge firepit!  It's 13 feet wide and 20" deep (don't worry, the entire pit is not going to be filled with fire), and it took me much of one day and an hour or so of the next to dig it out.  Steve came home when I was about 80% done and saved the day by helping me finish digging - my shoulders were pretty sore by then!

I'm now waiting...and waiting...for the flagstone that I ordered 3 weeks ago to arrive.  Real flagstone is hard to come by around here, and it apparently takes a long time to show up!  I'm going to dry-stack it around the perimeter of the circle to create a retaining wall/seating area.  Then, in the middle of the dugout, I'm going to mortar in a 5-foot-wide stone firepit.  It's so windy in this area that I wanted the firepit to be below ground level, and by the time I plant shrubs in the mounded berm surrounding the pit, it should be a very cozy and protected area.  Can't wait to have this project complete so we can start using it - there's nothing like a summer campfire, especially for pyros like Hyrum and myself!

Steve worked really hard ripping up the old deck, and he occasionally had help from me and the kids.  Hyrum had a great time pounding the old nails through so we could salvage all the decking wood for other projects (like the clubhouse).

 The rot in the back of our house was more extensive than we realized, and our contractor spent all month (minus several days of rainy weather) getting it fixed and putting everything back together.  What a mess, what a frustrating and expensive nightmare that never should have happened in the first place.  Grrr. It just got all buttoned up this past week, so thank goodness that's behind us.

Remember these chairs?  They used to look like this:

They have been intimidating and frustrating (to put it mildly) to refinish, but by the time they're all done it will be worth it.  Every step of the way I keep thinking "Okay, I've just finished the hard part...from here on out it will be easier" but it hasn't really been the case!  The mere fact that there are 4 of them guarantees a huge time investment, of course.  As usual I underestimated the time and work involved in removing every single tiny upholstery nail with pliers, patching and sanding and painting and glazing the wood, cutting new foam, cutting out all the fabric pieces, making piping, sewing the piping on with a million box corner angles, stapling on all the new upholstery (the inside curve of the barrel part's a real fun one, let me tell you!) and making and attaching the gimp to cover all the raw edges (which I haven't done yet).  I got pretty burned out on these, and I still haven't upholstered the last chair yet.  Gotta do the outside projects first though, because of the impending summer heat.

They're real beauties on the inside, eh?  Good bones, though.

Ah, house painting.  After painting every single wall of every house we have bought throughout the years (this is house #5) I'm really. tired. of painting walls.  But apparently I'm not too sick of it because I keep on doing it!  I've never moved into a house without feeling it absolutely necessary to change the paint color(s). It's a curse.  We've lived in rentals 3 times, but only until we could find a house to buy in the same area...because I can't handle living in a place that I can't spruce up with paint and remodeling.  Like I said, a curse.

We weren't able to eliminate the awful sheetrock pillar with the obnoxious (and dangerous) sharp-angled trim because it was load-bearing, so we did the next best thing = replace it with a pretty one instead! 

Actually, we didn't do it - our contractor did.  We had him put a matching one on the other side of the room so it would look balanced and intentional, and it makes a huge difference in the room.  So do the new windows! 

This is the same area, after Steve had carefully removed the sheetrock and the corner fireplace.  We had the one illogical window moved over and added 2 more so the great room has a spectacular view of the backyard now.  Beautiful.  I still need to finish painting everything in that room, and install the stone and millwork around the fireplace/mantle, and make drapes for the new windows.  After I finish the clubhouse and the firepit.  :-)

Awwwwwww... I love my Hazel.

I am trying really hard to spend time with my kids in the midst of all these projects.  Because I know the day will come when they're not little anymore. 

This is also why I haven't been blogging or designing fabric or making artwork this past year...between trying to get our house functional and trying to spend more time with my family, there just isn't enough time to do the other stuff right now.  I've also been trying to get more sleep because I just can't pull the 4 or 5 hours-of-sleep-a-night thing anymore...at least not without being exhausted and grumpy and unproductive the next day.  So again, my blogging, designing, and creating has suffered.  Hopefully by the time school starts next fall I'll be able to do those things on a regular basis - I have enough on my plate right now!

We hadn't taken any family photos in a long time, so I convinced everybody to endure a tripod self-timer session on a beautiful, wind-less evening.  Unfortunately they turned out really grainy and blurry because I set the ISO high, the aperature wide, and the shutter speed fast (to accomodate the fading light and the fact that we're moving targets).  I should have set the aperature much smaller but it was too dark for that.  Sigh.  They look okay on screen but I won't be able to get good prints from them because they're not sharp.  Bummer!

This was the Attack Daddy pose.

I really, really love these pics of the kids...I'm so disappointed that they're so blurry.  I didn't realize they weren't sharp until I came inside and put them on the big monitor.  Not sure how to check for sharpness during a shoot when the LCD screen on the camera is so small that I can't tell it's blurry until after I'm back inside.

Flower Power,

Sibling antics,

 

the Zombie Walk.

I love my kids! Can't imagine my life without them.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The good news (other than the fact that I'm actually doing a blog post after a HUGE absence) is that I was able to carve out enough time to make Easter dresses for my girls this year...hooray!  It had been a couple of years since that happened.

Hazel picked out her fabric almost all by herself, and despite her solemn expression in the photo above, she was very excited about her new dress.

There we go, that's better.  Can you believe how long her hair is getting?

I find it quite interesting that Hazel, despite being an absolute shoe fanatic (she has more shoes than anyone in the family, I think) is nearly ALWAYS barefoot!  Inside, outside, upside down, she loves to go around without shoes.  I need to remember that fact the next time she is BEGGING and PLEADING for a new pair of darling footwear that she just can't live without, even if they are on clearance or inexpensive to begin with.  Should we vote on how long you think I'll hold strong to that resolve?  Perhaps not.  If little girl's shoes weren't so stinkin' cute it would make things easier.

Eliza's dress is made from Amy Butler fabric that I absolutely adore, and I actually bought the fabric to make myself a dress a long time ago...but once I came to grips with the acknowledgement that I'm not going to have time to sew for myself for a very long time, I figured Eliza might as well enjoy it in the form of a new Easter dress.  These kids are growing so fast it's hard to keep their closets stocked!

This dress, with its clean lines, was deceptively time-consuming - partly because of the 10 inches I had to add to 7 pieces of flared skirting (it was a store-bought pattern) to make it the length she wanted, and partly because I nearly ruined the entire thing due to a cutting error.  The skirt had taken much more yardage than anticipated due to the added length (10 inches extending the length of flared pieces is much different than if the skirt were straight) and I had JUST enough fabric to cut the bodice front with the gorgeous plant image centered in the middle.  And then I got distracted and grabbed the pattern piece for the bodice BACK instead.  Usually I always double check before I start cutting, but this time I didn't. 

I can't believe I didn't notice that the pattern piece didn't have the "fold here" arrows...but my mind was in la-la-land and so I cut out a nice big, single back piece (rather than 2 separate pieces that a back would have been) and I had no other fabric scraps big enough to make a bodice front.  This was on the Friday before Easter, so no time to order new fabric.  The contours of a bodice front are much different than the back, but I had no choice but to simply cut a lower neckline (I should have made it even lower, but too late now!) and cut here and there to make the front and back fit together properly.  Fortunately for me, she's still built like a little girl so the results weren't disastrous...just a little ill fitting around the neck and shoulders.  Lesson learned on that one! 

Here's another sewing project that I finally finished...one of my good friends from when I lived near DC had a baby - nearly a year ago - and I made these dresses for her darling little girl.  It's about time, eh?

I don't like making clothes for newborns anyway - they grow out of them too fast! 

It's so nice to have spring arrive!  It's been unusually cold this past month, but at least we're not still getting snow like northern parts of the eastern US.  I had planted tons of daffodils last fall, it's been wonderful to see them cheer up things up both inside and out.

These darling little mini daffodils brightened up our table for Easter dinner.

They're the sweetest little things...and only 6 inches high.

Another good news story is that my DIY chandelier is finally finished and installed!

It started out like this...a big brown light fixture on clearance from Home Depot.

I painted it silver, and then spent many hours putting together the crystal embellishments and beads that I had ordered on ebay.

I had to drill holes in the leaves on the arms, but for everywhere else I just juryrigged attachment locations using jewelry chain.  The whole setup with the crystals is done like jewelry rather than the traditional connector rings usually used for crystal, but hey - at least I didn't have to drill a million holes everywhere.

A slight improvement from its original brown-ness, yes?

Here's another makeover project I finished this past month.  This $50 dresser was badly dented, scratched, and chipped.  I filled and patched everything I could, sanded it all down,

gave it a coat of primer and then painted it grey.

I tried dry-brushing Martha Stewart silver paint on it, but I wasn't happy with how splotchy it was.

So then I mixed various metallic paints and glazes together with some water to create a glaze that I brushed on all over the entire piece = a much better finish.  This piece is in our bedroom, which I am still working on.

Ah, yes, our troublesome master bedroom!  I ripped out the carpet (you can see where the partial walls were - and the carpet was not - hence the carpet removal) and installed engineered hardwood flooring.  We had the partial walls removed because they made no sense and prevented us from putting a long dresser anywhere in the room.

This is the flooring that I had purchased a year ago, back when we thought we were going to build over the living room and create a studio space (that's the bad news...but more on that later).  Anyway, we decided to use some of the flooring for the master bedroom instead, and so I spent a couple of days installing it and adding shoe molding around the baseboards. 

I don't have any official "after" photos yet because the room's not finished, but here's a close-up of the floor = very gorgeous, but it sure makes any little string, lint, or dust show up!  I'm glad I don't have dark wood like this all over my entire house...I'm not that good at keeping floors spotless!

So, as I alluded to earlier, we decided not to extend the balcony and add a floor above the living room in our house so that I could have a studio.  It would have cost a bunch of money and we most likely would not have been able to recoup the cost when we sell the place because the real estate market is still terrible around here.  That's the "small" bad news.  Boo.

Are you ready for the Ugly?

This, my friends, is what happens when a builder doesn't use flashing where a deck meets the side of a house (and yes, it's illegal to not use flashing).

This is what happens when a dishonest person carves out what is already rotten (our house sat half-finished for 3 years before the bank took over and hired various contractors to finish it up and, in this case, cover up the damage) and fills the rotted void with pieces of pressure-treated wood to make it look normal and able to pass inspection.

This is what happens when a dishonest person knows there's a big problem and fills the rotted area around the doorjamb with a bunch of silicone to disguise the rot/reduce the leaking around the door.

