Furniture Rearranged

Last Wednesday, which luckily turned out to be a fairly sunny day, we hired a couple of movers from Oregon Trail Moving to help us move some furniture from storage and to rearrange furniture inside the house. Since it was so hot last summer we decided it would be worthwhile to move a bed down into the finished basement. The long-term plan is to install a murphy bed, but we just moved one of our bedroom sets down there for now. (I guess I haven't taken a photo since we cleaned up and made the bed.)

I don't have a good photo of the other side of the basement yet. Last night we got the television installed on the wall bracket and we started hooking up the gear. It's going to look a lot nicer with the wires all behind the walls. We are still hunting for a used nice-looking media cabinet so we will continue to use the inexpensive IKEA unit we bought to use during the remodel.

I also started moving my quilting stuff into the upstairs bedroom. I need to try and figure out the best way to use this furniture. Those are two Stickley bookcases and a Borkholder console table (all solid wood) that I scored off craigslist for very good prices. I think I may cover the console table with an ironing pad and use it as a permanent ironing station.

I'll have to show photos of the second bedroom next time. I still haven't taken any pictures since we moved in the new furniture.

I had planned to have the movers just move the big furniture pieces and then we would move the rest of the boxes and little stuff ourselves, but they managed to get virtually everything loaded in our pickup and rented U-Haul trailer. We only have a few things left in storage to retrieve before the end of the month.

The extra help was great, but I had rather expected to be able to deal with stuff a little at a time. Since everything came at once I now have a rather large pile of boxes down in the basement I need to finish sifting.

Rearranging Closets

Jeff is delighted with his new closet. It is much larger than the one he had upstairs.

All his clothes easily fit and we are going to add some hooks onto the blank wall areas to provide even more hanging space.

And I'm thrilled I got to claim the closet upstairs to store quilting supplies. I'll have to put some thought into how I want it all arranged before I start moving into the shelves.

I've already hung all my flimsies and quilt backings on the other wall. Hopefully, this is the maximum number I'm going to have. I expect once I have the long arm I will quilt most of them fairly quickly.

(For folks who are interested in the quilting side of my blogging, I am posting my quilting endeavors over at my quilt blog.)

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. =)

Closet Finished!

With all the drama in the kitchen, I never got around to posting about my closet progress. It is finished! And I have unpacked ALL the clothes! 

I thought I remembered downsizing my square dance clothes before I packed them up originally, but I clearly still have way too many. That bottom rod is crammed full and I'm worried there is too much weight on there. I will definitely need to disassemble some of the skirts to make quilts, or start dancing again. =)

I scored 5 large tubs of plastic hangers in rainbow colors off craigslist so I actually
managed to hang all the shirts/blouses on color-coordinated hangers. LOL

I'd forgotten about some of my really beautiful medieval costumes. I definitely need to try them on and see if they'll fit me again.

Shelves Finished!

I am so excited to finally be nearing the completion of my closet project. Today, Jeff cut down the shelves to the right dimensions and then I sanded the edges and applied edge-banding. I used the pre-glued kind and it was much easier than I was expecting.

As seems to be typical for this project, I don't have enough shelf pins so I've already ordered those. They'll be here Friday.

Next up, we need to install the closet rods. At this point, it will probably be the weekend before we finish because Jeff gets his second round of coronavirus vaccine tomorrow. Based on reports from friends we're expecting he'll be wiped out for at least two days.

Closet Shellacked

I finally got my act together this week and continued work on my closet. I varnished the top shelf and did two coats of shellac on all the rest of the woodwork. (I used varnish on the top because I was hoping it would be more durable when we slide tubs and boxes across the surface.) 

We still need to finish making shelves for the cabinets. Unfortunately, the guy we hired to help us with this project cut the wood incorrectly and now we have to either buy more sheets of plywood or piece some of the shelves. Right now, Jeff is trying to piece the wood. 

