Snow Snow and More Snow and Oral Surgery

I guess that I really jinxed it when I wrote my last blog about how little snow we had. Remember that little last snow bank in our yard? 

Oh well...

This is what we are in for.... 

It's time to pay the piper. We got round one last night. It was only a few inches but a lot of blowing around. Right now we are in the middle of round two and the winds have really kicked up to 40 mph. We are going to expect another 4 to 6 inches today. Then round three is coming in overnight. They said in total we should have 12 to 14 in. I don't mind the snow so much, but it's the blowing that is awful! It blows into huge drifts which can make travel dangerous. It also blows over trees and branches on to the power lines that cause outages. Then the temperature is going to drop to below zero tomorrow night. That's fun. Then everything freezes solid and makes it difficult to snow blow or shovel. Especially the pile that the plow keeps putting at the end of the driveway!

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Yesterday was an adventure. But it was all made better by getting to see this beautiful friendly doggie face at my dentist office! Meet George. He is a 1-year-old Irish wolfhound that is learning to be a good boy. He's behind the desk in the receptionist area. Quite a gentle giant. He is standing on the floor next to that chair with his head leaning up over the counter to get a sniff of my hand. Yes, he's that big already!

The rest of my dentist visit was not as much fun. I know I've been having trouble with some gums located underneath a bridge that I had put in over 10 years ago. They needed some serious attention. Since I was going in for my cleaning I asked if they should get looked at by the dentist. The hygienist rescheduled me for another appointment to come back in the afternoon because other people were all canceling their appointments due to the impending storm. No waiting!

On second thought, waiting would have been nice. Like waiting forever and not having this done? Lol. 

But seriously, I suddenly had oral surgery performed on six areas of gums above my teeth that were being affected. I had the bridge work corrected and ground down smoother to stop irritating the area. I also had a piece of cadaver bone mounted in to reinforce another area. Then I had dissolving mesh put in and sutured down to help the gums reattach back to the teeth. Sounds crazy hey? Also expensive.

With no dental insurance, our dentist kindly gives us a cash discount. So once we were done, we trekked on over to the credit union and performed a robbery to bring back a hefty amount of cash. Ugh.

Amazingly, I am not having any pain at all today. There is some swelling to be expected. But not nearly any of the dangerous pains that I was given as precaution and possibility of pain medication needed.

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The other thing we took care of yesterday was voting. We had a state judicial race primary election in Wisconsin that was quite important. We were going to vote absentee if we were gone on our vacation. But since we were in town we were able to just go in person and do it the original way. 

Also on Monday we finished up the painting in the kitchen. I got this little section of wall completed with taping off and then two coats of green. 

Steve took care of unhooking our modem and router that are usually hidden up on top of the refrigerator. Then we moved that out, so we could get painting done behind there as well. 

And here it is now, all done and everything moved back into place.

I'm really glad we went with this soft sage mossy green. It sure looks a lot better than that previous beige/rose/mauve color. I think that color sucked in the light whereas this new one reflects it outwards. 

I put everything back in our little kitchen table area, including my hand blown glass paperweights and the cuckoo clock and my little 12-month quilted stitching hanging from my friend Patti.

Steve got the refrigerator back into place and put our modem and router set up behind my big platter from the kids. Everything is now back to normal. 

Well, it's Wednesday morning. Since this storm is going to keep us trapped in the house for a couple days, Steve decided that we should start painting over that same beige/rose/mauve color in our bathroom. So we started on the walls and I just rolled half the ceiling before taking a break. We might run out of paint so maybe I can only get one coat done. We will have to wait for the storms to subside for a couple days before we can go back and get some more.

Not about to risk going out in a blizzard 

just to get more paint! 

I Am Not A Fan Of Ceiling Fans

I am not a fan of ceiling fans. 

I never have been. They don't appeal to me in the least. The very worst is laying in the bedroom looking straight up at a ceiling fan rotating over the bed. It makes me nauseous. Even a ceiling fan out of the corner of my eye, in my peripheral vision, can make my stomach upset.

The only reason I agreed to a ceiling fan in my She Shed is because it's mostly positioned up over my shoulder, out of my line of sight. With the 14 ft tall ceiling, we need to push the hot air down and need circulation in the room. I know that. When we created the She Shed we added this 56-in industrial ceiling fan. It works quite well and has a rheostat type wall switch that you can run it on any speed. On the highest speed it is zooming like an airplane ready to take off! We usually kept it down as low as possible just to move the air around. But, it only goes in one direction and it pushes the air straight down on us. The outer walls still feel cold, and the corners are really chilly. Not bad in the summer, but in the winter months I just don't like the feeling of the air pushing down. Also, the industrial ceiling fan does not have a light on it.