We knew the door jambs of the french door were rotted, but the county inspectors and the private inspector we hired before we bought the place didn't know -or didn't inform us - how bad it truly was.  When we hired a contractor to replace the doors, this is what he unearthed.  Not only was there no flashing, but they had used normal OSB at the base of the house where it touched the deck.  Another illegal, cost-cutting move that resulted in a bunch of rot.  

Isn't it just lovely?  Just a word of advice...never buy a home that has been abandoned and turned into a foreclosure in the middle of the building process! 

We now have to rip off our entire 60 feet-long back deck, remove the siding, replace the rotten OSB with weatherproof material, replace the rotted beams between the foundation and the walls that the entire house sits on, then finish it properly with flashing and the siding.

I'm grateful that we hadn't already sunk a bunch of money into building the studio room, but I'm very upset that we now have to sink a bunch of money into repairing what should never have happened in the first place...especially to a "new" house!  It has been very difficult (impossible) to verify who did what because of how many different people have worked on the house through the years.  The original contractor is now out of business, and of course nobody is going to step forward to claim responsibility for anything at this point.  We're not the type to sue anyone, but it sure would be nice to make the responsible party at least pay for the repairs!

The silver lining in all of this is that, since that wall is going to be all torn up anyway, I get to have more windows installed in the wall and the ridiculous corner fireplace was removed.

Steve worked very hard to carefully remove the sheetrock and the corner fireplace unit so that the new windows can be framed in.

Didn't he do a good job?  He's also been doing all the electrical changes that needed to happen because of the way previous contractors did shortcuts in the corner where the fireplace was.

We're going to have a new fireplace on the main wall that is much less deep than the corner one.  I'm going to do a rock surround for it and build a big beautiful mantel above it.  Can't wait for that! 

So there you have it, folks.  Am I forgiven for not blogging for so long?  As you can see, things have been rather crazy around here.  Oh - and I didn't even mention the 2 weeks that I was completely floored because of the flu.  I must not have ever truly had the flu before, because that was the absolute worse virus I have ever been through.  Talk about feeling like I've been hit by a train a million times over.  I'm nearly all better now, though, so things are looking up!  Hopefully in a few weeks everything will be fixed and I can start finishing the interior of our house and have a bunch of pictures to share...wish me luck!

 

His, Hers, and Theirs

Remember the office space that we created for Steve and myself?  Below you'll see a picture of what this wall was like before Christmas...

Well, we realized that our office was the hub of family activity more than any other room...which means that our kids were always begging for our computers and bringing all their STUFF into our office.   Which, of course, means big messes everywhere and not enough storage or desk space. 

So we bid adeiu to the reading chair and the bookshelf (the ottoman got a facelift and so did the dark bookcase) and bought a nice long, skinny table from IKEA.  I considered making the table too, but with my mammoth list of other things to make/change/remodel I decided to go with the store bought one....besides, it was on sale!  Then I got to work designing and building a custom hutch with custom boxes to go in it.

Presto change-O!  We now have a family office/creative center with all the crayons, markers, yarn, playdoh, foamy shapes, paper, glue, etc tucked away in pretty boxes and the kids have their OWN table to do crafts on so they'll (hopefully, crossing my fingers on this one) leave me to my own messes on my own desk.

I actually remembered to take plenty of "during construction" photos on this one, so here goes!

I used a big sheet of cabinet grade plywood for the back, then cut 12" wide pine boards to the proper dimensions.  Steve helped me glue and nail (I super-duper heart pneumatic nail guns!  Can't live without 'em) the 2 sides of shelving together that you see in the pic above.  Not exactly a one-person job! 

I had drawn out all the lines where the shelves were to go beforehand, and during construction I used these awesome spring clamps to help hold the shelves in place during the glue+nail process.  Because, as much as I would sometimes like to be, I'm not an octopus.

I made sure I drew lines on the BACK of the hutch that were exactly the same as the lines on the front of the hutch.  This made it possible to send the nails through the back and into the shelves in a much more precise manner...although we still managed to miss occasionally - but much less than we would have otherwise!  Blame it on the knots in the wood - they can be so hard that the nails would rather deflect than go through them.  Or user error.  Either way.  :-)

Two of the three shelves in the middle section were in line with shelves on the other sides, so nailing into them from the opposite side wasn't possible.  I attached cleats made of quarter round to those places, and the shelves rested on the cleats.

Then it was time for the trim, which I glued and nailed in place.

After filling the nail holes, sanding, and using painter's caulk in all the seams, it was ready to paint!  It took far too long to paint that thing, and I resolved to paint the pieces first next time.  I was lucky that my good friend Christine came down from DC area to visit me, because she helped me finish painting this hutch AND prepainted the pieces to the unit I built in the laundry room!  (More on that later)  See what happens when I get visitors?  I put them to work!  Actually Christine is a kindred spirit and likes doing stuff like this, so I didn't have to feel too badly.  We got to go to the beach too, and the sand dunes - good times, good times.

I made the large boxes out of cabinet grade plywood, because that's what I had on hand and I actually like seeing the lines of ply on the box edges.  I painted these with 1 coat of white paint and then sanded back through so the ply edges were partially visible and only a thin coat of paint remained on the box sides, with the wood grain peeking through here and there.  I knocked all the sharp edges and corners off with a hand-held sander prior to painting, then went back over it with the sander after painting as well.  I then coated everything with a thin layer of furniture wax and they are smooth as a baby's bum! I also glued sheets of felt to the bottom of the boxes to minimize friction and potential damage to the shelving.

These 2 little guys were made the same way, but I used thin pieces of poplar instead of the thick, heavy plywood since they were so small.  The shiny boxes with lids were ones I found on clearance at Lowes right after New Year's.

We screwed the hutch to the studs in the wall in several places, so it's actually not resting on the table at all.  That baby was so heavy we didn't want to stress the table, and this way we know that, no matter how crazy our little monkies get, the hutch won't tip over on them. 

Ah, finally...one little corner of my world where there really is a place for everything and everything is in its place.  Hmmm....how long do you think it will last?

 

North Carolina Christmas

Merry Christmas from North Carolina!

I hope you all had a peaceful Christmas Day full of happy smiles and the love of family and friends.  We had a nice, relaxing, quiet time this Christmas - which was just perfect for us this year.

 As you can see, I've been busy getting our house all decked out for the Holiday Season - it's my favorite time of year and I can't seem to help going all out for Christmas.  Since it's warmer down here than it was up in DC, my kids have been complaining that it doesn't feel like Christmas because of the weather (they have, apparently, forgotten the 80+ degree winters in Hawaii that we experienced for 5 years)....so I've been trying to make the house extra Christmas-y to help us all get in the mood.

It's always a bit harder to do on the years that we move, but I've been working diligently this past month to get the house ready to be Christmasified.  I do believe that's not an official word, but it works.  :-)

We've been enjoying all the Christmas decorations and the get-togethers with our new friends here in NC.  So many wonderful, friendly, and kind people down here - it's been great getting to know everybody.

I feel like I have to give a disclaimer/apology for all the crazy lighting in these pictures...they were taken on different days and nights and the light varied immensely.  I don't have the skills (or the time to develop the skills right now) to properly edit the lighting in my pictures, so they are what they are this year. 

I'm just glad to get them posted at all...I've been working on all this stuff for the entire month, and have spent many, many hours photographing, editing, and uploading them.  Glad to see them all together in one post at last!

Despite the crazy rush of the Holidays, coupled with trying to get our house presentable, my Craigslist vintage furniture redone, and making gifts for family and friends, I've been trying hard to remember the true Reason for the Season.

After all, "Christmas begins with Christ" and it all started with the babe in the manger, despite society's tendency to commercialize and secularize this sacred holiday.

That being said, I must admit I'm a fan of Santa Claus and the joy and wonderment that ol' St. Nick brings to Christmas.  I just don't want my kids to forget that celebrating the birth of the Savior is the real cause for Joy - not just what's under the tree Christmas morning.

 

Santa Claus conveys the spirit of giving and of being good and kind, so I'm not one to cut him out of Christmas in our household traditions, as you can see from the Santa collection in my dining hutch.

 

Good ol' Calvin and Hobbes made their way into my display as well...I made that little ornament back in the days before Sculpey clay.  It's made of bread/glue dough, so it has faded and degenerated a bit over the years, but I still love it.  I was so sad when Watterson retired from making Calvin and Hobbes cartoons - I dearly miss Calvin's precocious wittiness and mischievous antics.

Thank goodness for Phineas and Ferb - whenever my kids watch that on Netflix I'm always drawn in...I love those 2 little genius kids and the creative messes they inadvertantly draw their sister into.  Always good for a laugh, that show.  But I digress.

You remember my dressers that I gave a major facelift to earlier this month?

This year I discovered the beauty of German glass glitter, and I've been coating loads of things with it!  The silver glitter balls above were styrofoam balls that I spray painted silver, then coated with the silver glass glitter.  The photo simply does not do them justice - they gleam and sparkle brilliantly in real life.

I did the same thing with this small Nativity arrangement I bought at the Dollar Tree and then painted and coated with glitter.

The silver Nativity figurines on the dresser were inexpensive plastic painted ones from Walmart that I spraypainted a satin nickel finish, which classed them up quite a bit.

I've also been playing around a lot with Krylon mirror spray paint, which I used to coat the inside of a bunch of inexpensive glassware to create the glimmery candle arrangements on my mantle.  I used masking tape to isolate the rim of some of the glassware, which I coated with glue and then glitter.

The big silver ball was not something that I made or altered - I found it at Marshall's and had to take it home.  :-)

These plastic snowflakes were from the Dollar Tree, but some were blue and some were shiny white.  I spraypainted all of them a satin white and coated them with clear German glass glitter, and now they look much better!

You'll recognize these ornaments from previous years - you can find the tutorials for them in my sidebar.

I just finished making a slipcover for the ottoman that currently serves as our "coffee table" until I can finish the real furniture that's still awaiting a makeover.  I also made improvisational fabric "artwork" to provide some color and interest above my dressers until after the remodel (we'll be adding a room above and moving the fireplace to the center of that wall).  I'll eventually paint large panels with real artwork to hang above the dressers, and the walls will no longer be a cream color, but for now this will do the trick.

I couldn't resist the snappy red and white chevron fabric!

My Wall o' Plates display is smaller in this house, but still fun.  I still need to make valances for the kitchen breakfast nook windows, but that will have to wait until after the holidays. 

Here's a better picture of the table I just finished redoing.

These were very cheap ornaments from Walmart that I spraypainted and then coated with silver German glass glitter. 

It might be hard to tell from the photos, but the "before" version (in photo below) was definitely upgraded with the fancy glass glitter.

