More blues cut

I managed to get thru the last of the stash pile that contained many scraps. Here are the herringbone pieces I was able to get

This is the pile of scraps left from cutting all the blue herringbone pieces. I will cut rectangles for zig zag blocks and squares for 4 or 9 patch blocks out of these scraps. I still need to go thru my scrap bins and look for more blues.

Here is the stack of fabric I have for bindings and backings. I did order some fabric from Hancock's of Paducah for backs. They had a 20% off coupon for everything and I hit the clearance fabrics hard. I found some great stuff for $3.99 a yard. Take 20% off that and I got free shipping - what a deal! I think they lost money on me! I haven't received the fabric yet, but I am looking forward to that bright yellow package showing up at my front door.

Yesterday I had to stop by the grocery store to pick up a few things and I went into the New Balance store that is in the same plaza just to check out athletic shoes. The ones I bought last year from Second Sole are just killing my feet and I hadn't liked them all that much since I bought them. The saleslady had me try one about six different styles and I found the perfect ones. I went to pay for them and they were marked down to $39.00 from $119.00! What a deal! So far I love them and my sore heel that I have had for a long time with my other shoes seems to be going away.

I am going to be taking time off over the holidays so I may not be posting much. I have to use four days of vacation or I will lose it. At work we only get Christmas day off so I will be taking the four days between Christmas and New Years off. The custodial staff is off January 2nd so I can't get into the school where my office is located. That means I will have 11 days off in a row! I plan on working on the house - there is a lot to do to get it back together after the floor refinishing - and of course doing some sewing.

Have a great holiday season!

More cutting

After work I made myself cut more fabric despite being tired from the lack of sleep the night before. I made some great progress. I was surprised how many smaller pieces that I had put in my stash pile rather than in the scrap bins. I like that I am going to have a wide variety of fabrics to work with. I ended up with sometimes only one piece of a fabric or with bigger pieces up to 7. I could get 4 pieces out of a fat quarter. Here is what the design wall looks like now.

Here is the pile of fabric before I started cutting last night

and here is what it looks like now. The pile on the left are scraps and the fabric on the right is fabric that is big enough for a quilt back and binding.

Next I will have to go thru my scrap bins and see what goodies I can find.

Yesterday the roofers were back to replace my turtle vents. It was sunny and all the snow was gone so it was a good day to get this done. It is wonderful to have contractors that let you know when they are coming and deliver what they say they are going to do. Here is the before

And the after

Painting, a present and cutting fabric OH MY!

After work it was in the 40's so I kept the garage door open and sanded the three lengths of baseboard that still need painted.

After sanding and wiping them down I put on a light coat of primer. I had to close the door because the wind had picked up. A light sanding tonight and I can put on the first coat of paint. Once I get these painted I can start to install it in the house. I am going to do the master bedroom first so I can get the mattress out of the kitchen.

Yesterday I went to lunch with a friend and we exchanged presents. I gave her the tower of lock n' lock containers filled with cookies and green tea bags. She gave me this nifty flashlight. The flashlight is LED, rechargeable, and I can charge my cell phone with it! It is much lighter weight than my Halo so if I go walking it will be lighter to carry.

I ended up on the phone for awhile with my sister so I only got a few pieces of the blue fabric cut out for the next round of herringbone quilts. I woke up at 1:00 a.m. and could not go back to sleep so I got up and cut fabric for two and a half hours. Here is the pile of fabric when I started. This is fabric from my stash and as I went thru it there were many small and odd shaped pieces.

This is what the pile looks like now. The fabric on the left are pieces I saved for bindings.

Here are the pieces pinned on the design wall.

I still need to go thru my scrap bins and pull the blues that I can get a 4 1/2" x 16 1/2" piece out of. While going thru the bins I will sort out the blues and put them in their own bin.

Here are the scraps that are left from cutting my stash fabrics. I will set these aside for now and eventually cut them into squares or rectangles.

Cookie baking

I spent my entire evening baking the rolls of dough I made over the last week. Here are the four kinds I made. From left to right, a modified Martha Stewart French butter cookie which I substituted almond extract, made rectangular, and dipped in milk chocolate and almonds, Martha Stewart green tea cookies, Martha Stewart French butter cookies, and Toasted Pecan Sandies which I got the recipe from someone's blog, but I forgot to bring the printout so I can't give credit where credit is due right now.

