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.....

Pallet Wood Redo In the Bathroom

When it came time to redo our bathroom floor and counter top, we turned to our tried-and-true material: wood. We chose pallet wood - hard wood from pallets. We covered the floor and counter top with beautiful, warm wood. We made our own wood putty by combining sawdust - from the same wood - and wood glue. For the finish, we used tung oil - another one of our favorites because it's a natural product and easy to use.

When it came time to sand the wood, we fired up two sanders and went at it in a marathon session! We were covered in sawdust!! 

These last two photos show Bill and I taking a breather - literally: we had to exit the bathroom to get our breath back! 

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.

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.

Good Morning, Glory

After Bill moved some mulch - at our last home, on Church Street - morning glories started to grow where he dumped that mulch. So I decided to move some of those new plants to various parts of the yard. I even put some wires on the utility pole out by the curb so the morning glory vines could climb it. We had morning-glory-filled trellises everywhere, too. 

Of course we had other flowers in our yard, too.....

But the morning glories were the show-stopper. Total strangers would round the corner in their car, stop and comment about our yard.

That's no stranger: That's Mike admiring the flowers with my husband Bill.in our side yard on Church Street.

And there are some more flowers - my parents, Bed and Etty, er, I mean Ed and Betty.

Yes, we were a bit crazed when it came to the whole morning glory thing. We had fun with it. 

And we're not the only ones who got into it: I mentioned, earlier in this post, that people would stop and comment about our yard. People would also ask me where I got those morning glory seeds, and I would assure them that they were normal, garden-variety (!) seeds. We even had one guy stop mid-corner to ask if he could have some of the seeds; so we gave him some. 

But here's the thing: It didn't occur to me to tell people that I put wires on the utility pole. In fact, it wasn't till some years after we moved from that Church Street home that I realized I should have told those people that - told them that those plants had help climbing that pole. Picture it: That poor man who got seeds from us goes home and plants those seeds . . . .  and they don't climb for him like they did for us. 

And one more story: The first year we had morning glories everywhere in that yard, I feared the electric company would have a problem with us growing vines up their pole. Well, I needn't have worried: The electric workers stopped by and complimented us on our garden, then asked if they could help us get the vines off the poles! God is good . . . . .