And Sew Forth: My Sewing Room

When we first moved here at the tail end of 2004, the walls of the east side of the two-room basement were green. That's my brother Mike helping Bill put together a satellite dish.

Bill used the sewing room as a sort of staging area for cutting boards when he covered the bottom part of the ping pong room wall with barn wood. What a mess!

We painted the walls of-white and I moved my sewing supplies into that room.

This shot, above, was taken looking north. The washer and dryer are now to the right in this picture. I want to get the orientation right, and have chosen the washer and dryer as a sort of fulcrum for orientation. 

The doorway to the right in this shot leads to the other room in the basement, what shall from henceforth be known as the ping pong room. This area, seen in this shot, would eventually become an office area. The washer and dryer - though not seen in this shot - are to the left of this view.

Looking north again, you can see the window. I changed my sewing stuff around willy nilly for months, trying to get happy and satisfied with my new sewing area, but that washer and dryer were still visible to me as I sewed. I finally decided to ask Bill to build a half-wall to cover my view of the appliances. An artist has to have a nice place to work, right? I use the word 'artist' advisedly: I've been called an artist before but I'll let you decide that for your own self!

After Bill put barn wood in the ping pong room, he had some wood left over, so we build a wall to hide the appliances from the ping pong room. That half-wall is visible in the far reaches of this shot, above.

There's that barn wood half-all....

and below you'll see that half-wall from the ping pong room:

Beautiful barn wood....

The half-wall is peeking out on the right side of this shot, above. Notice that the washer and dryer were still in sight as I sat to sew. (The stove eventtually went into the other, ping pong room, where we have a full kitchen.)

When someone gave my husband a bunch of plywood, he quickly added it to the walls, covering the cement block in my sewing room. The ceiling would be our next project. But in the meantime, I continued to lobby for a half-wall that would hide the washer and dryer...

Ahhh. That's better! Half wall in place . . . .to hide the appliances from view as I work in my sewing room

Paint! Those walls needed some paint! And my thoughts were never far from my latest obsession to-date: lighting. I had to have better lighting in my sewing room......

But first, paint on the plywood would be nice, eh?!

I called these my 'watermelon walls,' and you can see why! I hated that painted trim, and soon came up with a better look for that part of the wall. But back to the watermelon effect: That was accomplished by putting two colors of green in the same roller pan, and rolling them both at the same time. The top part of the wall was painted in an up and down fashion, while the lower part of the wall was scrumbled - I moved the roller in all directions to get the mottled look.

We eventually added two bookcases at the northern end of the room, with room behind them for storage. I eventually, attached fabric-covered wood to the fronts of those bookcases, effectively turning them backwards, so as to hide my fabric stash.

This shot, above, shows the second bookcase. Also seen in these last two shots is the flower border, one I fashioned from copies of a real flower from our garden.

The fabric room divider hides the area behind the bookcases, an area used for storage. 

Somewhere along the line, we added ceiling tiles to cover the joists. During this time, too, I put the word out that I was looking for fluorescent lights. Our son Bob came through: He called one day to let me know he'd seen an ad in his work newsletter; someone had light for sale. Our sons Bob and Allen helped their dad install 28 feet of fluorescent lights along one wall of my sewing room. The tables, seen in the shot above, were covered with floor tiles, to match the black-white-and-color color scheme that was slowly gaining ascendancy in my sewing room.

I think I'll stop here, for this post. I plan to post a second installment of my sewing room metamorphosis. I think I'll call the second portion: And Sew On: More Shots from My Sewing Room.  

For Part II of the sewing room remodel, click on the link below.

http://redoredux-faywray.blogspot.com/2013/03/and-sew-forth-continuing-saga-of-making.html

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

Sleep Tight: The Bedrooms

While our style is a bit subdued in the rest of the house, we cut loose color-wise in the bedrooms. My husband picked the color for our bedroom walls . . . .

. . . .  and Will picked the color for his bedroom. And people think that I use color liberally! Ha! 

