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

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

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

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