Cleaning the House Exterior

We have waited too long to deal with some exterior house maintenance issues. The gutters with screens on top didn't really do the job for us. They'd probably be better if your house wasn't surrounded by tall trees. The leaves just sat on top of the screens and in heavy rains the water backed up onto the roof and over the past 10 years, it's done some damage to the roof structure. I am not going to crawl up there and take a bunch of photos, but you can see this area easily from the ground.

Anyway, we decided to buy LeafGuard Gutters. We had them at our last house and really liked them. And they have the feature that if they ever get clogged, they'll come and clean them for free. Though, I will say, OMG the salesman wasted so much of our time. He spent 3 hours selling us gutters when he could have done it in under an hour.  We already knew their benefits and that we wanted them, but they won't give you the price until they go through their lengthy pre-programmed spiel. They'll be installed sometime next month.

We also decided to hire folks to clean the exterior of the house. The roof, the exterior windows, and the siding. I am in the process of gathering estimates. I'd like to have everything done and installed by the time the rainy season starts in late-September or October.

Weekly Sewing Days

A friend of mine asked if we could start getting together for a weekly sewing day and I happily agreed. It's always good to find the motivation to spend time in my sewing room. I did finish one interesting new project last week. Jeff asked me to make a remote control holder for our TV area. Our remote controls were always going MIA and Jeff could never find his glasses. This solves that problem, assuming we put them where they now belong.

I made this out of a pair of Jeff's old dead work jeans, hence the wear and discoloration. I thought it added character. I didn't use any type of pattern, I was just winging it the whole time. I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

I've got some new potholders for Jeff in the works. The shape is a nerdy math pattern Jeff made for me back in 2012. I had forgotten what a pain it was to add the edging around this tight curve but at least this time I remembered to cut the fabric on the bias.

I chose the turtle fabric because it's Jeff's favorite

Curtains for my sewing room have been my latest forever project. I ripped apart the old Roman shades from Redwood City in Dec 2015 and because there were not enough squares to make nice looking curtains, I decided to add a second batch of purple squares.

Usually, I like piecing projects, but these just have not been able to hold my attention, perhaps because I don't really have a plan once I actually finish them. Since I'm nearly done with the squares now, I'm hoping this time I'll make it to the end of the project and be able to show photos of the finished curtains soon.

Merry Christmas All

I hope all our friends and followers are having a nice holiday season. We're having a pretty quiet month so far. For the first time in over a decade, I actually managed to put up a little six-foot tree. We don't really celebrate the holiday anymore, but I do enjoy the colorful lights to brighten up our gray weather.

On the house front, I am still futzing around with the shed windows. We discovered that not only were they put in upside down, they were put in backwards (with the inside facing out). Jeff removed them and I spent a day trying to remove the old glazing compound. I'm not sure what they used, but it's like cement. I honestly don't think it was actually window glazing compound. I'm not sure what it is, but it is very hard to remove and I'm worried I'm going to break the glass panes trying to get it all off.

Master Bath Mostly Finished

All I have left to do is to put another coat of varnish on the little shelf, and that project in the master bathroom is officially done. I'd also like to install grab bars in the shower, but we didn't get to that this week. We still need to pick up masonry drill bits.

Now that we have the towels and other stuff off the counter, we were able to oil the soapstone again. I much prefer the darker green color the oil brings out. And I also finished re-hemming the curtains so they'd fit in the windows again.

The curtain fabric is a cheery, bright William Morris pattern. The colors aren't period, but the pattern is.

I was also pretty excited that JCPenney's finally carried the dark green towel color again this year. I've been looking for nearly five years for towels that matched the soapstone—I knew they made them because I had bought one back in our old house in Forest Grove (around 2000)—finally this year they had the right color green, called Green Gables.

I bought them during their Labor Day Sale when they were marked down 50%, then I used a coupon for another 30% off! They were a really good deal. And now that I know they take so long to cycle around to this dark green color, I stocked up on hand towels.

I've made at least a dozen more squares in the past couple of days for my sewing room curtains. And when I was in there sewing last night I started gazing longingly at my fabric shelves. I couldn't understand why I wanted to make another quilt so bad until I realized it has been nearly five years since I finished my last one. No wonder I'm getting the itch to quilt again. I think I'll have to start another quilt in December, once I'm done with NaNoWriMo.

Quick Update

Jeff and I have been spending a lot of time writing lately, but I finally got some more work done on the master bath last week. I finished cleaning up the glass and I put the windows back together.

I have used the shower and it is nice to be able to shower upstairs again, but I need to install the grab bars. I'm hoping to get the shelf and towel hooks installed next week. We're waiting on a reasonably clear day so we can clear space in the garage to cut up our large pieces of fir. I'm hoping for next week, but given our current rate, it may be longer.