I've also been working on cleaning my sewing room again. For the past few months, I've had a bad habit of finishing a project and then moving on to the next project without actually cleaning up the mess from the project I just finished. I had piles of fabric all over the place and a mountain of scraps overflowing onto the floor.

I've temporarily shifted some of the stuff from my sewing room into the closet to give myself more room to work. I will likely be moving some of the tubs from the sewing room into the closet permanently, but I still have a lot of boxes I need to unpack first to see how much room I have left.

I ordered brass rods and flanges and we got the rods last week, but the flanges were back-ordered. The shipping date looks like they may come next week. I'm hoping.

Closet Installed

We made good progress on our closet the past few days. We've installed the fixed shelving on the right side and face frame on the cabinets. Most of the wood was shellacked before it was installed, but I still need to shellac the face frame pieces. I would have shellacked everything, but I was worried there may be damage during the install and I figured it would be easier to touch up just stain.

Back when we did the rest of the closet I bought all the brass rods and brackets we needed to finish this closet, but then we used them in the guest room and sewing room closets, so today I ordered more. (If I had remembered, I would have ordered weeks ago.) I was relieved I could still find them, but it wasn't easy.

We still need to cut plywood shelves for the cabinets. And I have about two weeks to finish shellacking everything before we receive the rods.

Douglas Fir Staining

I put the last coat of stain on the plywood pieces this morning. 

Then, this afternoon, Jeff and I spent a couple hours finalizing the right side shelf design and measured and cut out the rest of the douglas fir. It didn't make much of a dent in our douglas fir stash out in the garage.

Tomorrow morning I'll put on the second coat of stain. It is possible we could start installing them as early as tomorrow afternoon, though we may want to wait until Monday morning to make sure they're totally dry.

Closet Progress

The boxes are built and installed. The douglas fir plywood is cut and ready for staining.

I know how I get to spend the weekend.

Master Closet, Again

Back in early-2013, I presented a design for a very complicated wall of cubes for my master bedroom closet. Folks who have followed us for a while will no doubt be 0% surprised that we never built it.

Briefly, in 2016, I revisited the issue again hoping I could figure out an easier plan that we could actually do.

We didn't do that either. The more I looked at the plan, the more I was sure we would muck it up. We have a lousy woodshop and those boxes need to be made perfectly square. When I thought about how we would work on this project together, I decided it would not be good for our marriage. LOL

I think I finally figured out a way we can finish this project and not get a divorce. I read at the Family Handyman site a recommendation to use kitchen cabinetry for built-in bookcases and it occurred to me they might work for my closet! The benefit of using kitchen cabinets is they'll be drilled for adjustable shelves and everything will be built nice and square.

The days of free SketchUp are mostly gone, but I was able to make some edits to my old file. I'm not sure we'll be able to hang these cabinets without help, but we will try.

The plan calls for two stacked upper cabinets because I could not find a pantry cabinet that came as wide as I wanted it (they're 25½" wide); I'm sizing these to fit the Sterilite plastic tubs I like to use. The shelves along the right side will be fixed and simply cut to length in order to fill whatever space remains.

Another Lap Quilt Finished

I just finished another lap quilt. Excuse the bad photo; I'll take a better picture after I finish the binding.

This is a train quilt for my father, who is a huge fan of trains. He frequently takes train vacations. I had this marvelous train fabric but the trains were so large they wouldn't have worked well cut into small pieces so I used this pattern from my favorite quilt pattern book, 101 Fabulous Rotary-Cut Quilts. When I realized the pattern was called The Railroad, it seemed like it was fate.

Master Bedroom Closet Plan

It's been ages, but I was in the mood to take a look at my master bedroom closet plan. Back in 2013, we finished one side of the closet, but didn't finish the cube side. I held off on the cube side until after the bathroom remodel (just in case we wanted to steal space for the bathroom).

I decided my original plan was overly complicated. The piece shapes were going to be just too difficult to cut accurately.

The other day I was cruising around the internet and I ran across the IKEA Kallax 5x5 shelving unit and it got me thinking maybe I could just cheat..... It's sort of tempting. We could simply paint it to match the walls and probably finish this project in a couple of days.

