Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Downsizing Progress

We have now managed to get rid of five bookcases and the books that used to reside in them in the basement. Woohoo! After we manage to clean up the area and shuffle the remaining furniture a bit, I'll post some photos.

I also just finished putting a coat of semi-gloss paint on that built-in "cabinet". (This was clearly not built by an experienced woodworker, hence the quotes around cabinet.) The paint was leftover from our abandoned color in the master bathroom so I was happy to find a way to use it up.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

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.

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Sifting Basement

We've been busy down in the basement the past two weeks sorting through our library to do a massive downsize. We originally had a set of eight bookcases and we've managed to get it down to two bookcases of books we're keeping and one bookcase of books we're actively selling. We've already donated about eight boxes of books to the library and have more boxes packed to go. And we've been having a massive liquidation sale in our SCA facebook groups to reduce the remaining books that don't have much financial value.

Excuse the pictures, it's still a disaster down in the basement family room, but I am quite pleased with our progress so far.
This was how stuffed full the bookcases were before we started. We had six total of these full-size bookcases.
Here is where we're at now.
The two far-right cases are books we're keeping for now and the third one is books that are listed for sale. We've already got a friend lined up to come pick up these empty bookcases later this month.