The tile looks better in the pictures than it does in person. I'll have to take some closeups to post soon. Barrett clearly had a problem getting tile flush and evenly spaced on the walls. Somehow, given all the problems and delays, this should not surprise me.

Finishing Sewing Projects

This week has found me in my sewing room. I am trying to finish projects already in the works before I take over the room with my massive reupholstery project.

I am currently back working on my sewing room curtains. Since I tend to work assembly line fashion, I only have the one finished sample square to show. I'm still building components to build the blocks and should finish quite a few at a time.

I guess it's been since December since I last talked about this project. Ultimately, I decided to disassemble the Roman shades and reuse the squares in curtains. It took me about a day of hanging out watching Netflix and ripping apart all three Roman shades. I ended up with 16 of the green squares, but that isn't enough for curtains for my sewing room. So I am making a second set of 16 squares, this one with purple as the basis. Once it's put together, I think it will go well with the sewing room colors.

Anyway, I did get started on it in December, but then I didn't have the motivation to make 100s of 2.5" pieced squares. This time I'm taking it a little slower. I work on it for a few of hours then go do something else.

The something else yesterday was making new pillowcases for the guest bedroom. I realized I never made matching pillowcases for the purple and yellow quilt so I spent about an hour pawing thru fabrics and then making these.

It's really nice to have the guest room back in useable condition.

Ready for Wallboard

Jeff finished insulating the bathroom yesterday and now we're all ready for the wallboard to go in.

Though, when I went in there to take pictures, I saw this...... I guess I still have some paint stripping to do. Sigh.

I think we FINALLY worked it out with our tile guy. I guess threatening to replace him finally did the trick and we've gotten on his schedule. Or maybe it's just that the holiday is over now and he has time again. In either case, we are expecting to have him come out this week and hang the wallboard. He was originally planning to come out today, but since Portland is blanketed in a layer of snow and ice, most folks are taking the opportunity to stay home and extend the holiday one more day. :)

What's Next?

Jeff and I managed to get the guest room all cleaned out for our guest. (No pictures at the moment, because the room is already occupied.) Many of the boxes stored in there were unpacked, but there is still a pile of them in my closet. I'll get to those later as I just don't want to overclutter my sewing room yet.

I managed to not turn on my gaming PC today and instead listed about 10 items on craigslist. (Go me!) I'm again attempting to escape the allure of MMOs to actually get some stuff done in real life. (Our current game is Final Fantasy 14.)

I have started to disassemble the Roman shade panels from Redwood City and I'm planning to convert them into curtains. I had originally planned to just add some width and use them as is, but now that I've had time to think about it, I'm going to unassemble them a lot more and actually insert squares with purple fabric into the mix. I like the fabrics I originally used, but if I add purple, it will go really well with my stencil. :D

Jeff and I are also thinking we're ready to make another leaded glass panel, this time for the huge glass panel in our front door. Yeah, that's a lot of clear glass.

We've been looking around my pinterest images and our current front runner is this design.

It's still mostly straight edges with some curved edges. I think we're up to the challenge. Jeff is working on the pattern in postscript. Once he's done, we'll start poking thru our glass collection. I believe we'll change the color of the flower to purple (rather than the red).

Stupid computer games . . .

Jeff and I must have been channeling our inner teenager for the last couple of weeks because we managed to get totally distracted by an online computer game. The time just sort of slipped by and we barely noticed. But last Friday I looked up the date we started and was shocked to realize how much time we had wasted!

Partly, I think we were feeling really overwhelmed by it all and it was easy to go tuck our heads into our computers and ignore all the other stuff. So, I decided it was time for some project rescheduling. I still want to get many of the same projects done this year, but I'm trying to be more realistic about our abilities to actually finish them before summer.

I think we have finally gotten our act together and progress on our lists should resume. Right now we're focusing on small projects.

Jeff went to storage and brought home a car-full of boxes of art (which wasn't all of them). Geez, we have a lot of art. We obviously had a lot of wall space in our big house and we probably have about 3 times as much as will fit in this house; we'll probably have to get rid of a lot of it. We're still trying to sift through it all to figure out which pictures will get to stay and where they go. (I hate this part of downsizing.)

Today I finally made curtains for our master bathroom. This is one of those "why didn't I do this sooner" projects. It really only took me a few hours and most of the time was sitting around sewing on rings.

I didn't like the old curtains because they were faded polka dot and didn't really seem like they were designed for these windows since they were about 4 inches too long. And they didn't open and close very well because the casing was very bulky on the rod.

This is pretty much the only before picture I can find but it's not very good because it is backlit.

This is what the new curtains look like. The fabric I used is a William Morris design done in bright colors. I've sewn on rings so the curtains will actually open and close, unlike the old ones. They're cheery and bright and I like them.