They sparkle brilliantly now, especially in the sunlight.

I didn't make the Hawaiian quilt on the wall, I bought it when we were stationed there.  I think it's safe to say I will never make an applique quilt as involved as that one is! 

This is Eliza's little tree in her room, appropriately decked out with horse ornaments!

I spray painted a bunch of cheap plastic horses white, then coated them in the clear glass glitter.  To turn them into ornaments, I spraypainted tiny eye hooks white, drilled a tiny hole into the horses, and screwed the eye hooks into the holes.  (I should have inserted the eye hooks prior to painting to save myself some work, but I hadn't bought the eye hooks yet) What a transformation, eh?  I think that's my favorite tree in the house this year.

When Hurricane Sandy struck about a month ago, I started piecing this Christmas quilt.  I've been wanting to do a pinwheel Christmas quilt for a few years now, and I finally determined to design and sew it.

I obviously haven't quilted it yet - things just got way too busy and I had to set it aside because I didn't want to rush through the quilting process and potentially ruin it.  Now that it's all pieced, I'm regretting all the different shades of green in the quilt.  I was going for a more classic look, and this one has a much more retro/vintage look due to the riotous colors and patterns. I think I may piece another one that's just red and white next year.

This version is still a lot of fun, and I'm sure it will be something my kids will remember pulling out each Christmas season as they grow up.

To create the blocks, I sewed strips of fabric together and then cut them into triangles to create the pinwheels.  This resulted in blocks that had vastly different looks to them, even when using identical fabric strips.  These 2 blocks (above and below), for example, were made from the same fabric strip combinations but look completely different because of the positioning of the triangles.  Can you see the same fabric combos in both blocks?  Such fun, such fun.

I really enjoyed the creative process involved in making this quilt - no 2 blocks are the same (except the tiny, 4" ones) and each block was a new design challenge.  Not the fastest or easiest quilt to make, by any means, but definitely more interesting than doing monotonous assembly-line style piecing.

Here's another sewing project I did this Christmas...handstitched lettering on velvet pillows!  These were sent off to family members, but I must admit I kept a couple of them for myself...I really like how they turned out.

I discovered that velvet is extremely hard to sew with because of the nap.  Even with the special walking foot I have on my sewing machine, the 2 squares of velvet would shift and push off eachother like crazy when I was sewing them together.  If anyone has any tips on how to sew velvet together, I'm all ears!

The green one was made with antique-style velvet, which was much easier to work with because the fabric had a stiff backing and the nap was less thick = less push and pull as it was going through the feed dogs. 

Hazel liked the pillows too - or at least she liked getting her picture taken next to them!  She always loves to get into the pictures I'm taking around the house.

I bought some lovely wool felt from the Heather Bailey store, which I used to make some sweet little personalized ornaments for my young nieces and nephew.  I must admit I was surprised at how long it took me to make those little things - I may as well have made all the girls a skirt!  Ah, well, hopefully the kids will enjoy their ornaments for years to come.

After the handstitched ornaments were all sent off, I got smart and made simple clay ornaments for my local friends.  I used plain white clay and then, after they were baked, I coated them with a silver glaze and blotted most of it off so that only a pearlized sheen remained everywhere except for the lettering.

Much faster and easier, and yet they're still quite lovely.  I got the idea for stamping the words into the Sculpey clay from an online tutorial .  Her birds were more 3-dimensional and looked quite a bit different, and I used a cut-off paper clip embedded in the clay as my hanger, but the stamped lettering is about the same.

I didn't have time to make handstitched felt birdies for my kids, so I made them clay versions instead and coated the birds with different colored glazes, which they really liked.

These are the three that I kept.  They have a metallic aqua glaze on them.

 

Here we all are in our Christmas Sunday attire!  The kids only tolerated posing for 3 or 4 episodes of the self timer on the camera+tripod, so this was the best we could come up with.  At least we now have something to put on our Christmas cards...the ones I haven't made yet.  :-)  That's one of this week's projects.

Have you noticed we have a new member in our family?  We rescued her from a local shelter a few weeks ago, and we're so glad we did.

Hazel has aptly named her Princess Velvet (her fur is SO incredibly SOFT!), but most of the time we dispense with formality and just call her Velvet or, simply, Kitty. 

The kids have been begging for a pet for so long, but I just couldn't bring myself to get a dog.  The thought of having to bathe, groom, pick up poop, wipe its paws every time it went in and out of the house, etc etc just made me cringe.  I have a hard time getting my own kids to bathe, brush their hair and teeth, and flush the toilet - the last thing I needed was to look after a doggie for all the same reasons!

Cats, on the other hand, are more independent.  And they don't slobber all over your face.  And they clean themselves, and there isn't cat poop all over the yard.  I  can handle a cat, provided it doesn't claw my furniture to shreds.  :-)

We all love our Velvet!  She is a remarkable kitty because she is incredibly tolerant and mellow, especially considering her young age (8 months).  Hazel carts her around all day long and Velvet quietly endures without a scratch or a frantic dash under the furniture.  She is already housetrained and, so far, has not done any major damage to furniture with her claws (knock on wood).  Plus she is such a sweetie! 

Velvet loves to snuggle on laps (I love the way she tucks her front paws under herself) but can be playful with her kitty toys too, which provides lots of entertainment for the family.  She is perfect for us, and hopefully she thinks we're okay too.  Definitely my favorite Christmas present this year.

 

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year!

 

All I want for Christmas is more time before Christmas

I fail to see how it could possibly be nearly 2 weeks into December.  Or more specifically, how there could possibly be a mere 15 days until Christmas! 

After all, I'm just downloading and editing the few pictures that I took at Thanksgiving.  I know, it's weird to see so much red and white at Thanksgiving time (candy cane stripes with pumpkins?!) but I had just put my "Minnie Mouse" drapes up (had to add length to my original ones plus make 2 new panels) and the striped napkins seemed to fit the mood at the time. 

Our awesome neighbors and my little brother (who happens to be stationed nearby and had just come back from a 6 month deployment) were able to join us for dinner, which was really great.  It's always nice to have extra adults at Thanksgiving time, as my kids are not of the opinion that any traditional Thanksgiving food is worth eating - except for the rolls - and it's no fun to cook a big turkey with all the fixins just for Steve and myself.  Actually, I have to say that Hyrum did try the turkey this year and he even admitted that he liked it, so there's progress.  :-)  Eliza saw the turkey in all its raw glory that morning, so there was no way we were going to convince her to eat any of the cooked version.  She loves animals and can't stand the thought of eating one...although she hasn't quite figured out that Costco meatballs and McDonald's hamburgers are in the meat category.  Wait - the McD's hamburger hardly qualifies as real beef...I can't stand those things.

ANYWAY, one of the (many) reasons I'm feeling so far behind this Christmas is the swingset we finally finished enough to attach the swings to. It's a work in progress, but at least they can start playing on it now.

What was supposed to be a fall project turned into a slighty early Christmas present!  Can you believe the weather is warm enough for my kids to be playing on it with bare feet and no jackets?  In mid-December, no less?  Not that I'm complaining - I was very grateful to be working on it in 60 degree weather, I assure you!

I've been meaning to get a swingset built for them for months now, but we've been slightly preoccupied with other things.  One fine day about 2 months ago, when Steve was gone on a business trip, I decided that it was time to start - I was very weary of the kids whining about being bored with "nothing to do".  Harrumpf.  So I drew up some plans (I wanted a TALL swingset with lots of swinging capablity), went to the store and bought all the lumber, and got started.  Silly me, I honestly thought I'd be able to get a lot of it done in one day with Hyrum to help me hold the posts steady.  I dug the holes, got the posts all level, filled the holes, and got the wood ready to brace the center posts at the appropriate angles.  Then darkness fell before I could brace the tall center posts.

And then Hurricane Sandy happened. 

And then I discovered that my posts weren't in the ground deep enough because when the ground got waterlogged, they decided to lean.  A lot.

So a few weeks later, with Steve to help me this time (and some very helpful advice from our neighbor), we dug up the posts and started again.  This time we dug the holes 30 inches deep and added 4 additional posts (30 inches deep as well) for the angled boards to tie into, so there's no way that puppy is going to budge now! 

It took 3 weekends, a few more trips to the store, and some help from our local missionary friends, but we finally got it to the functional stage.

And Hyrum is jumping for joy. 

I guess I should impose a "no jumping out of the swing" rule, but look at that kid's face!  I used to jump out of swings all the time as a girl = felt like I was flying.  Good thing kids are flexible and resilient.  :-)

Here are Reasons #2 and #3 that Christmas has come too quickly this year...

Last week the weather was AMAZINGLY perfect for refinishing furniture, and these diamonds-in-the-rough had been waiting patiently for over 6 months for just such a time.  Being so close to the coast, I've discovered, means lots of breeze and wind...which can be wonderful in the summer but is a lousy climate for refinishing furniture.  But last Monday was different.  There was NO wind, it was warm but not too humid, and so I pulled the Carpe Diem and went to work.

After spending hours sanding all the grime, waxy buildup, and sticky paper from dresser #1 (dresser #2 was less work, but still needed sanding), I sprayed grey primer on them and then 2 coats of satin grey spray paint.  Once I had them back in the house I brushed 2 coats of a homemade mix of Martha Stewart metallic paint in Thundercloud + an asphaltum glaze + black paint on each dresser. 

The result was a dark, lustrous, gorgeous finish with a rich but subtle sheen that looked exactly like polished hematite.  But it was a bit too dark and I wanted to accentuate the carved details in the woodwork, so then I very carefully applied and wiped off a silver glaze (also Martha's, as seen on the left of the paint photo) in the carvings and along all the edges.  

The dresser above had a million intentionally-inflicted small distress marks from the original factory finish, which I didn't even notice until I primed the entire thing.  I debated whether or not to spend the time filling and sanding all of them, I opted not to but now I think I probably should have.  The metallic paint really highlights all of the miniature dents, which you can probably see on the drawer fronts.  Oops.  It actually looks a lot better in real life - the dents don't scream out like they do in the photo.

 

The silver glaze was a very time-consuming process (5 hours for the 2 dressers) because I had to make sure I wiped every last bit of glaze off the flat planes (without wiping it out of the grooves and along the edges) of the wood with a damp rag because any leftover glaze would have left an uneven silvery sheen and it would have ruined the hematite look.

I also took all the original hardware, scrubbed off the waxy gunk, and dabbed 2 light coats of silver glaze with a t-shirt scrap onto all the surfaces.  The result is more of a patina than a paint layer, which I love.

