Making Progress

I've been working pretty steadily on my stained glass project and I think I'm on track to finish by the end of the month. I'm finding the closer I get to the end, the easier it is to motivate myself to work on it. 

This piece is going to suck! It will probably take hours of grinding to get it right.

Dream Basement Plan

I spent a couple days playing in SketchUp again. The plan isn't as complete as I would like because my version is so old I can't download the fun free downloads. 

We have a big job ahead of us getting rid of all the extra stuff that will no longer fit. LOL

Since we still have a TON of douglas fir in our garage, we are going to try and build that media cabinet behind the TV.

The shelves are double-sided. The front side is the right depth for DVDs and the backside is a little deeper for the storage closet. The right side open shelves are for the home theater gear and our printer.

We're working up the plan with Tim Austin (the guy who built our garage) and he is expecting to be able to start in about two months. I'm crossing my fingers.

More Stained Glass

We are going to try and fix up our basement this winter so we're going to need to move out of it fairly soon; a project I am definitely not looking forward to.

So we are making another go at finishing our heraldic stained glass. I would like to finish it this month so we won't have to package it up again. I got in about four hours today.

We've gotten to the fiddly tiny pieces in the turtle's head but we're making good progress every day. If I keep at it, I will definitely be able to finish it this month if only I can avoid getting distracted by some quilting project. LOL

So Much Purging

We have spent weeks sifting old boxes. On the bright side, opening 15-year old boxes is like going to the store and getting new stuff without paying. It's also a lot easier to get rid of stuff we haven't touched for so long.

We've filled up the car twice this past week to get rid of stuff. And I've had a parade of people coming by to pick up free stuff. I love our neighborhood Buy Nothing lists.

Some of the mess remaining in the basement is stuff that needs to go in for recycling. It will hang out until we get our truck back from the body shop. Some uninsured moron decided to hit it last week. The front bumper was totally crushed in.

The living room is still a mess, but it does look better than it did.

Here's how it looked on Aug 19.

Here's how it looks today. 6 more days to get this cleaned up.

Finishing the Basement

I don't know if I've mentioned it here on this blog, but last month I ordered a Handiquilter long arm with a 12' frame. So, now I need a space that is 14'x7' to set it up. Even though this house is really quite big in total square footage, most of the rooms are pretty small by modern standards so there is really only one good place to set it up, the basement family room. 

I've been slowly sifting and downsizing during the pandemic, but now I am finally getting thrown into high gear. I am so looking forward to having a quilt studio down in the basement.

For folks who have followed us for a while, you'll know our basement is like a dungeon. There are some windows, but not very many, and mostly they are under bump-outs, so they don't provide much extra light. And there are only a couple of single-light bulb ceiling lights. 

We're planning to hire Tim Austin again to help us finish the space. (He's the guy who built our garage for us.) I'm hoping he can help us get the room wired up for better lighting and some decent outlets and I'm hoping to replace the battle-scarred sheetrock ceiling with some sort of panel system, probably something along these lines. In the old days, I had big plans to makeover the basement and make it beautiful, now I'll be satisfied with bright and comfortable.

Ideally, I would like to get the work done before I take delivery on the long arm, so we're going get started as soon as Tim is available, which is about two months. That will certainly provide a good deadline for finishing that stained glass project and cleaning out the space.

This is the area I am planning to turn into the quilt studio. 

The goal is to move the workout gear into the front storage area. We're trying to empty and collapse three racks. We've been making good progress on the project.

Stair Railing Progress

Our forecast calls for nice cool weather for several days so it seems like a good time to finally get this railing installed. We made good progress this afternoon. 

We have a couple more hours of work to install the outer boards and the flat upper portion. Then I'll have to touch up the paint.

We also still need to route the edges of the board that goes flat on top, but it will be nice to have most of it finished by the end of the weekend.

Sifting Stuff Again

We are going to have out-of-town guests over Labor Day so we're trying to get the upstairs bedrooms cleaned up. They still had big piles of boxes sitting around that had been disgorged when we cleared out the closet to build in the cabinetry.

(I haven't given up on the stained glass. I am definitely planning to finish it this year, but our weather has been so hot that I really can't spend all day down in the freezing basement and then go up to bed in the unseasonably hot upstairs bedrooms. I don't get a lot of sleep when the weather is consistently over 100℉. We really need to get a bed down in the basement before next summer.)

Anyway, I have been trying to talk myself into cleaning upstairs, but it turns out I like quilting more than I like cleaning. LOL 

Today, I decided to try something drastic. I asked Jeff to help me carry all the piles of stuff lying around in the bedrooms down to the living room so I could get it all in one place. I'm hoping it will make it easier to sift. Plus, it has the advantage of being located in a cooler area of the house.

It's quite a lot when you get it all in one place. I have two weeks to get this mess cleaned up. =)