After Bill brought home some wood from an old outbuilding, we found the a perfect base to use for a new work space for storing tools in the workshop. Using the cedar wood from the outbuilding, we soon had wood cut and attached to the wrought iron base. Sanding and a coat of tung oil brought out the beautiful grain of the wood.

The new table/shelf unit holds lots of tools; it's just what we needed....

We decided to extend the original work bench, and we topped the new extension with some more of the cedar. After adding some task lighting, the new extension was ready to use and enjoy.

The Dining Room Gets Smaller with Each New Coat of Paint!

I mentioned, in an earlier post, that our dining room has been through a lot of changes. So I decided to chronicle some of those changes this morning. 

We bought this house in late 2004.

The color of the wall . . . . changed and then changed again!

The table changed, too....

The art on the wall changed over the years....

And the curtains went through several changes.....

The fan light will be gone in subsequent shots; watch for it!

I eventually tacked one of my quilt creations onto a huge cork board, surrounded by striped wall paper and trimmed with cording we made with a drill.....

 Ah! The ceiling fan disappeared! This was a recent addition: track lighting with pendant lights.

And of course the most important part of any decorating scheme is the people who grace the rooms....

Why, there's Ed, my dear daddio. ,making our dining room especially good! Love you, Dad.

I quit! I have had a lot of fun this morning, reliving the passage of time through our dining room.

Susan

Pass-Through

One day, oh, about 6 years ago, I was walking around in our kitchen trying to figure out something new I could do to that room. I first thought about moving the fridge against a different wall, but that wouldn't work, I decided, because there that would have put the fridge up against a baseboard heater. Then I thought about tearing down the wall between the kitchen and the living room, but I quickly discounted that idea because it would entail messing with electrical wires and such - plus that wall could be a load-bearing wall, I further opined. Then it hit me: We could put a pass-through on that one wall, the wall  between the kitchen and the living room. 

It's a good thing this pass-through idea was a good one because shortly after I suggested the idea to Bill I heard his reciprocating saw buzzing and went in to investigate and found a gaping hole in the wall!

He soon had that hole trimmed with beautiful barn wood, though, and I heaved a sigh of relief: That heretofore dark corner of the kitchen was transformed by the pass-through of light from the living room. 

Oh, and a bonus: People in the kitchen could now see into the living room. Cool! 

My Dad - one of our biggest cheerleaders in re to any remodeling we did - came to see us one day shortly after the pass-through went in, and he suggested we take pictures and use the pass-through as a sort of frame. So that's what we did. 

But this project was not over yet: I had the idea to add some gingerbread at the top of the new opening. After I came up with a pattern, Bill insisted that there was NO WAY he could cut such an intricate pattern in hard wood.

The next day when I got home from work, Bill presented me with a gift: He'd rough-cut the design in wood, and it was lovely.

Now it was my turn to do some work: I got busy with my rotary tool, shaping and smoothing tho rough-cut edges of the trim. 

Why, there's Dear Bill, coating the pass-through with polyurethane.....

Eventually this wall would be covered with barn wood - our intention for that wall all along - but that's another story for another day. 

Bye for now.

Susan

Let There Be Light

We bought and moved into this house in the winter. The yard and environs were as yet unexplored when we moved in because of the deep snow that fell the same week we signed papers to buy this house. Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered there were windows on the north side of the basement one day when I could finally get out and walk the perimeter of the house.

I was very excited about this discovery and made immediate plans to uncover those windows.
The west  half of our basement was very dark; I knew those windows were invaluable in the scheme of things. 

So while my husband worked to cover the old paneling with barn wood, I took hammer in hand and . . . . . broke through to those heretofore hidden windows. 

As soon as I saw daylight streaming through the first hole I created I knew I was on the right track: 

Bill added some nice trim to our 'new' windows.

What a gift! The once-dark ping pong room was transformed by the uncovering of those two windows.

Partition Wall with a Secret

My husband Bill worked tirelessly to put barn wood up on the bottom half of the west side of our two-room basement - he garnered the wood from an old barn, brought it home in his truck, de-nailed it, planed it, and put it on the wall. 

The photo above shows the old paneling in the ping pong room, looking east into the other half of the basement.

Once the barn wood was installed in the  ping pong room, it was time for a less strenuous project, so we opted to put a partition wall in the other room of the basement, using wood left over from the wall project. The new wall hides the utilities - the water softener and the hot water tank, etc. 

The basement has gone through many changes. The photo above represents how the basement looks at this writing. The partition wall looks fabulous - a vast improvement over the view before we installed that wall. And, oh, did I mention that this half-wall holds a secret?

Ah! Storage!! We thought to add storage to the back of that wall. Whoo hoo! Storage!!!!

PS: Look for this area of the basement in future posts; I hope to share the different stages in the development of the east room of the basement. I'll give you a hint: I now refer to that half of the basement as 'my sewing room.