So here are my silver hematite beauties side by side (they really are the same color, but one is closer to the window), a practical nod to the Hollywood Regency style that I love but don't have the budget or the lifestyle to embrace completely.  Mirrored finishes and lucite coffee tables are pretty, but expensive - not to mention easily damaged!  My 2 dressers cost me a whopping $125 together (thanks to Craigslist in DC) and all the paint was another $40 or $50. 

When we finish remodeling, there will be a fireplace centered on that wall and the dressers will flank it on either side - so their stylistic differences won't be quite so apparent.  And the walls will be painted grey.  Can't wait to see it all come together!

Here we have Reason #4 for falling behind.  This barrister bookcase used to be dark brown, but I wanted it to be white in its new location by the kitchen table.

This is how it used to look when it resided in our office.  Some of the glass doors had been damaged, and there were lots of dings from our move.

I painted the entire thing white, distressed the edges, then cut out cardboard and wrapped it with fabric to cover the grooves from the missing glass cover thingy on the top shelf.  Plus I just love how the fabric backing looks in general, and I would have done it even if I weren't trying to hide grooves!  :-)

I created a mercury glass mirrored finish on the glass by spritzing the backs of the glass with water, then spraying Krylon Mirror spray paint in several thin layers on top of the water droplets.  Wherever the water drops were, the paint didn't stick so it created that mercury look.  This photo is just showing the reflection of the floor, so it's impossible to see the silvery finish - I'll have to get better pictures later.

In November I sanded and painted our kitchen table, just before Thanksgiving.  It had one of those Queen Anne high gloss cherry finishes, so I had to spend a LOT of time with Mr. Sander getting all the gloss off.

Terrible picture, again my apologies...I promise I'll have better ones when I'm all done decorating for Christmas.

I used Annie Sloan's chalk paint in Paris Grey for this piece (2 coats).  Then I sanded it down to a smooth finish (the trouble with that paint are the inevitable brush strokes) and distressed through to the old wood color in places.  I really like using distressed finishes because it makes me much less paranoid about damaging my furniture.  Any new damage tends to blend in...and for a kitchen table with 3 young kids in the house, damage is not a matter of IF, but WHEN. 

I then put 5 coats of Minwax Polyurethane on it for good measure.  I used a small foam roller for super smooth surfaces, it worked out better than a brush would have...although using a sprayer would have been the best tool.  Don't have one of those though, so the roller was the next best thing. 

That table was another DC Craigslist bargain, I think I paid $70 for it.  I have another leaf for it too (not pictured) so it can be REALLY long = perfect for parties and get-togethers!

So there you have it, folks...5 big reasons why I haven't been blogging and why I'm STILL not done with my decorations, let alone making all the gifts I have planned!  Hmmm...too bad humans need sleep, cuz I sure could use several extra hours in my days.   I'm hoping to have my big Christmas post up and running by next week - wish me luck, and Merry Christmas to you all! 

 

 

October in a (pumpkin) shell

I started this post 2 weeks ago, I promise...and now that Thanksgiving is almost upon us, it really is time to wrap up October!

Here is our new dining room, still without drapes and the faux paneling that I started doing nearly 2 months ago.  At least the lower third of the walls are smoothed out and painted white.

Mr. Crow says that, as long as there are plenty of bugs to eat, he doesn't care about the rest.

Eew.  Such a lovely sight to see at the dinner table.  :-)

My black china hutch looks especially dashing bedecked with Halloween dishes.  If you look closely, you can see the one wall of faux paneling I have finished = I had to get it done before pushing the china hutch back to its final resting place, as the hutch can't be moved when it's all loaded up with a ton of dishware and I wasn't about to unload/reload that thing twice!

Nothing new here, just rearranged from previous years.

 

The egg cups were especially useful to display my Halloween flower blossoms.

 

 

 

 

 

The orange paper lanterns were saved from when I did the decorations for my niece's wedding a couple of years ago - I finally unearthed the box they were in when we moved. 

The black branches that I normally hang the ribbon ornaments on got crushed in the move, so I just suspended them from the lanterns for an easy fix.

My beloved Halloween quilt is very happy on its new wall....

...and the chevron pillow I made from the quilt scraps is quite content as well.

Did I ever show you these pillows last year?  I don't remember if I did or not.

This hexagon one was appliqued onto a linen background and then I handstitched the "web" around it.

 

I must confess, I saw these Martha Stewart mice at TJ Maxx and had to buy them - there's no way I'd take the time to cut them out myself and at $2, how can I go wrong?

 

Another shot of my most favorite quilt.

My kiddos all decked out for trick-or-treating!  Costumes are always a source of last-minute excitement at our house, because my kids change their minds at least 3 or 4 times before Halloween night as to what they want to be.  I've learned to wait until the last week to make them, but this year I was making Hyrum's and Eliza's costumes at the VERY last minute. 

I thought I could get away with just adding ears, a mane and tail to a brown hooded sweatshirt for Eliza's horsie costume, but after spending 2 hours shopping for said sweatshirt, I gave up and, in desperation, bought a fleecy blanket to cut up.  I spent all of Halloween eve designing and making her costume.

Hyrum was feeling grumpy about the whole trick-or-treat thing and stated quite emphatically that he didn't want a costume this year....until he came home from school on Halloween day and said he wanted to be a skeleton.  So I found his sweats and grabbed some fusible fleece that I (fortunately) had on hand and cut out the bones during Hyrum's piano lesson.  The ribcage is appropriately detailed, but in the essence of time I just did very basic (anatomically wrong) bones for his arms and legs, and no pelvis bones...which alarmed Hyrum quite a bit but given the time constraints he forgave me.  :-)  Forty-five minutes later (and no dinner for mommy!) we were out the door enroute to tricks and treats.

True to tradition, I had a Halloween party for my kids and their friends.  This year was rather modest in the fancy themed food department (compared to previous years), but hey - at least we had a party!

Here are my chocolate covered pretzel/caramel spiders, which looked better than they tasted because I couldn't find Rolo candy and used caramel squares instead, but left them in the oven WAY too long so they were as hard as rocks!  Not exaggerating, I assure you = I had to warn the kids not to eat the spider middles unless they wanted a broken tooth or two.  I'll know better for next year.  :-)

I decided to let the kids create their own Halloween-themed treats this year, which was a big success.

I bought those awful, low-quality Ding Dongs and Swiss Rolls (that I can't stand but my kids love) and let them go crazy with marshmallows, candy, and frosting.

They had a great time!  Definitely a repeat activity.

 

No, there aren't Ding Dongs inside this one...I was asked to help out with a small, rather impromptu local wedding and so I offered to make the cake too, since their budget didn't allow for one.

I couldn't find any real flowers (in the 1.5 hours that I had to shop for them before picking up my kids, in a new city that I'm still unfamiliar with) that would work in the autumnal color spectrum, so I had to buy faux flowers instead.

Not exactly optimum, but definitely better than nothing at all, right?  They were very appreciative of everything, I'm glad I was able to help out.

What's October without a visit to the good ol' Pumpkin Patch?

This pumpkin patch/produce market was fantastic = demonstrations of hand-pressed apple cider,

scarecrow stuffing,

even a giant sand dune!

I don't know how kids can stand having sand get everywhere in their clothes and hair, but they sure don't seem to mind!

The hayride was lots of fun,

and of course the pursuit of picking the perfect pumpkin was something Hazel took very seriously.

"This is the one, Mom! " Too bad I didn't get a photo of it after she carved it (all by herself, of course) and before it rotted all over the porch.  Hopefully I'll have my act together a bit more next year....and hopefully I'll post again before December!  Don't hold your breath, though - it looks like I'm pretty consistently averaging 1 post per month.  That just may be the new norm for me this year, at least until things settle down with the new house, doctor's appointments, switching schools/preschools (Hazel's third one since May), etc etc.

If I don't "see" you until the end of November, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

His and Hers

What classic color scheme is better for a shared His-N-Hers office than good ol' black, white, and red? 

Well, okay, there are lots of options but since we already had a bunch of black, white, and red stuff from our last house, this is what I came up with for our new office area!

All the furniture, rugs, and drapes were from various parts of our old house, just regrouped to fit this new space.  Recognize the ribbon photo board from my previous studio? 

This is a view of how open it was before we had the wall added.  By closing that space off to the front entryway, we gained a lot of usable interior office space with room enough to have a bookshelf and a reading chair instead of a 10 foot opening.  I know many people like the modern open concept, but for me this works MUCH better.  I'm not a fan of having things so open that there are no boundaries between various spaces of the home...not to mention the mess visibility factor! 

The drapes were reworked from the ones I had in our master bedroom in the old house - Steve was nice and let me have my polka dots, even though it's his office space too.  :-)  At least they weren't pink polka dots, right?!  I normally hang my drapes with the rods almost to the ceiling, but since the ceiling in this house is at 9 feet instead of 8, I hung the rods lower than usual.  I wasn't in the mood to add on extra length at the bottom of my drapes for this room.

Speaking of the curtain rods, would you believe that they're just 1" diameter PVC pipe?

Yup, true story.  I didn't want to spend a fortune on these walls, and I wanted the drapes to completely cover the space between the windows, so I knew I could get away with the 45 angle PVC couplers and the super cheap curtain rod brackets (you can buy them in unfinished pairs at Lowes for a couple bucks each set).  So I painted the pipes black with spray paint that's especially designed for plastic, and I only had to buy 2 unfinished finials for either end of the curtain rods (which I also painted black, obviously).

The whole rod setup for those 3 windows, including the pipes, brackets, spray paint, and finials, ended up costing about $20 - and $5 of that was for the spray paint!

To make the finials (which come with a screw inserted in them already) attach to the ends of the PVC, I could have glued wooden dowels inside the ends and then screwed into that, but instead I sprayed some of that expandable caulk sealant stuff (the foamy kind that expands and then hardens) into the open ends of the PVC, then taped the finials in place on the end before the foam had a chance to expand/escape/ooze out the end.  Once it hardened (about 30 minutes) they were firmly secured in place and I didn't have to go try and find a dowel that would fit just right inside the pipe.

Here are these baskets again - I've had these forever, but in order to make their original blonde finish less noticeable on their new shelf, I stained them with a watered-down glaze which was a deep brown/black color.

This is my side of the room.  Except normally there are a bunch of papers from my sketching and all the stuff the kids noodle around with everywhere.  No, I didn't clean up just for the photo - I just took this as soon as I was done decorating = before we had a chance to mess it all up!

Perhaps one of these days I'll actually live by that "Keep Calm" motto...I've got the "Carry On" part down okay, it's just the Keep Calm part that continues to elude me....maybe by the time I'm 80 I'll get that part figured out.  Or maybe by the time we stop moving around?  Hmmmm....I wonder......