Steve suggested we put a household type ceiling fan up there with a remote control. Then we can reverse the direction, control the speed, and have the light on dimmer to create whatever level we want of illumination. So he hopped up on his ladder and disabled the one that was up there. We will list that on Marketplace and sell it because it's a perfectly good fan. It just doesn't have all of the features that we wanted like the household one does.

It has only 3 blades and was unobtrusive up there, kinda out of sight, outta mind for me.

We ran up to the big box home improvement store Menards in Marinette. There they had this 52-in fan, which is a little smaller. But it did have the reversibility and also the light kit with the dimmer and the remote control.

Hop skip jump like a bunny, here's my Steveio assembling the new fan and putting it up. I read the directions and handed him the parts, while he took care of the wiring and the mounting brackets.  He just loves fiddling with stuff and getting it set right. 

Soon he had it all together and tested, turned the power back on, and it works just fine. Now we can control the amount of circulation in the room much easier with the touch of a remote.  It will push the warm air down along the walls and take care of excess condensation on the tall french doors and windows too.  We noticed a drastic improvement in just an hour of use.  The room feels more "even temp" with the better circulation. 

I do want to add this stained glass lamp shade to the bottom of the fixture to match the other stained glass lights in the She Shed and the rest of the house. The only problem is the threaded rod that came with the kit is only long enough for the white shade that was included. Steve put the white one up for now, but as soon as we get back to a hardware store he can get the longer threaded rod. 

We had added stained glass shades like this to the ceiling fans in the house in Chilton and it makes them at least tolerable in appearance to me. Even though I still don't like the blades moving if I can help it.  Now I can walk in the room and hit the button on the remote to turn it off when Steve isn't looking.  LOL

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While we were at Menards, we took the time to pick up an extra gallon of paint to work on the newest antique door that he found on Marketplace. It's written about in the blog prior to this.  He is sanding it first, and then I will paint it before installing it on the laundry room/ half bath doorway. 

At the same time we had another thought in mind. Since we bought this house three and a half years ago we really hadn't painted any of the rooms (other than a couple crazy deep mauve accent walls), and we did paint the bedroom when we redid the ceiling. 

The rest of the walls in the entire house are almost a pinkish beige hue called Bermuda Sand. We are considering maybe lightning brightening and changing the tone so we grabbed a bunch of paint chips to decide what we're going to do. Since all of the trim and doors are painted in the String of Pearls color we need to find something that coordinates without looking too pinky. So here were some of our choices:

We will think about that a bit and make a decision later. But we can paint room by room, wall by wall, and take our time. I do enjoy painting and it can be a winter time project. Just doing a little bit at a time. 

On our run up to Marinette and back was an absolutely beautiful day with vivid blue sky. It has stayed cold enough here that the snow is still clinging to the branches of the trees everywhere. 

The wind chills were in the 10 degree range, 

but falling lower by the weekend.

I know in the Eastern states they are getting hammered this weekend with four or five feet of snow. Right now we just have an inch or two on the ground and that is fine. It brightens everything up and looks so clean, Much better than the dull browns and greys after the autumn leaves came off the trees. 

We are staying in this weekend and not doing much of anything. I may start on this next quilt project which is for my friend Vicky. It's in memory of her mom, it's a quilt kit that her mom had bought and never got around to working on. It will be a wall hanging.  I will do the cutting, piecing and quilting while she will do the stitching around the appliqued birds and the little branches they are sitting on.

When we work on it, Vicky has decided she would like all four birds going in the same direction. On this sample photo from the kit, it looks like they are crooked not placed properly. I hope our version will look better than this! 

So that's it for a comfy Snuggly Saturday morning. I am fighting off a little bit of sinus and a sore throat. Not enough to be really sick, but enough to not want to go anywhere either. Good excuse to stay home and play with my She-Shed stuff.

Casters, Snow and Another "A-Door-Able Door"??

It sure is a good thing that they built a Jo-Ann's Fabric and Craft store right next to the Harbor Freight store in Marinette Wisconsin! While Steve was busy digging around in Harbor Freight for a few special items, I had the opportunity to go next door to Jo-Ann's. I grabbed some extra backing fabric for my quilt and a new spool of the variegated thread that I wanted.  I was still waiting in the parking lot while he was shopping, and he had the keys in his pocket.  So I had time to snap this pic,  Great ideas of the developers to put these stores side by side. On second thought, I should have gone back in JoAnn's. 

One of the things that Steve added to his shopping cart at Harbor Freight were four heavy duty locking casters. I have been kind of prodding him to think about getting them for quite a while. He has this really wonderful HEAVY workbench island situation in the garage. But every time he wants to move it, he has to drag this very heavy island across the cement floor. The screeching and scraping sound is AWFUL! Not only that, I can't drag it myself if I want to move it! So I had suggested a set of good heavy duty casters on the bottom, ones that could be locked into place.