Installed Wood Blinds

After I discovered that mini-blinds were period (1900), I've kept them in mind as a solution for finishing the windows in our bedrooms.

Originally, I had a plan to make quite elaborate applique Roman shades, but I'd never gotten beyond the planning stage. I did have the basic plain Roman shades I could have hung, but I didn't like the fabric with our refinished bedroom colors.

Shortly before Christmas I ran across a good sale (35% off) on Levolor wood blinds. I thought about it for nearly a week, but finally, in the interest of being done, I ordered them.

Unfortunately, our windows were not deep enough to accommodate the 2-inch slats, so I contented myself with the 1-inch. I ordered them with the fabric straps—to match the period drawing at right—in colors that matched the wall paint.

I don't love them, but they'll do. And it will be nice in the morning after we've gotten to bed too late.

Working on Closets

I continued shellacking today. I finished up the master bedroom windows.

And then I finished shallacking the master bedroom closet.

Yay, we can finally put the hardware back on all these windows!

It also finally occurred to me I ought to do something with the guest bedroom closet before we have the floors refinished. I was thinking I should paint it so it matches the rest of the room.

But then I found this...

Really? How is this possible? I can't possibly paint bare wood...

...it's just not in my programming. So now I have to try to carefully remove this shelf and strip the paint. Sigh.

Dining Room Curtains Hung

I decided I needed a day off paint stripping. So, instead, I spent a leisurely day hand sewing while listening to my current audio book.

By this evening, I finished sewing the rings along the top edge of the dining room curtains and now they're hung up. I still don't feel comfortable starting the embroidery on the design—the embroidery hoop may smear paint if it isn't thoroughly dry.

I'm not 100% happy with the way the panels turned out, but they're probably not so bad for my first effort making my own stencils.

I guess now I should probably start thinking about what I should make for the guest bedroom. Maybe I'll try some appliqué...

Finished Living Room Curtain

I continued to plug away at the third living room curtain while I was in front of the TV this week. Yesterday afternoon I finished it. Woo hoo!

This curtain, unfortunately, doesn't really get seen because it's behind the bird cage. But I know it's done and I can finally cross another project off my To Do list.

Dining Room Curtains

Progress on interior projects continues at a steady pace. Sharon finished off her quilt backing and worked on a couple other non-house sewing projects.

Today we started cutting for the last four leaded glass panels. We're treating these last four panels as a "set" and cutting all the pieces up front and then planning to put each of them together, one after the other.

Sharon also got started on the dining room curtains. At this point, they are not hemmed along the bottom edge. She is letting them hang for a couple of days to be sure they stretch evenly.

In fact, this is really just the starting point. Besides hemming, she is going to sew on rings and apply stencils. Her earlier successful attempts have given her more confidence to try something a bit more difficult.

She chose this design from the article "Draperies for the dining room: designs in stencil and embroidery" from the October 1910 Craftsman Magazine. Though, she's not planning to stencil along the top edge.

For this project, Sharon is going to have to cut her own stencils. So, she ordered the materials to do that: a stencil cutting tool and some mylar. But this project surely won't be finished before the kitchen tour.

Shopping for Salvaged Materials

When we remodeled our house last year, we had intended to use quite a lot more salvaged building materials. But, it turns out, the city permitting process makes it pretty difficult. You can't just change a window size based on some excellent salvage score you've just found, because changes have to be reviewed by the Permit Dept. And it's not easy to find a salvaged item that is exactly the dimensions that you've drawn into the plan.

Therefore, in order to submit detailed drawings showing all the components of the building, we have to have all the salvaged items before we finalize the drawings! So, Sharon has been hunting around trying to locate and acquire the important salvaged materials for the garage project.

She actually found a nearly-new garage door in Eugene that was nearly identical to the one she had been contemplating ordering new! So, now we may be trekking down to Eugene on Friday to purchase that for our garage project.

We also went out to the Rebuilding Center and sifted through their doors. When we found more than one good option, we couldn't decide and didn't buy either. Now, though, we've picked which door and we're hoping it will still be there when we return tomorrow.

The windows are an especially difficult challenge. Most salvaged windows are white vinyl. We're trying to match the house and the house has green mullioned windows. We've read that you can paint vinyl windows, but you shouldn't paint light-colored windows with dark-colored paint because the vinyl breaks down under the heat of the sun. So, more than likely, we'll just end up ordering the same brand of windows we purchased for the house.

Or, if somehow we manage to find a pair of old single-paned windows that are close to the desired size and still have the frame on them, we'll go ahead and use them and paint them green. But we're still shopping around; we don't expect to get that lucky!

Update on Saturday: Here is our new garage design updated with our salvage finds! Now we just need to find windows, or resign ourselves to ordering them new.