 

Finally, something is finished!

It isn't much, but there is one tiny corner of my chaotic, in-the-middle-of-remodeling-prior-to-moving-in house that is just the way I want it to be!  Hooray!   Except, that is, for the lack of soft grey paint in the corner there, which I didn't notice until now.  Ah well.  I'm not going to bother cutting in everything until the whole room is ready to paint. 

This will give you a sneak peek into the new color scheme of the main rooms of our new house = oh, how I love the combination of aqua, red, and grey, with lots of silver accents!

That quilt in the middle there (this was the kids' playroom in our old house) was the inspiration for my new color scheme. 

Anyway, I love this little vignette at the back of the closet we just finished (a la contractors).  It faces the back door and looks into the kitchen breakfast area, reflecting lots of light and color into the back of the house. 

The mirror is one of the many things that got damaged in our move - the corners were all smashed up.  I was able to fix it and repaint it, thank goodness.  The mirror frame used to be black, but I painted it white and then did a series of glazes (1 coat light silver, 1 coat dark silvery grey....both were little pre-mixed bottles of Martha Stewart paint available at Home Depot).  I love how it turned out!  Much better than plain black. 

You'll probably recognize my awesome red faux poppies...they've been cheering my house for the past 4 homes we've lived in.  The horse head statue is a new bargain acquisition, thanks to Marshalls.  I didn't like the way the bottom of the base was designed, so I covered it up with some wide grosgrain ribbon...the perfect little polkadot flair, n'est pas? 

Here is the reason I'm finally blogging again....I love my kids more than anything, but Holy Macaroni I'm glad school has finally started!!  This has been one of the most difficult summers ever for all of us - the kids were SOOO bored so I pretty much gave up trying to work on the house and spent much of my time entertaining/playing referee/driving to the local pool.  We're ALL breathing a sigh of relief that school has begun.

It's also quite exciting to see a picture of the two of them actually hugging eachother and smiling...an important moment to document, without a doubt (wink).

Even my little Hazel Basil is off to school this year...PreK, that is, since the cutoff here in NC is just before her birthday.  I'm laughing at myself because, after 10 years of secretly looking forward to having all my kids in school so I could have more free time during the day to work, I'm all bittersweet and sniffy about my baby girl going off to school fulltime.  Hazel has been my nearly constant companion for almost 5 years now, and I miss her snuggles and adorable smile (Although not the whining.  I don't miss the whining at all).  My friends who have "been there, done that" assure me that the sadness is short-lived, however, and I'll quickly recover.  :-)

So this past week has been spent cleaning, decorating, working outside, and doing lots of little projects like the ones you see started in above photos (more on those later), plus I'm almost finished with our office - but that post will have to wait for another day.

I also need to post about the amazing Marcie, who worked tirelessly to make (and inspire her friends to make) TONS of bags for the Bulgarian Orphans!  She doesn't live too far from us, so she and her 2 sweet sons (they helped put all the drawstrings in) delivered the huge box of nearly 100 bags earlier in the summer.  At about the same time I received a box of beautifully sewn bags from Manuela (thank you!!) so we have lots of gorgeous bags to send off the the orphans.  That's on my list of things to do this week.  But I'll post about that later too.

Right now I've got to finish spreading drywall mud on the base of the dining room walls...I'm eliminating the annoyingly distracting texture of the sheetrock and, when it's all smooth, will cut trim to create faux paneling/wainscoting below the chair rail.  Not the most excitingly fun project, but it'll look great when it's done!  I'm REALLY looking forward to having my dining room put together.

Until another day, then....and I promise I won't wait another month before I post again.  You probably thought I'd died or, more likely, went completely insane due to the traumatic upheaval of everything these past few months.  Which, actually, is not that far from the truth.  But I'm mostly recupurated now.  Catch ya'll later - now that I'm in the south I can talk like that, right?  :-)

Why I haven't finished unpacking yet

It's only been a couple of months....what's the rush, right? 

Just in case any of you are eager to see a beautifully decorated new home anytime soon, here are a few photos to explain why that hasn't come to pass quite yet.  It makes no sense to paint and do window treatments until all of the construction dust has settled.  And until the rennovation/painting is done, nothing can be put into place yet.

These pictures show what was originally a small formal living room area which opened up off of the front entry.  Well, our need for an office far exceeded the need for 2 living rooms, so we decided to have a wall installed, french doors put in on the other wall, and the open doorway into the great room was opened up to improve the sense of vertical space.

Since we're still wiped out from renovating our other house, and because Steve will be extremely busy with his new job assignment, we hired a contractor to take care of everything except the painting (my job).  It's awesome to have someone else take care of the work, but the downside is that it has to be done on other people's timetable = lots of waiting until the various workers have time to come in and do their respective jobs.  We're currently waiting for the sheetrock guy.  I'd do it myself, but the walls have a very heavy splatter texture on it that would be impossible to match without a splatter machine, which I don't own and have no intention of buying.  I wish all the walls were smooth, but that is not the case.  Hopefully the sheetrock will be done this week sometime and things can progress.

There is very little storage in this house, so we decided to bump out the closet under the stairs to squeeze in a little more storage space.  At least now we'll be able to hang all our winter coats in one place!

You can see the ridiculous, stand-alone post in the photo above - the post they ended up having to put in to support the balcony above because they didn't use a beam beefy enough to support a free-standing cantilevered balcony.  Grrrrr.  Hazel's already gotten hurt on that huge trim wrapped around the post, and it really affects traffic in one of the busiest places in the house.  I'd love to get rid of the post altogether, but it would be mega-expensive to go in and beef up the beams on the second floor enough to do that.  At a minimum, I want to replace it with a round pillar so Hazel's head won't get bashed again.

We're in the process of installing unfinished cabinets in the laundry room, which will help a lot in the storage department.  I'm still thinking about what I want to do to the cabinets to finish them....

This is our master bedroom, after the 2 senseless little partial walls were removed so that we could actually have room to put a horizontal dresser in our bedroom (you know, the one that got split in two because of the movers).  Apparently the original contractor put those little walls in because he was going to install a built-in shelving system, but no such shelving ever materialized.   And since the rest of the walls are peppered with windows and doors, that space was the only place for a long dresser.  Besides, it was a great excuse for me to condemn the super cheap, ultra ugly and scratchy carpet to death....I'll be installing new flooring in there as soon as the sheetrock is done.

The sheetrock guy will also be fixing the place in the ceiling where Steve almost fell through while trying to figure out why the AC unit in the attic was leaking and ruining the sheetrock in our hallway.  Oops!  Glad he didn't get hurt.

Anyway, as soon as the flooring is installed, I can move our bedroom furniture out of the living room and we can have a bed and a place to put our clothes again.  Except now I have to find new furniture since the movers destroyed most of our bedroom set!

Some of you have already been scratching your heads about these remodels/replacements, saying "Wait a minute...I thought it was a brand new house?"

Yes, it was recently finished, and we're the first inhabitants, but it was abandoned several years ago by the original builder while only half built.  So it sat for a few years without the exterior and roof even being finished.  Then the bank stepped in and hired a different contractor to finish the job...and as you can imagine, workers finishing a house for a bank foreclosure can result in a level of workmanship and quality of materials that is much less than if they were hired by a client about to move in.   So, between the weathering wear & tear and the foreclosure status, this "new" house has suffered all sorts of issues like rotted door frames on the back deck, leaking patio doors (3 exterior doors and frames need replacing), plumbing and wiring issues (leaking pipes and faulty, arcing (sp?) wires that kept tripping circuits), HVAC problems (improperly installed unit in attic = leaking and water damage),  bird infestation of all the bathroom ventilation systems, warped and cupped hardwood flooring, and soft spots underneath the kitchen flooring that I have yet to confirm the cause of.  Some of these things we knew about prior to buying it (yes, we had it inspected) but many came to light after moving in...and since it's a foreclosure, everything is "AS IS" and we have no recourse even if things were installed improperly.  It's a good thing we got a good deal on it!

Soooooooo, it's a beautiful house with wonderful potential - it's just not as "move-in ready" as we had hoped.  But the neighborhood is really great, I LOVE how much space we have outside (3 acres!!!) and our neighbors are FANTASTIC.  They've helped me out so much already, especially when Steve was gone for weeks at a time and I was here alone with the kids trying to deal with all of the problems that kept springing up with the house, not to mention moving in and sending the kids off to a new school.

Because the inside of the house has been so overwhelming, I've been seeking solace and a creative outlet by working on the landscaping outside...another major reason I'm still not unpacked yet!  We were blessed with a cool and wet spring, which really helped as I planted 17 trees and HUNDREDS of plants.  Here you can see the front of the house, and my tiny little fledgling landscape....and the 11 cubic yards of mulch that didn't go as far as expected, boo-hoo.

This is our backyard - in the distance you may be able to see 6 trees that I recently planted....or maybe not.  :-)  It's so awesome to have so much space, although it takes about 2 hours to mow everything, even with a 60" deck mower!  It's worth it though - I love it.  Eventually I'll put in a big vegetable garden and dig out a big firepit area, among other things.  Those projects will have to wait until next year though.

This is what the front of the house looked like before we moved in...

...and the same general area of the house in its current state.  It still looks pretty wimpy, but I was determined not to overplant so that when the bushes reach their mature size, they won't be crowded.  I ordered many of the shrubs online, and they came as bare-root little twigs so it will be at least a couple of years before the yard really looks like much...hence the urgency to get them in the ground as soon as I could.

Now that the brutal summer heat has descended upon us, I spend at least 2 hours a day watering and weeding everything - and I have started to question the wisdom of planting everything at once!  I did so because there was almost NO vegetation (other than weeds) on the entire property except 6 scrawny, neglected bushes in front of the house.  I really wanted to get things in the ground ASAP so they can get growing - because I NEED plants as much as I need a nicely decorated house inside....especially after leaving behind such a lush, densely-planted yard in Virginia. 

 

As you can see, there is still much work to be done.  I'll be installing edging all around the beds, and this fall we'll get rid of the weeds (AKA lawn, but it's not grass - just weeds) and plant grass seed. 

Since the water table is so high in this area (AKA swamp), everyone's property is surrounded by ditches to control flooding.  When we first started house hunting in the area, I was amazed at how flat the topography is - and how many swampy marshy areas there are (hello, mosquitoes).  In fact, there is a large wildlife reserve nearby that, no joke, is officially named the Great Dismal Swamp.  I'm sure it's very beautiful, but since I'm no fan of bugs, alligators, and poisonous snakes, that's probably not a place I'll be frequenting much.  I've had nightmares about alligators eating my children for years, and now water moccasins and diamondbacks have slithered their way into my list of things to be paranoid about.

