Fabric I love

I have been collecting Halloween fabric for two quilts for months. One needs to be made with purple and pink and the other orange and green. Let's just say there is not much pink Halloween fabric, but then I found Alexander Henry Ghastlies fabric in mauve! I found some on ebay and bought half yard pieces. The shop I bought it from made a mistake and sent me the far right piece in white instead of mauve. She put the correct piece in the mail yesterday so it should arrive tomorrow.

There is another piece in an etsy shop that the lady is putting a custom listing together so I only have to buy a half yard instead of a whole yard. After all I only need a FQ so I already will have leftovers.

Now the fabric I love is the Alexander Henry spiderweb fabric. I bought the natural, mauve, and light gray. If had more money than I knew what to do with I would buy at bolt of each color (it also comes in white and smoke)just so I would have it to look at.

I spent last evening watching the Tony awards that I had taped, cut the paintable wallpaper into pieces for the studio walls

moved my spices to a different cupboard and filled and labeled the new bottles I bought with spices that were in containers from the bulk food store

and did a few household tasks that I didn't do this past weekend because I was too busy painting. Tonight I am going to start installing the wallpaper. I looked around my studio and there is no reason I shouldn't be able to get the majority of this room finished next weekend. That will be a fast room redo for me! It usually take me weeks and weeks!

Studio redo

5 hours Friday night, 6 hours Saturday, 8 hours Sunday - that is the time I spent this weekend cleaning, priming, and painting the studio. I would have worked more on Saturday, but I went to visit family so I didn't get started in the studio until about 4:30 p.m.

I will give you a sneak peak at what I am doing. I kind of want to wait until I am done for the big before and after reveal.

I now have a nice white ceiling. I hate painting ceilings! Here you can see the difference! The ceiling was yellow from cigarette smoke from the previous owner.

Nice and white!

I have been going around the room priming the over the wallpaper and wainscoting in sections so I don't have to move the furniture so many times. Here is the wainscoting with the primer showing and the finish color of gray. I bought a quart of black paint so I could tint the leftover beige paint I had. I will mix some of this gray with white and use it for the top section of the walls.

I can still see the strips thru the primer - ugh! I just don't ever want to see those stripes again! I now have 3 out of the 4 walls to the point where I can start installing the wallpaper. The 4th wall is my main design wall and since I didn't get the ocean quilt top all sewn together I covered it up with an old sheet to protect it from paint splashes.

Next I will work on removing, priming, and painting the trim around the window so I can install the extension jambs. Since this window is 6 feet wide it is hard to install the trim around the outside edge of the window by myself I want to get the painting done so my brother can help me when he comes over. I also will get started on the wallpaper - but first I have to do the dishes and clean off the counter in the kitchen as this is the only surface I have in the house where it is a smooth cleanable surface for pasting wallpaper.

All of this just for getting new ceiling lights installed!

Prepping for a busy weekend

I went on a road trip this morning to the Home Depot and Lowes for stuff I needed for the weekend and when my brother comes over to help. I needed primer - I only had a half a gallon. I bought two gallons to make sure I didn't run out. My goal this weekend is to get the studio primed - ceiling and walls.

Last evening about 8:15 I saw a deer in the backyard. I haven't seen many this spring. I startled it and she was looking at me with her ears perked up. She eventually wandered away. She was in the backyard again this morning taking a nap.

Have a great weekend!

Problem solved

I have to make a Halloween quilt for a little girl that love purple and pink. I have collected a few purples, but the pink stumped me until today. Eureka! Alexander Henry Ghastlie prints in mauve! Here are three I am buying.

Houston we have a problem

I worked on stripping wallpaper and it is not going well. The wallpaper was installed over the wall board which is nothing I have ever seen before. The wall board is not like drywall; it is like pressed cardboard. When I get the wallpaper wet enough to remove the wall board also is wet and starts to peel away. The weird part is there is a pattern on the wallboard. Very strange stuff.

I have taken off plenty of wallpaper over the years and this is the first time I have been stumped. On to plan B. I am going to do a test patch of primer over the striped wallpaper. I planned to re-wallpaper the upper part of the room with paintable wallpaper so I don't think papering over the previous paper will be an issue. We will see.

Working on the house

I got started last evening sanding two areas - one in the master bedroom and one in the living room. I primed the areas

and then began to cut in for painting the master bedroom I only got half the room done. The A/C was just not keeping up with my temperature. I just couldn't take all the sweating. You can't see my cutting in as I am painting the room white and it is already white. Yes, my ceiling is painted black.

I went downstairs to the studio where it was cooler and started stripping wall paper.

8th finish of 2014

Finally another finish for this year!

I spent time this weekend doing the typical chores - mowing, laundry, dishes, etc, but then I decided to start working on re-doing the studio. I need to paint the ceiling before my brother comes over to install an access door for the new hose bibb he needs to install and before he installed my new lights. I also need to remove this butt ugly wallpaper before I paint the ceiling. I first took all the stuff I had pinned to the 7' wide design wall and then take out the screw holding the panels to the wall. Here is the before and the after

I moved around the room to the right and cleared off the next wall. See the bookcase in the second before picture? It was packed with stuff. I spent some time going thru the stuff, organizing it, relocating some items into another bookcase in the guest room, and recycling a bunch of stuff. The containers of pens/pencils and the parts chest on top of the bookcase went into the fabric storage room for now. Now I need to find a temporary place to keep the bookcase while I remove wallpaper and paint.

I want the sewing room to still be functional as I work on re-doing the studio so I will be tackling it in two phases. I think I can get about 3/4 of the room done for the first phase and then the second phase would be the 8' design wall area.