Did I mud or paint last evening?

Yesterday morning I had a dentist appointment. I had enough time to make a quick trip to the bulk food store in Sugarcreek, Ohio to pick up some spices I was low on. It seems like I only get to the bulk food store two or three times a year. Here is what I bought - chili powder, cumin, ginger, garlic powder, clove, cinnamon, cardamon, smoked paprika, black pepper, turmeric, and sea salt. Their spices are a higher quality and less expensive than the grocery store.

I decided to paint last evening.

It only took me about an hour to put a second coat on the downstairs foyer and clean up. The walls look so much better! Now I will be able to install the trim this weekend.

This will be another working on the house weekend, but I may try to get in a little sewing time. I will put the second coat of mud on the office wall so I can sand tomorrow and then prime. My plan is to paint the room on Sunday and then I can install the casing around the window. The only things that would be left to do in this room is installing the baseboard and closet doors after I get the floors refinished. While I am waiting for mud and paint to dry it will be going thru stuff to see what I want to keep and what needs to find another home and squeezing in that sewing time. Have a great weekend!

This house smells like a Mexican Restaurant!

I threw together in a crock pot before I went to work black beans with chicken broth, cumin, garlic, cilantro, bay leaf, salt, and pepper. When I got home from work the house smelled so good! Just like a Mexican Restaurant! The bean though were not quite done. I did not pre-soak them and after 9 hours they were still a little firm, but they tasted wonderful! I let them cook until I went to bed so they will be good to go for tonight's dinner.

The only sewing that I got done was this pair of pants for the son of a woman I work with. I had to take in the waist and hem them.

Tonight I either have to either put the second coat of paint on the the walls of the downstairs foyer or the second coat of mud on the office/bedroom. I am leaning toward the paint job.

Sacrificing part of the design wall for a greater cause

Here is my delivery from Keim Lumber on Monday. More money not spent on fabric! I bought 5 sheets of drywall and the trim that is bundled with the yellow invoice laying on top. The rest of the trim is baseboard I bought last year.

I got up at 4:12 am to demo the wall in the office/bedroom. I wanted to get the demo done before my brother showed up at 7:30.

An hour and 20 minutes later 99 percent of the job was done and the trash bagged up and taken outside. There were a few nails I could not get out - I couldn't get enough leverage while standing on the ladder.

My brother Mike arrived and after reviewing the to do list we had a snack. I made home made cinnamon rolls like our Mom use to make when we were kids.

There was some extra wood framing that was structural for the bay window that use to be at this location (see former post) and it wasn't needed so we ripped it out. Well now you could see outside!

There was also a huge gap under the window! The picture is blurry - I was handing Mike a utility knife thru the gap.

After surveying the situation, Mike comes in and asks if I have any foam board scraps. I didn't, but I told him we could cut off the bottom of one of my design walls which are foam board so that is what we did. You gotta do what you gotta do!

Mike used the foam board and entire can of Great Stuff expanding foam in a can to fill in the gaps. The difference in the room's temperature and the noise level is unreal! I still need to get a mason to fix the gap in the brick outside. Right now it is covered with flashing, but that is not a permanent solution.

We took the scraps and stuck them over the expanding foam that we filled the holes with on the inside too.

Once that was done Mike noticed to big bumps in the ceiling. He needed to know why so he started cutting away the drywall.

When the house was built some of the framing was below the ceiling level and the drywaller just thru the drywall over the bumps instead of trimming them. Well, Mike cut out a small area and I handed him my Multi-Master and he cut the wood off.

Now it's on to insulation. I did the cutting and he did the hanging. Look, he doesn't even have to use a laddler. It is nice having tall brothers! Since I am short I do the ground work and he does the high stuff.

Finally drywall!

And mud!

After the mud was on the walls, Mike helped me measure and cut the bottom piece of trim for the front window. You just can't hold it and measure it by yourself or at least I can't on a window this wide. Mike had to leave so I finished the trim myself. I still need to fill in the nail holes, caulk, touch up the paint, and install the finish hardware, but that's the easy part. This is the reason I spent Sunday painting.

I am so happy that these two jobs are well on their way to being done! There is still a lot to do to get the house looking like someone hadn't come in and ransacked the place, but I feel like I am over a big hump.

Michael's leather jacket and thank goodness for Excedrin

Remember the leather jacket I altered for my nephew? Well, here is the picture of him wearing it. I am so glad I decided to make the sleeves longer than what I orginally thought I needed to make them.

Instead of spending my time and money at a quilt shop buying fabric, this is what I spent my money on this weekend.

and this (one gallon of this has already been used)

I have drywall and some trim that is being delivered today. There goes more fabric money!

I just love painting with a new brush. Every time I am at the store I want to buy a new brush. I my opinion Wooster make the best brushes. They are better than Purdy by far and Wooster brushes are made in Wooster, Ohio! Yes, they are a bit more expensive, but the quality is so superior and if you take care of them they last a long time. I am hard on brushes and I try to keep some for primer and some for paint. I find primer is really hard on brushes.