Anyway, on Craigslist I found a local listing for a huge pile of river rock that a homeowner had pulled out of his yard and was selling for a great price, so we borrowed a big trailer and vehicle from our awesome neighbors next door and loaded them all up.  Sweet!  The perfect solution to controlling both weeds and erosion around the culverts in the ditches.  I mortared the rocks in place around the culverts, and the remaining rocks will be carefully stacked on top of landscape fabric along the slope.  I dug a little "shelf" in the dirt at the bottom of the ditch and embedded the first row of the rocks in cement to provide additional stability when the rains come.  I'll put more landscape fabric at the base of the ditch and cover it with gravel, which should help a lot with weed control as well.

Every morning I come out and work on it for a few hours before it gets too hot...but with the heat wave we've just experienced this past week the early morning thing is pretty much pointless.  On Saturday it was 90 degrees at 9:00 am, with enough humidity in the air to make me drip just standing there, let alone mixing cement and hefting rocks.  I think it got above 100 for several days, and the humidity makes it SO much worse!  I know that other places have been even more scorched, but this muggy heat is enough for me!  I've been able to brave the temps, though, to keep chipping away at this rock project.  I really enjoy working with rock, and I'm looking forward to being able to finish SOMETHING....because it's going to be a long, long time before the house is the way I've envisioned it to be.

This next week is supposed to be cooler, with lots of thunderstorms - hurray for that!  Having Mother Nature water my plants is much better than me doing it, and building rock walls in ditches will be much more pleasant.  :-)

 

 

 

The Colors of Freedom

Happy Birthday to the USA!!!

We celebrated with a trip to a nearby town to watch the fireworks, and I made a cake for the occasion (although I must admit I ran out of time on the official Independence Day, and made this a day later).  The kids still thought it was fun. 

I used 2 white cake mixes, and into the batter of one mix I poured a small 4 oz. box of cherry Jello powder.  The blue was just food coloring mixed into about 1/3 of the other white cake mix batter.  After all the layers were baked, I cut a circle out of the center of each red and white layer.  I tinted some of the stabilized whipping cream (the frosting) and mixed it with crumbled blue cake and gently packed the blue mixture into the center of the assembled cake (with the hole in the center), then frosted everything with the whipped cream frosting. 

It would have looked better with skinnier layers of the red and white cake (4 skinny layers of each color) but I had thoughtlessly frozen the layers prior to cutting them, so it was too tricky to try and cut skinny layers when they were frozen solid on the inside and rapidly thawing on the outside.  I should have sliced them before freezing the layers.  Ah, well - you get the Flag Cake idea anyway, right?  Hyrum was excited about the concept of a flag cake, although he informed me that the number of stripes was inaccurate.  Sorry, buddy, maybe next year I'll be closer to reality.  :-)

My dishes were very much into the spirit of July 4th, even though the rest of my house is still in utter chaos.

The dining room is the only place that is somewhat organized...although right now my table is a hospital bed for artwork that got smashed/broken during the move (thanks a lot, careless packers).  Sigh.  I thought about doing a post dedicated to all the furniture that got destroyed by the movers, but it would just make me angry all over again.  Suffice it to say that there is hardly a dresser or chair that didn't get damaged, either structurally (they SHOVED everything in the truck so hard that many joints, drawer glides, and casings were busted loose) and/or cosmetically (chipped paint, big dents and gouges).  To those of you who either HAVE to or CHOOSE to have movers move your things, may I offer 2 bits of advice:

1) Do NOT let them bring in a large crew to pack/prep/load everything in one day (there's no way to supervise a crew of 8-10 men to make sure they're treating stuff well)

2) When they load your things in the truck, have someone stand there the whole time and make sure they're not killing everything they cram in there.

If we had done those 2 things, our bedroom dresser would not have a crack the entire length of the dresser top (they split it in half, and dented the living daylights out of it, don't ask me how), nor would all of my carefully refinished vintage furniture have suffered so horribly.  And my picture frames would still be intact, and the glass wouldn't have broken, and my artwork wouldn't have been damaged. 

ANYWAY, that was the post I was NOT going to write.  Oops.  Back to Independence Day...

I found these awesome plates at WorldMarket.com, aren't they great?  There isn't wall space for a Wall O'Plates in our new dining room, but I was able to squeeze these in beside the china hutch.   They make me smile every time I see them, bless their little ceramic souls.

I'll post some current pics of our new house soon, we're in the middle of a bunch of projects right now.  I know, I know, as if I didn't get my fill of fixing up/changing things in the house we just moved from.......

I'm determined to get this house fixed up/changed at the BEGINNING of our 4 year stay, rather than at the end.  I've had it with doing things at the end just in time for us to move out - and I'm REALLY hoping that this will be our last move for a LONG time.  This past transition has nearly killed me...at least emotionally.  Okay, I'm pretty wiped out physically too.  After 7 moves in 12 years, I'm done.  Should I knock on some wood now?

Hello, Goodbye, and Hello Again

Hi, I'm Shelley...remember me?  If you don't, I wouldn't blame you a bit...I almost feel like a stranger on my own blog, it's been such a ridiculously long time since I've posted anything.  I could list all the reasons, but it would be a mile long and I'd only come across as a whiny baby, so I'll just say this:  The past 3 months have been among the hardest, most emotionally taxing and physically exhausting time periods of my life.  There.  That about sums it up!  I need to apologize to all the very kind people in my life who have emailed me in the last few months, wondering how I'm doing, and I haven't responded to them.  I was entirely overwhelmed, and didn't even know where to start or how to sum up all the crazy events that have happened, so my default response was to put it off until tomorrow.  And you can guess where that lead, right? 

So here I am, finally with both feet in North Carolina, FINALLY finished with the remodeling/painting/prepping/moving out of our place in Virginia.  I've been back and forth between the two states several times, as we've moved into our house here in NC to get our kids in school the last little bit of the school year and, at the same time, finish some huge projects on the house in VA.  Much of the time Steve and I have been in separate places (he still had a bunch of work to do for his job in DC, plus the fix-up house factor) so that has added to the fun.  We all managed to survive, however, and now it's time to step back and bid adieu to our beloved house (and all our wonderful, incredibly inspiring friends whom we will miss dearly!) in Virginia. 

Soooo....I expect you'll want to see some pictures if our Virginia house that we've been working so hard to finish, yes? 

I'll start with the rooms that you've never seen, with accompanying "before" photos, and then throw in some pictures of the rest of the house at the end (just to have our entire house re-do's in one post).  And I'll try not to cry when I see the compiled collection of photos representing all the huge amounts of work we have done to that place, only to leave it behind (sniff sniff) ...

This is our master bathroom.  It's on the small side by modern standards, but since we knew we were leaving it didn't make any sense to go to the expense of reconfiguring plumbing to create a large bathroom suite.

Here's a "during" shot, after the old tub rusted through and leaked water down through the ceiling of our living room.  Steve had great fun with the Saws-All when he cut that tub in half in order to remove it.  He also replaced the water-damaged subfloor and the wallboard around the tub.  Alas, I can't find any photos of the original bathroom, complete with old flowered wallpaper and lots of tiles falling off the shower wall to reveal a blackened, moldy mess of rotten sheetrock.  It was Awesome.

It's a little more awesome now, even if it is still small, eh?

 I did all the tile work all by myself...and let me tell you, it was FUN! 

I'm lying. 

I hadn't done much vertical tile work before, which was a little bit more challenging, but the biggest issue was the size of those tiles!  They're only 8 inches high, but they're 20 inches LONG which turned out to be a real nightmare because those walls were insanely crooked, bowed, and skewed.  Not a big deal when you're working with small tile, but when you have 20" of inflexible material sticking out because the wall curves and bows, and your layout pattern is the halfsies brick-layer style, you have a problem!  I think I spent at least 3 days of my spare time working on setting the tile in that shower.  Of course, the inset tray/shampoo shelf slowed me down a wee bit too.  That was one of those "Oh, how much longer could it possibly take to install a shampoo niche?" situations that really did take MUCH longer than it would have because of some boo-boos that happened along the way.  Glad it all worked out okay, although I would sure do it differently next time. 

Since it was such a small space, I installed 2 large robe hooks (from the hardware section, NOT the bathroom section = much less expensive) instead of a teeny towel bar.  Besides, it's much easier to throw a towel over a hook rather than carefully place it over a small bar.

 The floor in this bathroom is, without a doubt, my FAVORITE part of this whole bathroom.  No, that's not wood, it's tile.  Big, gorgeous tile that looks like weathered wood and even has texture embossed into it.  I LOVE this tile!  FYI, I bought it from The Tile Shop, a chain store in Virginia and who knows where else.  I'm so sad about leaving this tile behind, in fact, that I've resolved to install it in my new kitchen here in North Carolina to replace the absurdly ugly and poorly installed laminate faux tile currently (dis)gracing my kitchen floor.  But that's way down on my list.  And I digress.

 

I don't think I ever showed you pictures of the kid's bathroom!  I actually did this bathroom before any of the others, because the countertop was falling down and mold was everywhere.

I cut out the moldy parts of the sheetrock, replaced it, and created a vanity sink by cutting into an old dresser (which I painted) and adding a sink and a tile backsplash.  The drawers needed to be cut away in the center to make room for the underside of the sink + plumbing, which I did but then I never got around to repairing the drawers...for 3 years.  (sheepish grin)  Steve ended up fixing them after I had already left for NC with the kids, along with tons of other "we'll do it later" projects that we hadn't gotten around to doing until the month before leaving.

....And here we have another bathroom project!  This one is in the basement. 

In anticipation of your inevitable question, "Why on earth did you remodel all those bathrooms if you knew you were leaving?"

Answer:  Because they were falling apart and rusting out and causing water damage and plumbing problems and rotten floors...not to mention the mold and ugliness factors!  We might be transferred back to DC area, so we decided to keep the house and rent it out for now.  Which means those bathrooms HAD to be dealt with before we left.

We were only using half our bathrooms for most of the time we lived in the house because they were so bad and we hadn't gotten around to fixing them up until that phone call in December informing us we had to move.  Moving always provides a nice kick-in-the-pants for completion of house projects, does it not?

Here's another "during" photo....I'm really bad at taking "before" shots, can you tell?  At this point we had already ripped out the tile floor and the cabinet and leaky toilet.  Steve ripped out the tub and tile in this bathroom too, due to a rusted out tub.