But no, that would be too easy. LOL
Instead, I found this modular bookcase project at the Family Handyman website. This seems to be less complicated then our original plan and we could customize the cubes to fit our space. We're basing our design on 14" squares.

I've decided to downgrade to paint grade plywood because stain grade douglas fir plywood is more expensive than I can justify for this project. We're planning to finish the edges with small pieces of stained douglas fir from our pieces in the garage.

Rather than struggling to make the cubes exactly fit in the closet, I'm just going to install shelves on the right side cut to the available space.

I don't think we'll get to the closet before this fall. There's a lot we want to get done in the backyard this summer.

Tile Progress

Barrett actually managed to make it out to our house before noon yesterday and stayed until a reasonable time, so he got quite a lot done. Now we just need to figure out the accent tile. We're still waiting on the test firing, which I hope will be done on Monday.

We have a week to hustle to figure out the accent tiles before Barrett has time in his schedule to come back again, so hopefully we'll be ready for him.

Jeff just needs to install the supply line and the toilet seat and we'll have an operational toilet again! Yay!

Alex Vertikoff's Photos

In stark contrast to the ugly pictures outside, I have been given permission to share the photographs Alex Vertikoff took of our house back in July 2013. They turned out really beautiful!

I'm a little embarrassed about this one. I wasn't expecting him to include the sewing room in the background so I didn't have it totally cleaned up. The rainbow of threads is pretty though. LOL

Last Door Stripped!

I'm feeling very happy to be almost done! This door just needs a tiny bit of touchup with dental tools and then I can sand it! This was, finally, the last painted door in the house.

There will be a bit more paint stripping of woodwork once Jeff and his friend start demo in the master bathroom, but otherwise, I am done! :D

And We Have Closets

We've been crazy busy since my post on Wednesday trying to get the wood ready for our closet install today. Yesterday was spent sanding and applying two coats of stain and then we got up early this morning to put on a coat of shellac. Luckily shellac dries fast or we would never have made it.

I still have to do some minor touch up on ends which I hadn't stained because I wasn't aware they'd be showing then I'm planning to do a second coat of shellac in place. We are in the home stretch on this part of the closet project.

It's hard not to start moving into this space.

Jeff's closet shelves - obviously some picking up is in order

Jeff's closet double hang

Sharon's closet double hang

Excuse the poor pictures. We just don't have the technology to get a good picture. Once Sharon's closet is cleaned up, we should be able to get a better picture in there because the room is pretty big.

Closet Progress

Despite my lack of posts since last Friday, we are still working on the house. I don't tend to wear my little camera anymore and I've been too busy/lazy to take pictures of our current projects in progress.

Eric came again on Monday and helped Jeff cut the rest of the wood for the closet built-ins. The plan is to finish both sides of Jeff's closet and just the hanging side of mine. We'll come back to the cubes in my closet after the chicken coop is finished.

Rather than installing it all and then staining in place, we decided to cut the wood then stain outside or in the garage. I was prepping the wood for that project today, but then I asked Jeff to reach me a tub of shellac on top of the workbench that was way out of my reach. Anyway, the lid was not properly on the tub and it spilled everywhere: down Jeff's front, all over the workbench, all over the fir propped up against the wall, etc., etc. Let's just say, Jeff was not pleased.

So, it turns out today was the day we finally found motivation to work on cleaning the garage. We restacked the cherry tree boards along the back wall and pulled out the last bits of the salvaged douglas fir to take to Willow Classic Woodworking for planing and now we're working on figuring out how to arrange the rest of the stuff so that we can get to it when we need it without having to move everything else around it.

We were planning to have the closet boards stained by Friday so we could have Eric back to help us install them, but with this garage cleaning detour, we might have to push it a day or two. I hope not.

This is approximately what that side of the garage looked like, but it was a bit worse when we started today.

Here is the back corner this evening. We still have lots more cleaning to do, but there is a lot more space in there to work now.