I started packing them up to distribute them today to the administration office at the school, the security office, the custodial staff, and for a friend I am having lunch with today.

I had to let the chocolate set up overnight and added those to the containers this morning.

Getting the house back together and a bit of sewing

It is now time to get the house put back together. This is going to take some time as there is a sequence that stuff needs to be done. The first thing I did was to install the floor diffusers. Here is the before

This job did not take too long and the only tool required was a drill with a drill bit and a Phillips head bit for screwing in the screws. Now I can control the heat.

I really need to finish painting the living room, master bedroom entry and foyer before I install the baseboard. I dug out the baseboard to see how much I had and what still needed painted. Here is what I had upstairs stashed in the kitchen and I have two lengths of baseboard unpainted in the garage which were too long to keep in the kitchen during the floor refinishing.

I measured where I needed baseboard and I now need to figure out how much more I need to buy.

I did a load of laundry Saturday and once the clothes were dried they had that awful dryer smell. I figured it was from the dryer vent needing to be cleaned out so I proceeded to spend my Saturday night taking apart the dryer vent. Here is the vent that goes from the floor to the outside

Then the venting runs along the floor behind the sink and washer and then connects to the dryer.

Taking the vent piping apart was harder than putting it back together because of all the screws that were at each connection. I couldn't find my 1/4" hex bit so I used pliers and it took too long so I ran to the hardware store and got one. I go to take the screws out at the next connection and the screws were a different size! What the heck! I had a bit that was the right size so then things went a bit quicker. For each section I ran t-shirt rags thru the sections to get all the lint out. What a mess! I was covered with lint! Once I got to where the vent was connected to the dryer I noticed that the duct tape was all dried out and the vent was not connected like it should be. I think the dryer exhaust was getting sucked back into the dryer and that is why I had the smell because the vent was not blocked. After 3 hours I had the vent all put back together and the mess cleaned up. I can still smell dryer exhaust so I will have to go tape up a couple more joints that are leaking. The mess

I did make time to sew together the third zig zag quilt top. Here is number two and three together.

I started digging out blues for the next round of baby quilts. I have a couple more piles of fabric to go thru and sort out the blues plus go thru my scraps to see what goodies I can find. I stacked them into light, medium, and darks so I could get an idea of what I have to work with.

I got dough for two more shortbread cookies made last night - toasted pecan sandies and Marth Stewart green tea cookies. I know the green tea sound odd, but I tasted the dough and it was really good. I used Mighty Leaf organic matcha tea and Mighty Leaf organic Jasmine tea leaves that I ground up in my VitaMix. Tonight I will be baking these along with the dough I made up last week.

When working in the kitchen this is what I am looking at - the bottom of my mattress! LOL!!!

Then to get out of the kitchen I have to squeeze by a file cabinet and step over my rug. I feel like I am in a episode of Hoarders every time I go in and out of the kitchen.

A new day - a top done

After the flooring guy and I had it out yesterday, I had him put the second coat of varnish on the floor and get the heck out of my house. I just don't have the funds to get another company to redo the finish. The flooring guy's workmanship was not the issue. He did an excellent job. I just couldn't take his condescending attitude any more. After three days of it I had had enough. I gave up getting my floor stained with a pickled finish to get him the heck out of my house. I am only going to live in this house until I retire so the next place will be done the way I want it or that company can hit the bricks! It is a new day and I am moving forward!

The smell was pretty bad in the house when I got home from work. I had a Christmas program I went to so by the time I got back home the smell was better since the floor was dry. Now it just the matter of the air changing out to eliminate the rest of the smell. I did managed to get that quilt top sewn together.

This weekend is going to be a busy one. I need to start installing the baseboard and trim so I can put the furniture back and I need to take apart my dryer vent and clean it out. I went to get my clothes out of the dryer this morning and they had that smell. You know that smell when it is time to clean out the dryer venting. I will try and get a bit of sewing and baking done too.

Have a great weekend!