Here's a shot of the new sheetrock (in the middle of my patch job) after Steve ripped into it to reduce the amount of crazy plane-changes in the ceiling (ductwork all over the place).  There was also a nice big hole where they brought all new electrical wiring into the basement after we discovered the existing wiring was faulty (circa my studio remodel last year).  All sorts of fun!

I carried the same Allure Ultra flooring into the bathroom from my studio, and Steve installed faux tile walls around the new tub (twice!)  But we won't get into that story. 

We ended up keeping the funky retro shower head in place, it's a great conversation piece (because, after all, everyone needs an icebreaker in a basement bathroom).  Don't judge the bad paint job above the shower wall - I hadn't repainted yet after Wall Install #2.  You probably didn't even notice until after I pointed it out, huh?  C'mon now, I'm sure somebody did!

 

Okay, while we're on the topic of bathrooms, here's the powder room that we redid a couple of years ago.

Again, another rotting bathroom with a gross floor that literally flexed/caved every time someone used the commode due to a long-neglected toilet leak.  The subfloor had to be replaced down to the joists, so Steve ripped everything out and replaced the subfloor so we could install new tile, baseboard, fix the sheetrock, and make everything all pretty. 

I'm going to miss this bathroom - I love all the black and white.

This was a project I have dubbed Stairway To Insanity.

Because I really, truly, almost went insane doing it.

If you remember, this was the staircase leading down into the basement.  The stairs were already there, but there weren't long diagonal pieces of wood on the ends of the stairs like normal.  Some steps were directly against sheetrock, some were open, and some were butted up against badly damaged sheetrock (or new sheetrock that was installed with gaps up to an inch surrounding the steps).

Sooo...I concluded that the best solution would be to fit carefully cut pieces of trim around each. and every. step. to hide all the mess around the ends of the stairs.

I still think that was probably the best thing to do, but *Hot Diggety Dog* that was a HUGE project.  Mostly because all the walls were (surprise) bowed and crooked and misaligned all over the place, and the treads weren't solid pieces of wood so nothing was level or plumb.  Which means that the pieces of trim didn't just fit nicely into place.  Oooooooh, no.  :-)  I spent an entire week cutting, installing, sanding like crazy, caulking, and painting all the trim on those stairs.  The day I finished was a very happy day, indeed....if I drank alcohol (which I don't), it would have been a champagne moment for sure.

Okay, now for the projects you've already seen:  My studio, of course.  I still can't believe I had to leave that place behind.  Tragic, especially because there's no space to do something similar in our new house.  But ANYWAY.

Here's the same space, before removing the built-in cabinets and discovering all the wiring issues that necessitated a complete demolition.

If you haven't read about this Project with a capital P, click here.

This is how it was the day we moved in...

...and how it looked after replacing walls, floor, closets, adding french doors, recessed lighting, and all that other good stuff.

And we mustn't forget about the kitchen!  This was the very first thing we ripped into.  I'm so glad we did, at least we enjoyed a gorgeous kitchen for 3 years! 

For the whole story, please click here.

 

 

 Farewell, cute kitchen with the really deep cabinets to store lots of stuff.

Goodbye, large formal front room that displayed my Christmas pretties so well.

Hasta luego, my dining room that so perfectly displayed the trappings of every holiday.

 

Goodbye, Wall O' Plates.

 

 Farewell, new front door that we replaced last year.

 

Goodbye, basement that we just finished!  Click here for that post.

Oh - and I have no pictures of this, but goodbye to the entire upstairs bedroom area that I spent three L*O*N*G days painting all the trim and doors for!  I had never gotten around to painting the trim upstairs (it was really stained and ugly) and none of us had closet doors the entire time we lived there (because I removed the old, horrible brown-faux-wood-contact-paper-covered ones the first week we moved in).  So in the last few weeks Steve installed 4 sets of paneled bi-fold doors (so 8 bi-fold doors = 16 individual door planks) plus the 3 paneled doors leading to the walk-in closets and the bathroom of the Master Bedroom.  Which means they all had to be painted.  Two coats.  And after I painted all the trim, I had to cut back in with the wall color everywhere.  Love it, love it, love it!  Okay, so I didn't love doing it, but I love the end result.  It looks really fresh and clean upstairs now, what a difference white trim paint makes!  Too bad I waited until 5 days before the renters moved in to do it, eh?

So long, lush backyard that I worked SO hard to make all nice!

This is the SAME corner as the photos above, before I built that flagstone patio and before we hired a company to install the fence and gate.

 

These are the same backyard steps, before and after.

 

This is a different set of steps, leading down off the patio from the other side.

 

Here they are again, looking up instead of down.  I had intended to trim back all of the azaleas before I left, but I simply ran out of time.  I hope our renters can keep them trimmed....maybe I'll drive back up there soon and spend a day trimming the bushes back at least for this year, so they can see how it needs to be done.  Am I being a control freak?

The 2 photos you see above are the same area.

Remember the mess on the other side?  The 4 photos above are different views of the same spot.  I took a sledghammer to the rotted boardwalk and added a bunch of stonework and 3 terraced garden plots along the south side of the house.

 Farewell Virginia house!  Goodbye, all the wonderful people I was so fortunate to know up there!  We will miss you dearly, thanks for all the memories.  Sniff sniff...

Hello, North Carolina!  Looking forward to our time here! 

 

 

Basement Blahs Banished

I'm happy to report that the basement is (almost) finished! 

Just in time for us to move.  But we won't talk about that right now.

Here it is while standing in the kid's playroom, looking into the guest room.  I didn't want to close off the space entirely because of all the wonderful daylight from the sliding glass doors.  But I wanted to provide a sense of privacy to guests, which is why I opted for a partial wall and the drapes between the rooms.

Just to refresh your memory, here's the same space in the midst of the remodel.

Just a slight improvement, don't ya think?

Our only regret is that we didn't do this a lot sooner so that we could enjoy it more...we LOVE our basement now!

Here's a dresser I rescued from dump-dom (and yes, 2 of those knobs are a little different....I started painting them and wiping away the excess, but I'm not sure if I prefer the painted look or not).

Here she is before the makeover, all $25 of her.  Someone had started refinishing the top, but since that time the top had suffered extreme trauma so I decided to just fill, sand, and paint the whole thing.

The whole dresser was completely thrashed with scratches and dents, and the light colored "stripe" you see there is actually exposed raw wood from where part of the vertical corner piece was entirely ripped off.  Steve helped me a lot on this piece = he was really tired of it sitting in our garage (I lacked the energy/impetus to start the repair work on it) so he fixed the broken corner and helped me fill the millions of scratches.  What a great guy, eh?

 

Here's another rescue project...but unfortunately I don't have any "before" pictures of this one.

I decided to just go with all the dings and dents that were in this piece and distressed the finish to accentuate the "character marks". 

Here's another fun project, my darling armoire named Big Red.  Yes, I'm really good at stating the obvious.  Again, no "before" pictures of this one, but I'll just tell you it was blonde pine wood with a lot of knots showing and you can probably imagine what it looked like before.  I actually painted this one a long time ago, but I don't think I ever showed it to you.

The guest bed is another refinishing project I started long ago and finally finished this past month.  The initial layer is turquise, with white over the top and then distressed.

I made this pillow a few days ago because I just COULDN"T let that huge red bedspread sit there all alone without a single cute pillow to engage the eye.  I love the ruffled red ribbon in this pillow - and I love how easy it was to attach to the pillow front with fusible hem tape!

The bed skirt is another recently finished project - I swiped 20" from the width of 2 IKEA drape panels to make the skirt, then fused grey grosgrain ribbon to the (already hemmed!) bottom edge.  I put a center box pleat in the middle of each skirt for added interest.  The remaining drape fabric was then used to make drapes for the sliding glass door - I sewed the red and white polka dot fabric (3 yards of home dec fabric cut in half lengthwise) to the raw edge that I had just created by swiping the 20" for the bed skirt.  I love multi-tasking fabric!

I still have to paint the louvered doors which lead into the furnace room.  The previous owners had slapped paint all over those poor doors...you can probably imagine all the huge drips and globs that were marring the finish.  I spent quite some time sanding it down, and haven't had time to repaint them yet.  I can only paint trim and doors in spurts because it's not a task I enjoy...and after cutting, installing, patching, caulking, and painting all the baseboard and doorway trim in the entire basement, I needed a rest.

Here's a closeup of some little paintings I did a few months ago.

I hadn't painted any artwork for YEARS, and after finding out we were moving I had a sudden, very impractical urge to start painting again.  Not the best timing in the world, I know.  I think it was a reaction to all the stress of not wanting to move and being overwhelmed with everything that needed to be done prior to leaving this home.  Kinda like blogging about the basement remodel at 3:00 a.m. instead of sleeping.  Not that I would ever do such a thing.

Anyway, I did these little "practice" paintings to get warmed up again, before starting on the GIANT paintings that I was craving to do (big, door-sized panels like I painted for galleries before having children).  Needless to say, reality hit before I finished any big giant paintings, but at least I enjoyed a little creative outlet for awhile.  I'm really looking forward to resuming painting once I get settled in North Carolina.  No fair taking bets on how many years that will take.  :-)

 

 

 

The Official "Before and After" of 7 Layer Studio

Well, it "only" took a year, but my studio is finally finished!!!

Okay, I still have to put the doorknobs on the french doors, but I'm going to overlook that for a moment.  True to form, there's always some little detail that I can't seem to make myself finish before declaring something Done.  But at least the durn things are painted!  French doors, I've discovered, are a HUGE pain to paint.  Especially when one starts with raw wood, and 5 coats (including primer) have to be applied...with sanding between coats and a bazillion fun little angles to deal with around the glass.  I highly un-recommend doing it.  But back to this studio of mine!

In order to fully appreciate the evolution of this space, you must first see what it was like Before:

This was how it looked before we moved in.  Awesome.  Yes, that is a piece of plywood cut out in a tulip shape and painted red on the corner of the door...don't ask me why.  I think somebody kicked the door in and that was their fix-it solution.

The previous owners had slapped up a wall to create a bedroom space in here, but since there are no windows (which is illegal in a bedroom) they created one of their own above the stairs....

Which is still illegal but I don't think they were too concerned about rules or building codes...

Which explains why, when we were ripping out the plywood cabinet thingy, we discovered the foundation walls were not framed with 2x4 studs, but with skinny furring strips.  And the bare outlets were screwed directly into said furring strips with no plastic box around the outlet to prevent contact with flammable substances such as, say, wooden strips.

Which, of course, necessitated a full-on gutting of the space and a whole lot of extra work and (of course) money.