Now it can be moved around with ease or rolled out of the way if we're working on something on the floor. I like having this open workbench island space in the middle of the room to work on projects. The heavy metal top was originally a steel door that was used during a construction phase on his brother's home. It makes an excellent worktop for his workbench island. The sturdy steel legs came out of a bulk item trash day rescue. So all together, it didn't cost much for the island itself, so the investment of 4 casters seemed to make sense.

Plus I got to shop and oogle fabrics. 

In my last blog I was showing how we added beadboard to the rest of the walls in the bathroom. Now it's finally complete. It looks so much better.  Covering up those portions of the walls kind of makes the room feel bigger.  This is a wide angle shot with the cell phone to get it all in. 

It lightened and brightened it up as well. I really like the look of the beadboard slats and it seems to fit with The Farmhouse motif. I am so pleased with how it turned out.  I have a few little spots here and there to dab paint on. Spots that we filled in the holes from the finishing nail gun on the quarter round trim around the baseboard.

Just one more of our projects finished that we can tick off the list.

Wednesday morning we woke up to absolutely beautiful white snow covering on the ground. Our first snowfall of the season. The temperatures have dropped now and the ground has stayed cold enough that the snow is hanging around.

We let little Binney out into her potty yard and she had to dash around and bark and snuffle around in the snow a little bit. I think from year to year dogs forget what snow was like. So the first time out again in the snowfall is exciting. Just like kids.  She is so funny.  She had to wait and see if the neighbor dogs were coming out.  Then she barks at them to tell them off, and prances back into the house. 

After my painting was done, I spent Wednesday morning sitting back with my feet up in front of the fireplace. The sun was shining outside but a few flakes every now and then came glistening down as they twirled to the ground. Steve went into town for a haircut and I had a peaceful relaxing morning to myself with a cup of coffee, some soft music, a good book from my sister, and the company of Binney.

When Steve got back from his haircut, he insisted that we had to hop into the Saturn and go check out something that he had located on Facebook Marketplace. 

Here we go again! 

It's another "A-door-able Door"!

If you look a few blogs back, I had mentioned about an antique door that Steve had located. He worked really hard to clean it all up, strip it all off and get it in place for our master bedroom. When our house was remodeled back about 6 years ago, some of the doors were changed to modern hollow core ones. Others were left as original with the five horizontal panels. So we have been trying to locate old wooden doors to replace the newer modern ones. Steve found another!

Soooooo for another $20 (same price as the last one) we drove down to Green Bay to pick up the door. It was exactly what he was looking for and it came home in the same manner the last one did. Wedged between us in the Saturn. Much better than hauling it laying flat on the trailer, driving through the slush and the snow. He looks so determined to get this door home, doesn't he?

I am just along for the ride, laughing at him and his eagerness to restore these doors and get rid of the modern ones. He doesn't like them at all and he said that they bug him. They are kind of MDF white plastic fake chipboard whatever stuff. Nothing can beat a good solid wooden door, in his mind.

I did get him to swing by the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Green Bay. I think he was hoping to find another door! We walked around and I managed to spy an additional light fixture with my same stained glass lights that I have in the home. This one is a pendant. I got the whole thing for $6. I don't even have a spot for it. But it was worth it to pick it up in case I ever need the shade, or if one of our others breaks. Who knows, maybe I will find a spot for it. But in the meantime, it's good to have an extra on hand. At that price, it was a bargain.  It retails for $39.99 new. 

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So that was about it for yesterday. Today is starting out slow and easy and relaxed. We did bring the grand puppies over to the groomers so it was one less thing for the kids to do.  We picked them up a few minutes ago.  They are now minus a bunch of big bushy coats, and have their nails trimmed and we can see their eyes again.  This is Biscuit and Ewok. 

This afternoon we have an appointment with our local Health Insurance specialists to talk to Steve about his Medicare Part B Supplement stuff. He's only a couple months away from that. So it's good to get the paperwork in order and figure out what he's doing.

It looks like the Midwest and the Great Lakes are due for some very cold windy weather with wind chills down below zero in the next few days. Brrrrrrrrr

There's a Packer game tonight at Lambeau in Green Bay, and the wind chills might get down in the low numbers too. We hope they play as well as they did last Sunday!

White and Bright! Painting My She Shed

These blog posts are catching up on the past two months of work on the She Shed.

Three days had passed for the fresh plaster to cure. Now it was time to get started with the painting!

On one of our little forays up to the ReStore in Marinette, we happened upon a big 5 gallon bucket of really nice all white Sherwin-Williams contractor grade paint. There was about four gallons left in the bucket. We got the entire bucket for $30, which about what it would cost for 1 gallon of good paint.

