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.

A New Door? No Problem!!!

Our dining room has gone through a lot of changes in the past seven years. 

After we built a deck just off the dining room, I started to look for a door to replace the dining room window. 

I published an ad for the door on a local radio program, Tradio - a format that allows folks in our area to buy and sell things. I got a call from a man who had a door for sale and we went to check it out. We brought the door home and put it in the garage.

We took a break from big projects and did a smaller one: We shortened the dining room table; we would need the extra room a shorter table would provide, to get to the anticipated new door. We found a pedestal-style base at a yard sale, brought it home and painted it black. Then we removed the center insert of the old table and covered the old table [top] with barn wood, center. Voila! We now had a nice table - shorter, yes, but wider. 

Shortly after we got the door home and the table shortened, someone loaned us a masonry saw. That thing was HUGE! We picked a day to cut the hole in the house, and we were ready to go. 

After the window was removed, it was time to enlarge the hole to accommodate the new door. 

It was a very scary thing, watching the beautiful sandstone of this house being assaulted by a saw. I would have taken pictures but I couldn't muster the courage to watch the actual cutting!

The actual installation of the door straddled two days. 

Bright and early the second day of the installation, we removed the tarp we'd put over the hole the night before and got busy building a frame for the new door. We rallied the troops: our sons came by to lend a hand off and on throughout the day. 

By the end of that second day, we were able to start enjoying the newly-expanded view. 

Thj

The finish work would take another week - dry-walling, painting, re-installing the cornice and curtains, etc. 

In retrospect, I think it's a good thing I didn't know all the ins and outs of what this sort of project entails. I was, like, 'Hey! Let's put a door there!' It wasn't until after the thing was installed that I thought, 'This could have been a disaster!'

All Decked Out

I can't be sure about this, but I think that most people, when they want to do a project around the house, tallly what it will cost then go buy materials and begin the project. 

That's not the way it works in our household; we usually wait till the materials . . . . . materialize, then we make plans to use the materials for this or that. 

When someone gave Bill some wonderful hefty 2x10's last summer, we decided to use those boards to build a deck. Stakes for the new deck were soon in place, and the project was underway. 

The plan was to eventually put a door of some sort that would lead from the new deck into the dining room. So while the deck went up I put the word out that we were looking for a sliding glass door. The planning stage is always my favorite part of any project, so I had fun checking the prices of new doors and thinking about how I could avoid having to buy a new door. 

The deck was soon in place, and I did find a door - but that's another story for another day. 

And of course we'd need to add a tree to the landscape, too, eventually, for shade. I love the way one project feeds into another one. 

I love the whole process.

Oh, oh! I also began to formulate plans for incorporating the new deck into its environs......

Plants! We'd need more plants! A happy problem! Something to look forward to as the colder weather started to set in.

The new deck was in by the end of summer, 2011. 

Now it was time to start planning for that new door!

To be continued....

We eventually installed a sliding glass door - cut through the stone to add a door where the big window is in the photos above. To see more about the new door, please click this link:

Sliding glass door

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.