A funny story: When Bill suggested, one hot summer morning, that we should paint Will's bedroom, I went along with the idea; I was eager to check that task off our to-do list. The problem was, it was very hot that day. So While Bill went in to start painting, I had a brilliant idea: I would paint naked! It was that hot! So I took off all my clothes and sauntered into Will's room, where Bill was busily rolling paint onto the walls. And, guess what? Bill was naked! He had the same idea I had. Well, you know, people do say that Bill and I work well together!! They don't know the  half of it.....

Daisy Border

My sewing room has been through m any changes in the past seven years. After we painted the walls two-toned green - with two colors of paint in the same roller pan - I wanted a trim  between the lateral green striped effect on the top part of the wall and the scumbled green on the bottom of the wall. I was not happy with my first attempt to create a border - see photo; that's orange paint applied with a sponge cut in a rough square. At least I had some sort of border, though, right? I eventually decided I wanted a more structured design for a border/trim. So I scanned a real flower from our garden, dropped the scan into a Word Doc, then added a black border around the flower. I printed up a batch of these so I could glue them on the wall....

Trouble was, I had to cover up those ugly orange squares first. For this, I turned to my trusty old friend, brown wrapping paper. I cut the brown paper into strips, then glued it on the wall where I wanted the border to be. Then I glued the flowery squares over the brown paper.

PS: I love working with wallpaper paste; it's fun and easy to use.

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.

Bible Pages On the Wall

My sewing room has gone through many metamorphoses in the past seven years. Since I don’t have a lot of time this morning I think I’ll share just one photo: This is the way the wall in my sewing room looks now; it is covered with pages from bibles. After those pages went on the wall, I thought to also add some photos I had left over from another project.

Miracle Cornices

When we first moved into this house, there were no cornices on top of the two large windows in the main living area. The traverse rods were exposed for all to see!

That first summer (2005) I made myself a promise: I would find something to hide those traverse rods by fall....

Then one day, mid-summer, I left for work a little early so I could go to a yard sale. The yard sale was being held about 5 miles from our home, near a small town southwest of us. I figured I would have just enough time to check it out and still make it to work on time. As I got out of my car, then, and walked up the driveway, I spotted a very long cornice laying on the ground. It noticed it was birch - the same wood our kitchen cupboards are made from - and I noticed there was a white piece of paper taped to that long cornice. I also noticed another, shorter cornice laying on the ground, too, near the long cornice.

I figured the white paper was a price tag, and I figured, further, that even if the cornice was the right size for our largest window, the cost would be prohibitive. When I got close enough, though, what I saw astounded me: The taped-on price tag said FREE. I got out my tape measure, and discovered that the long cornice would just fit above the large window in our living room area. I looked askance at the smaller cornice; I knew it was nowhere near long enough for our other large window. But I told the lady, 'I'll take both cornices!' Of course I did! Now I had a problem: How would I get them home? I was running out of time, and didn't want someone else to grab those cornices before I could return with a truck to get them. So I called my husband. I have to add here that I had NO idea when I made that call where Bill was. He'd left the house that morning without telling me his plans for the day. 

Long story shortened: When I called Bill and asked him if he could help me get some cornices home, he told me he was in the neighborhood. That was part of the miracle, folks: I was at a yard sale in an area of the county where we seldom roam, and yet my husband was only a mile away from the yard sale when I called him to elicit his help. He soon pulled up to the yard sale in his truck and we hastily loaded the cornices into the back of it and I jumped in my car and raced off to work; I made it just in time. The next day, we attached the longest cornice above the window in our living room. Some days later, I tackled the task of lengthening the other, too-short cornice. I added 68" to it, with some plywood we had laying around, and then I 'stained' the plywood to match the other, birch cornice. 'Stained' is in quotes because, in the end, the only thing that would match the birch cornice was orange and yellow paint! If you look closely, you might be able to tell that the cornice in the dining area is not birch, and you might notice the seams I made in the lengthening process. But when I look at those cornices, I see miracle after miracle: The largest cornice fit with no adjustments needed; the cornices are made with the same wood as our kitchen cupboards; the wave detail along the edge mimics the trim on the board above our kitchen window; the cornices were FREE; and Bill was in the neighborhood so we could get our new cornices home. Oh, all this and I made it to work on time!