I looked up this particular brand and type of paint up online and it's $77 a gallon! That makes this bucket worth about $300.00!  I only wanted bright white, no other colors.  My goal is to re-create the feeling of the front porch at our last home in Chilton. 

Our old front porch - 

Light Bright and Airy. 

I eagerly got out my paint roller, extended telescoping handle, and my favorite paint tray. I like this tray because I can take a break, and snap the lid on with the roller in place, and it keeps the paint fresh without skinning over or drying out.

We started with a coat of primer that soaked right in. It was almost dry on the first wall by the time I finished the last wall.

Steve does not enjoy painting, to say the least. But he did go around on the ladder and do the cutting in for me ahead of my rolling. He takes a wide brush and makes sure he gets into every corner and then about the first four to five inches down each wall and across each ceiling surface.

Because we don't have trim up yet, we can run the paint right up to the edges of the plaster around the windows. The trim will come later.

I put on my MP3 player of soft Celtic music and set myself to work... I do enjoy painting. A lot. And now that the new paints don't have strong fumes like they used to, this one is especially nice because it is no VOC. It doesn't bother my lungs and I can paint away till my heart's content.

The room transformed itself from the raw plaster over to a beautiful white solid surface with primer and two coats of paint.  We will wrap the beam and cover the entryway ceiling later with tongue and groove cardsiding.

It gave us a really good feeling to see the room become more and more finished with each stroke of the roller.  At the very end of the second coat on the ceiling, we had to run and buy one more single gallon of that paint! The guy at the Sherwin Williams store said the retail price was $79 for the single gallon. ACK! Since I had the matching contractor bucket, he dropped it down to the contractor price. $37.00!  That was more than the entire big bucket I had gotten from the ReStore, but I needed that last gallon to finish the job.  Oh well. 

Here I am doing the very last section of the ceiling.

Once the paint was dry, we could start attaching all of the light fixtures and putting on the covers to the switches and wall outlets.

This was really exciting, because now we could see how our light fixtures were going to look. I had mentioned in a couple blogs back about finding these wall sconces at the local hardware store on clearance. They were in three different finishes, one was black, one was rubbed oil bronze, and one was silver. I had spray-painted them all white. Then I had found a lady on Facebook marketplace selling matching stained glass lamp shades that match the rest of the fixtures in my house.

We put them up as Steve connected all of the wires, and then I to had to decide if we wanted the lights to aim up or aim down??

Two sconces are on each side of the french windows facing east, and a third one near the entrance from the big garage.  Here I tried aiming them up. (Finnegan on guard dog duty now that the windows in the doors are low enough for him to see out of).

I finally I put pictures of both ways on my Facebook page and asked my friends to help me vote. The majority voted "down" so the majority rules. But we can change them at any time if we want, because there's only one central nut holding the fixture on to the wall.

Steve had figured out a way of how to mount my two articulating arm lights over the working area for my 12 foot quilting frame. He adapted them so they could be wired directly and mounted tight to the wall. I can swing them out or in any direction to use them but push them back out of the way when not in use.

We added LED flood lights to brightly illuminate the area.

Next thing, Steve mounted the ceiling fan up high on the sloped 11 foot tall ceiling. It's a commercial version of a fan, and goes very fast with speeds of one to five. A number five feels like you are standing underneath a helicopter! But it's very whisper-quiet down on setting one or two which is where we will keep it. Even on speed one it moves the air quite extensively around the room.

It was a really good bargain on sale for only $45. I like it because it's white and simple and plain and doesn't draw a lot of attention to it up there on the ceiling. I think big clunky ceiling fans with dark blades bother my eyes and give me a vertigo feeling. So this one will do the trick.

With all of the light fixtures in place and operational, we can dim down the wall sconces or brighten them up as we wish. Steve has 3 switches to operate all three at one time. He placed them by the entry door, the kitchen door and in the middle of the south wall in the room.

He also got all of the wiring for the exterior lights and exterior outlet functioning as well.

Steve got the TV mounted up on the bracket and hooked up to the antenna and power line, as well as adding his soundbar. We took the bigger TV from the living room to keep as our main TV down here. We shuffled some other smaller TVs around to take it's place in the living room.

Steve figures he will be spending more time down here in the she shed than up in our living room. I think he is right. Haha!

He got the TV done just in time for the Packer game that afternoon. He set up his lawn chair in front of it and made himself at home. A beer, a bowl of chips and some salsa. He was all set.

Granddaughter Claire decided to try it out

 and watch some cartoons 

from the comfort on top of 

Grandma in the lawn chair! 

I think my next blog will be about the process in which we leveled the cement floor and added the grey plank flooring.

Stay tuned!