Saturday, August 28, 2021

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.

Sunday, August 22, 2021

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.


Friday, August 20, 2021

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.

Thursday, August 19, 2021

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. =)

Saturday, August 7, 2021

Day 3 - Slow Progress

I've been trying to split my days between sewing and working on the heraldic stained glass. Progress has gotten pretty slow as I'm having to refit quite a few pieces because we changed to using lead cames. 

We're actually trying a crazy experiment; we're going to solder the animals with copper foil and the diamonds with lead came. I don't know if it will work but I looked around and it might. I didn't really want to lose the fine detail on the animals, but the diamonds are just straight lines. It may turn out to be a disaster, but I hope not.

I finished another (diagonal) row today. The next row will take quite a bit longer as I need to refit many of the body pieces. Hopefully, I won't have to cut any new ones. 

I'll just keep plugging away at this project. I'd like to finish it this summer.

Thursday, August 5, 2021

Stained Glass Again

In an effort to finish old stained glass projects so we can sell off the extra glass to clear space down in our basement, we are finally working on our old heraldic stained glass project we started in 2008! I thought about just abandoning this project because we're not active in SCA anymore, but I still like it and it would lovely to hang this up as a memento. We played a lot with SCA for more than a decade.

We dug through all the glass in the basement and I could not find any more of that clear glass I originally used, nor could I find a close match. So, ultimately I decided to replace it with a glass I had enough of. It's a bummer because now I have to repeat all that work shaping the glass around the rabbit, but I'll be much happier with the finished project.
We also decided to change this project from copper foil to leaded came. We don't have enough of the copper foil tape left to finish this project but we have a ton of leaded glass channels because when we made the panels for the cabinets we had to buy an entire box. We will lose some of the fine details around the paws, but we won't have to spend any more money on this project.
I hope we can finish this project this time; 13 years is more than enough to be hauling this around. And once I get this finished, I can turn my attention to other projects, like this panel for the front door and repairing a broken pane in the living room. 

My goal, once I finish the front door panel, is to get rid of all the excess glass we are storing in our basement. I have ordered a long arm machine with a frame and I need to make room for it.