Railing Progress

I've planed down the cedar and our installer did a temporary install on these boards so we could get the spacing right. There will be additional pieces of wood installed at the top and bottom that will hide the ends of the slats.  

Once the lower portions are cut out, we'll mark the diamonds, take out all the wood and cut them out. We'd also like to route the edges of the top rail. Then I'll start finishing it. I've learned from my past mistakes; we'll be finishing before the final install.

I was planning to paint them, but we seem to be out of that white color paint. But we do have lots of the opaque white stain we used on the pergola and fence, so I'm considering staining instead. I really don't understand the difference in durability.

Stair Rail Demo'd

It's too late to turn back now. We have bought the materials for the new railing (and OMG it was not easy to find clear cedar 2x6s). This time we're going to paint it before it's installed. The newells seem to be in good shape so I think we'll leave them alone; we need to fill some nail holes and repaint them before we install the new rails.

The rails came out really easy because they were so rotted on the bottom. Demo only took about an hour.

I am also planning to clean and refinish the decking while we have the rails out. I'll need to wait for several days of good weather before I can get started so it will probably be a couple weeks. We're expecting rain for the rest of the week so I'll focus my efforts on painting the new lumber.

Replacing Rotted Railing

When CDR installed our back stairs in 2012, they put in hemlock! In Rainy Oregon. Outdoors. Had they taken one minute to ask us what we wanted, we would have approved and paid for a more durable outdoor wood. But what is done, is done. And now the backstair railing wood is all rotted out. 

We found someone who can help us replace the current railing so we're going to try and do that in the next few weeks, but we are going to change the design so hopefully there will be less problem with water seeping into crevices and rotting out the wood. And I'd really like to install flat sawn balusters rather than plain spindles.

My plan is to use this style of install from the Lowe's DIY website: How to Build a Front Porch Railing.

I'm hoping by sandwiching the balusters between two boards with nothing filling the gaps between them the water will just run right through. And I'll be painting and/or staining before the final install.

And I'm hoping to do flat sawn balusters that are more like these, from the Pretty Handy Girl website.

We're working on our material list right now and we'll be buying them as soon as we figure out the final plan.

Front Planter Destroyed

New renters arrived to move into the house next door on Monday when our snow was so bad and they decided to drive across our front planter (even though I ran out and told them it was there) and then they got stuck. Duh. Then they spent a couple hours trying to dig the truck out of it. Sigh. I feel sorry for all the plants they killed. =(

I don't have any recent photos, but this is how it looked on Jan 2. The ajuga was looking pretty good for being in the middle of winter. And the ferns were getting established. I'm most disappointed about the purple iris being destroyed. I had also planted quite a few bulbs in there, but I don't really remember how many and which varieties. Presumably, they were crushed, but I guess we will see.

(Re)Started Quilt Blog

This blog started as a way for us to share with our family what we were up to after we moved out of state. But over time, as we remodeled our craftsman home in Laurelhurst, it morphed into a historic house remodel blog. It was a way for me to save info I had researched and as a way to record progress on our projects. But I have shifted a lot of my leisure activities to fabric crafts now and they don't really fit into the Laurelhurst Craftsman house theme. I will still use this blog for our gardening and woodworking projects since they still benefit this house.

Once the weather warms up we do hope to do another round of woodworking. I would very much like to finish my master bedroom closet. We decided to try and make the cabinets ourselves but the pandemic brought our progress to a halt. I'm hoping we'll get back to work on the project later this year.

Anyway, since I am seriously considering starting a long arm quilting business, I decided I should shift my sewing-related posts over to my long-abandoned quilt blog. Once I figure out a new name, I'll change the name of the blog, but I will leave it as it is for now.

If you're here primarily for the quilt posts, I would encourage you to follow that blog. I will start using that blog to post about project progress and challenges I am participating in.

I have posted a new post over there.

New Porch Floor

The porch is not finished, but they won't be making any more progress this week because of the snow. The new porch floor is looking really nice. As a reminder, the wood is meranti decking.

The contractor added a groove along the edge and installed it with a separate tongue. This is a photo of an exposed edge so you can see the detail.

The wood is unfinished in this photo. After he finishes the install, he'll finish the floor in place, but that won't happen until we have warmer weather, maybe in March.

Queen's Jewel Quilt Finished

I actually finished this quilt binding before the other two quilts, but it took me a few days to take photos, which are not great. The master bedroom is a bit of a mess.

I ended up making four sets of matching pillowcases for this quilt because Jeff likes LOTS of pillows on the bed and if I wait until the first set of cases wear out to make more, the fabric will likely be gone. So I decided to make more pillowcases right away and store them in the linen closet until we need them.

This pattern was inspired by the Queen's Jewel pattern from Quick Quilts from Your Scrap Bag by Patricia Wilens. I removed the outer border from each block and replaced it with a sashing. 

This quilt was finished with the Dragon Tails pantograph.

And recently I realized this is nearly the same quilt block design I declared was "next" in the queue in April 2018 (but it obviously wasn't). Perhaps that is why the queen's jewel pattern attracted me when I found it. Also, I ended up with nearly the same color scheme (green, blue, and purple); a happy accident.