Not a happy camper

I have dealt with my share of contractors over the years, but this flooring guy takes the cake. He does not listen; he just talks. Every time I have a conversation with the man about something, he cuts me off and tells me what I need to do. He talks to me like I don't know what I am talking about and he fiddles with things in the house instead of asking questions. My security light quit working because he fiddled around with light switches instead of asking which one worked what. He brought in a Styrofoam package yesterday that was delivered and stuck it in the house under a heating vent instead leaving it outside or calling me and asking me where I wanted it or just leaving in outside. It was pot stickers I had ordered they needed to stay frozen. I couldn't get to the kitchen to put them in the freezer so I was going to leave them outside. But Noooooooo! He brought the box in and stuck them under a heating vent! I asked him why he didn't call me and how long they had been under the vent. He began to tell me it wasn't an issue and they were packed in dry ice bla, bla, bla ... He is not listening! I am a big girl and can handle my life, how I want to do things, and I don't need him to tell me what to do!!! I didn't need his opinion, I needed him to call me if he was so concerned!!! This kind of stuff has been going on since the minute he walked into the house on Monday. I can't take it anymore.

I hate the floors. I told him to go ahead and just varnish them so I could get him the hell out of my house. He moves stuff around that he has no business moving and leaves dirty paper towels from blowing his nose in my bathroom. I wanted to have a pickled stain applied, but again he argued with me about that. It is sad I am paying all this money for something I am not happy with. He is going to hear about this today and I don't care how many times I have to tell him to shut up I am talking. Here is what the floors look like now.

Meanwhile instead of sewing I shoveled. We got 6" and there is no school today so it is nice and quiet here.

A bit of sewing

I made progress on the step zig zag #2 top. A few more seams and it will be sewn together.

I still have one more step zig zag to sew together. I will get these quilted and then I am done with pink for awhile.

The sanding is done and today is all about cleaning up a few corners and using a fine pad to buff the floors. I am not sure when the first coat of finish is going on, but the worst of the dust mess will be over today.

I figured out why I was so crabby. Besides the wreck at the house and hurting myself (I am much better today!) at work my area to work is so small I have no place to lay anything out. So I am fighting with dealing with the house mess and at work. There is a lot of paperwork at work and when there is no place to stack and sort, it is a problem and it makes me crabby. There are these tables that I use when they are in the room to lay out binders and paperwork, but I never know when the school personnel will be in to move them out so I can't leave stuff.

The struggle

I am not doing well dealing with the upheaval. I have been crabby - maybe because I still hurt a bit or the mess or both. Usually this kind of stuff doesn't bother me. The flooring guy had to plug his sanding machine into the 220 outlet that the stove is plugged into. I needed to do some cooking last night so there was a lot of messing around plugging and unplugging then trying to get the stove partly back into place so I had at least a little bit of room. I have a small kitchen and the stove was in the middle of it. I am so over crawling around stuff. I did get an area set up downstairs in the laundry/utility room with a small fridge, microwave, toaster, and toaster oven. I brought down everything I could think of that I would need to get thru the next few days so hopefully I won't have to go back into the kitchen.

Here is the before of the living room - the kitchen is located to the right.

The master bedroom

Guest bedroom

The entry into the master bedroom

When I first moved in I had this area changed. There was a closet two cabinets and a second door to the small bathroom. I had the closet and the cabinets ripped out, a wall built, and closed up the opening to the bathroom. Here is my drawing of the before and after

When the house was built the wood floor was installed after all the framing, so when the closet was ripped out there was a gap where the framing had been. I salvaged what flooring I could and found matching flooring at the lumber yard. I had to weave the new flooring into the existing which meant tearing out some of the existing. I saw Tommy Silva do this on This Old House so of course I could do it! Here is the patch job before I finished it last night.

I had it all reinstalled except for one row. Someone had trimmed the pieces down for me width wise, but I never got around to finishing the job. Well, last night I finished it. Here is the after

After it is sanded and filled you won't even notice that narrowed strip of flooring. I used three pieces to fill in the area, because that was all I had left of the flooring.

Here you can see the difference in color after the first sanding. I want light floors and so far it looks good.

Other than taking out the recycling and trash tonight I think I will be able to sit down at the sewing machine. I may have to borrow the neighbor's garbage and recycling bins since mine are full. The house is for sale and no one is living there so I will take advantage to clear the stuff out rather than wait another week. I just need to make some space.