So I started the weekend with finishing up the flooring in two places. Here are the before and afters. It doesn't seem like a big job, but the fussy cutting at the trim takes time.

I got this ceiling painted except for the edges I couldn't reach. This ceiling is over the steps. I will get the little bit of edging done when my brother brings over his extension ladder one of these days. To make sure I use the correct paint, I always write on the paint can what I used it for.

The I started painting the living room and the ceiling which is the same color. I wanted to get the window wall done so that my brother could help me install the picture frame trim. It is hard to trim out a window this wide by yourself. The light areas are reflections. Yes, the windows are open. It was in the 60's yesterday in Ohio in January. Global warming?

The reason the walls and ceiling are going to be the same color is because the peak is 13 and a half feet! There is no way I can cut in a different wall color from the ceiling color so therefore it is going to be all the same color. See the height?

Here you can see the new light color called Cloud Cover on the ceiling where I stopped.

Then I painted this wall

Next I went downstairs and painted the foyer. I had installed paintable wallpaper here but had never painted it. I wanted to get this painted before I install the trim.

I looked at it this morning and it needs a second coat. The paint color is so close to the color of the wallpaper is was very hard to see. I ended up putting on my headband light to try and see where I painted.

By 6 pm Sunday I was so tired. I did some clean up and when to bed early. First thing I did this morning was to take two Excedrin for my headache I woke up with and the muscle aches. That goodness for Excedrin! I am taking tomorrow off to work on the house. I still need to demo the one wall in office tonight before my brother shows up at 8 am tomorrow.

Weekend plans

I am going to rip out the drywall on this one wall in the room I call the office. My brother is going to come over Tuesday and help me hang new drywall.

Why? Well, when I first bought this dump house there was a bay window that leaked for what looked like a very long time. When the workers came to replace the window it fell out of the house when they touched it! Well, all that moisture over the years before I owned the place has ruined the drywall and it will not hold paint. Also, the new window was smaller than the old one and I would have to do a lot of patching before I could trim the window. Drywall is cheap so I am just going to take it down, put new insulation in the wall (when I did the bathrooms I found economy 1 1/2" insulation - what the heck?), and install new drywall with the help of my brother. I cannot lift a 4 x 8 piece of drywall by myself. Here is what the bay window looked like when I bought the place

Here is a closeup of the some of the problem

I will first have to clean out the room so there will be some downsizing going on. I have started a list of work I need to get done and if I clone myself and don't sleep, maybe I can get part of it done! I need to get things lined up that I need help with so my brother and I have plenty to do on Tuesday. This will be a good weekend to do this project since it is suppose to be warm. With hauling the debris outside at least the furnace won't be running.

Have a great weekend!

Inspriational book and another beautiful sunrise

I borrowed this book from the library and have been pouring over the pages. I like to make my own stamps on occasion and this book has all the info anyone would need to be successful.

I was busy last evening looking for some documentation I needed for my refy and it took awhile, but I found what I was looking for - YEAH!

I also needed to take some pictures of two of the closets that don't have doors. When I bought this house these two closets had the most awful metal louvered, beat up, dented floor to ceiling doors. I ripped those out while I had a dumpster in the driveway. Well now I need to get them replaced so I needed pictures and measurements for the lumber company to figure out a price.

The sunrise was so pink again this morning!

Postcard, pillowcase problem solved, and the house project

I received this lovely fabric postcard in the mail over the holidays from Vicki of Field Trips in Fiber. Vicki dyes the most beautiful fabric and it was an honor to receive one of her postcards. It is now hanging on my smaller design wall along with other small fabric art pieces I have collected from other artists.

After making pillowcases for my nieces and nephews for years I finally had a light bulb moment to solve a problem I run into once in awhile. The problem was that if I had a one way design and I wanted it to be orientated a certain way, I always had to figure out which end needed to be sewn to the border fabric. Once in a while I would sew it to the border fabric wrong the the design did not go in the direction I wanted it. Well, over xmas I finally figured out an easy way to solve this problem. When I cut the one way print I only cut the edge that I want to attach to the border fabric and not both ends. That way I know which end to attach because the other end won't have a nice clean cut. After I have the pillowcase turned to do the final seam, I trim the other end and their you go! Problem solved! Why did it take me so many years to figure this out?

I spent last eveing sorting thru piles of paper, you know that stuff that just collects, receipts, paid bills, paycheck stubs, bank statements, etc. I thought I had a handle on them last year, but I gathered up stuff from all over the house. It is all sorted now and all I have to do is stick it in the file. A lot of this was in the x-tra bedroom that I call the office and since I am going to rip out one of the walls this weekend - I will go into more about this later - I need to get the room cleared out and the paper piles was the first thing I tackled. I need to order some supplies - drywall and some trim pieces - from Keim Lumber in Charm, Ohio (they deliver! a 4x8 sheet of drywall will not fit into an Eclipse!) My brother is coming over next Tuesday to help me with jobs I cannot do myself like installing 4x8 sheets of drywall onto the wall I am ripping out.