Here is Steve playing with toys, er, tools.

He ripped out the silly sliding doors and useless skinny shelves that were associated with the inconvenient water meter sticking out of the wall.  Can't do anything about that plumbing, but we built a smaller little closet to contain the thing.

I'm backtracking now...here's the little closet thingy before we demolished it.

We rented a large U-haul truck to cart away all the debris.  Thank you, thank you, previous owners, for such a fun activity.  :-)

Since the flooring now had gaps in it all over the place, and since that type of laminate is now out of production, it became necessary to rip out the flooring too.

Aahh, a clean slate at last!  I wanted lots of light in here due to the absence of windows, so 12 recessed lights did the trick...and then some!  Not many dark shadows in my studio now, to say the least.

Beautiful, is it not?

One more photo of that glamorous "window" that my kids jumped out of on a regular basis.

We hired help to do the framing, some of the electric, and the sheetrock.  I did the crown molding and spent quite a long, long time painting (and repainting because I didn't like my first color choice) everything, including the ceiling (which had been retextured because I couldn't stand the existing fan texture and it got all damaged anyway when the lights were installed).

I patched all the gigantic gouges in the concrete floor to prep it for the new flooring,

and smashed my way through the bathroom tile so I could extend the flooring into the bathroom.  I ran out of time and steam on that project, and figured I should save that can of worms for another day.  So the new flooring only extends partway into the bathroom, which has yet to be gutted (and oh, does it need gutting).

Speaking of flooring, I installed a highly textured vinyl plank flooring called Allure Ultra (Sawcut Arizona is the color and style).  It's not as easy to install as they claim it is, but I was able to do it all by myself in a day or two.

I built the "counters" at the back of the room (the drawer units are from IKEA) and discovered just how crooked a wall can be...

...which required a new board because I had already cut that one to length (and had spent quite a lot of time sanding, staining, and varnishing it without doing a dry fit first) and I couldn't lose an additional 1/2" on the other side.  Grrrr....

So after Trip # 5,987 to Home Depot, I finished another board (after custom-fitting it to the space BEFORE the final length was cut) and the back wall was ready to go.  Do you like those 2 white tables?  I got them both for $50 on Craigslist...actually I got 2 identical table tops and 4 legs, but they were brown and damaged so I sanded everything down and painted it all white, then swiped some legs from a small farmhouse table with a dorky tabletop for the other, newly-painted tabletop.

And, eventually, my official 7 Layer Studio was complete...just a few weeks shy of a year after we first dug into that back wall.

Please excuse the unrealistic positioning of all my quilts and things on my tables...I was getting ready for my official Open House and so things are unusually clean and "on-display-ish".

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are you tired of seeing my fabric all over the place yet?

Sorry.  Maybe.  :-)

 

 

This quilt (it's for Hazel) was quite the project...that's all hand applique, because I don't have a machine that can do a blanket stitch or any other kind of fancy stitch.  Ironic, isn't it, that here I am with my own line of fabric and patterns and I have a bare-bones basic machine.  Someday I'll actually earn enough money to buy my dream sewing machine...

I built this large quilt rack shelf by using 2 decorative shelf holders (from Home Depot) and screwing through them to secure the wooden closet rod.  Then I glued 2 wooden tapered circles to hide the screw heads.  I added trim to a pine board for the shelf above.

 

 

 

My sister sends me the best Christmas cards.  She knows I love Norman Rockwell.

 

I wonder if other fabric designers panic at the thought of running out of their fabric line?  Probably not to the extent that I do...hence my, um, stash.

 

 

There's actually quite the crazy story associated with this china hutch, akin to the big black beauty I have in my dining room....

... It goes something like this:

Searched far and wide for small, cheap-but-good condition, old china hutch with good lines.  Found one in DC for $50, brought it home without much trouble.  Was in a hurry, didn't sand/clean it very well because I figured the spray primer would compensate.  Sprayed primer, then aqua paint.  Good to go, or so I thought. 

When I started painting the white on (with a brush), the paint was lifting and flaking off in numerous places, especially the cabinet doors below.  Upon closer inspection, I discovered the panels were PLASTIC.

Yes.  I know.  So I pried off the plastic panels, which damaged the door faces. 

So then I went to Home Depot (probably Trip #2,476 at this point) and bought tongue-and-groove beadboard to glue to all the panels, along with new trim.  Then I had to sand down all the places that had bubbled (the previous owner must have used a wax-based polishing product on the wood) and start all.  over.  again.

As my husband said, while grinning, "You know, for someone as experienced at furniture refinishing as you are, you sure do make a lot of mistakes!"  Touche.

At least I didn't mess up on my fabulous red dresser!

 

Or my super fun aqua and red chairs!

The first coat was red spray paint, then a coat of aqua over it with a LOT of careful sanding after it was fully dry.  Enough pressure to cut through the aqua, but not enough to blast through all the red at the same time.  I love these chairs.

Maybe someday I'll actually screw the seats to the chair frame so they'll be totally, completely finished...or maybe not.  Have I mentioned that I'm pretty sure I have adult ADD?  Hence the problem with finishing things before starting other things.

Hence the FOCUS sign above my photo board.  Hmmm...I wonder if it's helping?

Based on the huge amount of fabric that I have stashed and all planned out in my head how I'm going to use but will likely not ever get to, the Focus sign is probably a little less than effective.

At least Chunky Monkey and Friends are here to cheer me on...

...Even when a new quilt project is tempting me to drop EVERYTHING and make the gorgeous quilt I have planned in my head...in time for Christmas...so I can take cute pictures of my kids poking their heads out from under it.  Which I can then make into adorable Christmas cards and have something to send out that I'm actually proud of instead of the cards that didn't turn out and I refuse to send.

And you thought YOU had issues, eh?  :-)

Maybe that's why I love Toot and Puddle so much...that Puddle and me, we're a lot alike.

And so here we are, full circle, in my exciting new studio space!  I now get to enjoy it for a whole 6 months before we have to move to North Carolina.  No, I don't want to talk about that, especially because we still have the rest of the basement to gut and refinish (remember the wiring issue?) plus at least 2 bathrooms to gut and redo because of severe mold issues.  Quite frankly, I'm tired of guts, and issues.

But hey, at least I'll have a beautiful new studio to escape to momentarily when I'm having one of my inevitable upcoming gut-induced breakdowns...wish me luck, or better yet, wish for me not to have to move!  It's a nice thought, anyway - the not moving part - but somehow I don't think the Coast Guard cares much whether or not I just finished my studio, or that we are all quite happy living here in Northern Virginia.  Such is the life of a military family!  I really can't complain, we have been transferred far less than many people, but it still stinks.  And now I will stop complaining.  Hope you enjoyed my studio tour!

 

A VISUAL CHRISTMAS FEAST

Merry Christmas!!!

If I take the time to narrate these pictures, I'll never get them all loaded...

...So sit back, grab your favorite beverage, relax, and enjoy the wordless tour of my Christmas House!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can well imagine, I have spent DAYS putting all this together and photographing/editing everything...I know I should have my name on these pictures, but I'm too tired and too busy trying to get things together for some fundraisers for the Bulgarian orphans.  Please respect my hard work and link back to my blog with proper credit if you use any of my photos on your own blogs.  Thanks, and have a very Merry Christmas!

 

On Giving Thanks

There are already some houses with Christmas decorations up around here.

Now, you know how much I LOVE Christmas and all that goes with it...but it seems like Thanksgiving gets more and more overlooked every year. 

Well, I'm not even hosting Thanksgiving at my house this year (gasp...I KNOW!  This is the first year in probably a decade that I haven't hosted Thanksgiving) but I couldn't let the one holiday that focuses on gratitude go unrecognized in my house.  Okay, I can hear some of you saying that Thanksgiving is about eating an insane amount too.  And I guess it means watching football games to some people, but certainly not to me!  :-)

But hopefully we can all sit back and recognize all of the incredible blessings in our lives, regardless of the (often silent and private) struggles we all try to work our way through.  None of us are starving to death, we probably all have roofs over our heads and somebody to call family or at least friend.  Any of us who have the time and the means to sit around and read eachother's blogs and pursue things like decorating, design, and crafts are so very blessed.  Billions of people in this world do not enjoy even the most basic of earthly comforts, and millions of orphaned/abandoned children in the world do not have a single soul to call family.  They have no sense of belonging, no sense of being loved and cared for. It rips my heart out.

So yes, I have a LOT to be grateful for.  Sometimes I feel guilty for pursuing such "frivolous" things as, well, pretty much everything you see on this blog!  I wonder if I'm using my time wisely.  But I also know that the talents that I possess are from God and I'm supposed to develop them and use them to accomplish good.  Creating a beautiful environment is important to me, it feeds my soul and brings me joy - I just need to be careful about balance, and I need to make sure I'm giving back to others. 

Which is why this is as far as I got on the fabulous new quilt I was planning to make and hang on my Wall O' Plates wall instead of the plates that you see.  It'll have to wait until next year, because I'm Mommy to 3 beautiful kiddos and I'm doing my best to help those nearly invisible, so very fragile Bulgarian orphans on the other side of the world.

I still had time to "Thanksgiving-ify" my china cabinet a little bit. :-)

Speaking of my kids, here they are being swallowed up by a giant, child-eating pile of leaves!

They don't seem to mind.

Can you believe that all of these leaves came from our small front yard?!  When it's Fall here, it is REALLY Fall!  I love it.

You've heard of Snow Angels, but what about Leaf Angels?  Now you have.

Okay, these pictures have nothing to do with Autumn or Thanksgiving...I just wanted to show you the skirt I made Hazel recently - I've had that fabric for at least a year, and have procrastinated big time.  This week I've been back into Skirt-Making-Mode due to birthday party gifts and fun things for the cousins.  Hazel was feeling left out, so I squeezed this project in.  Plus a matching skirt to the one she was bringing to her little friend's birthday party, which I don't have pics of.  Yes, she's spoiled...but that's what babies of the family are for, right?  :-)

Raaawwrrrr...she's a dinosaur...or a tiger....or something!   You can tell she doesn't have any idea how cute she is, can't you?

One more thing I wanted to give you a sneak peek of...another quilt!  I'm planning on making a downloadable pattern for this one - I just haven't had time yet, imagine that.  Hopefully in the next week or two.  I'm also ALMOST done with my studio!  Which means that, after about a year's time, I'll finally be able to take a bunch of pictures and show you the big dramatic Before and Afters.  Woohoo!  Very exciting stuff. 

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!  Not sure what I'm looking forward to most...the turkey, the stuffing, or the pies?  Hmmmm....