Rainy Day Projects

Now that we practiced with putting the crown molding trim over the top of the closet doors, it was time to put the same configuration on top of the new window in the master bedroom. 

Steve did all of the measuring and cutting out in the garage and I took care of the painting. Then he was able to bring it inside all in one complete piece, to nail it up to the top of the window trim.

It sure looks nice and finished at the top. It's a close match to what is in the rest of the house. Even though the windows are new and modern, I still like the old-fashioned look of the crown molding around the tops.

Now that the trim is up everywhere, I don't think we're going to put up any curtains or valances. Not for now. The venetian blind is helpful for night if we want to close it off, and it still lets in plenty of daylight even in the down position. 

Now I just have to hang some artwork...

~~~~~~~~~

Oh, Monday night we had a visitor in the back yard:

Yup,

A big ole possum wandered in. 

The security cameras alerted us,  

and Binney barked her head off till it left. 

~~~~~~~~~~

After watching the weather reports, we decided to not go camping this week. Tuesday was a beautiful day, though. The sun was shining and the temperatures were up in the high 50s. Steve thought this would be a good time to tackle the north side of the garage. It has vinyl siding out there and the northern side was not only dirty but was kind of getting a tinge of green mold or mildew. We found this product to use with the pressure washer.

Steve wetted each area with the product in a pump up sprayer. He put on coveralls just in case it would do harm to his blue jeans or his favorite red checked flannel shirt.

After it soaked for a little bit, he used the wide soft bristle brush that he uses for washing the motorhome. It was amazing how well it loosened up all of the dirt.

The pressure washer was acting up a little bit, but he was able to get it working again and gave it a good spray down. Look at that dirt just roll down the siding.  

So when he got the entire North side completed except a little teeny section down where the kids have already parked their motor home for the winter. Now it should stay good for a while because it's supposed to have mildew inhibitor built into the cleaner. I never liked vinyl siding, that's even more of a reason why.... how moldy it gets on the north side of buildings.

After he put away all of his cleaning toys, we were able to move the motorhome back over and park it where it belongs alongside of the garage. It is not winterized yet because we might try to go camping again next week. Did you know last year on November 6th we had a 60 degree day? Maybe we'll get lucky and get some warm weather yet.

It's like we lost the whole month of September for beautiful fall camping due to covid. With both of us getting sick, even though we weren't sick that long, the quarantining for 14 days took a big chunk out of our camping. Fall camping is so nice because the weather is more comfortable, less bugs, and all of the kids are back in school so it's easier to get a campsite during the week. Oh well, there's always next year.

~~~~~~~~~~~

It was raining on Wednesday and I was able to finish up the last few blocks and put together the rest of the center top of this quilt that I am working on. I'm not sure what name I'm going to give it yet before I list it up for sale in my Etsy store. It will be a queen size quilt when it's done. This is just stretched over the full-size bed in our guest room for now.

I still have a white border to put all around the edge of the main body of the quilt. Then the final border will be what's called piano keys. Which is nothing more than long rectangles. It will go around all of the edges to make it the proper width for a queen size bed. This is just to give you an idea of what it will look like. I just laid the fabrics next to the edge of the main body of the quilt.

I really like how that one is coming out. 

I have a couple more in my mind 

but nothing started yet. 

I try to finish one before I start another.

~~~~~~~~~

Another good reason to not go camping, Tuesday evening I was able to have the two youngest granddaughters come over. This is Whitney and Claire. If they weren't already cousins, they would be best friends! It sure is fun having them come over because they chitter-chatter all the while and keep each other entertained. I just kind of hang around the edges and listen to them. They are silly, hilarious and adorable all rolled into one.

Watching them play reminds me of myself and my cousin Pam playing together at Grandma's house when we were kids. All we ever did was beg to be together at Grandma's house and spend time with each other.  Even though we were cousins we acted like best friends. Pam was older than me, but we sure enjoyed our time together. Especially at Grandma's house.

It was Whitney's turn to learn how to sew and make her own stuffed bunny toy. Claire had made one a couple weeks ago and I actually had two pieces of the same pre printed bunny fabric. So now it was Whitney's turn to learn to watch carefully as the needle slowly goes up and down. I have a speed control on this sewing machine that I can slow it way down. Then as we got near each stick pin, Whitney was able to pull it out and put it back on the magnetic pin cushion. It was cute to see how she watched that needle carefully go around the entire edge of the shape of the bunny.

Once we were done sewing the bunny it was time to turn it right side out and stuff it. Now she could actually use the scissors (a blunt topped safety scissors) and cut open the bag of the stuffing. Claire watched carefully, because using a scissors is something that they both are getting practice with.

Here they both explained with imaginary handheld scissors, (really their fingers) how we cut all of the way around the bunny. Special thanks to Grandpa for taking all of these photos. Otherwise we wouldn't have these pictures... because there's no way I could hold the camera, take pictures, sew, and monitor the scissors and stick pins.

The stuffing part was fun --- each time they thought they had enough in there, Grandma said "Nope nope nope, the bunny is hungry, it needs more!" The giggles were infectious. 

Once we were all done stuffing the bunny from the bottom, then I had to sew across carefully with a needle and thread. Whitney got to use the scissors to cut the thread after I completed the closing seam.

And there you have it, the two little cousins who created a bunny! Now they each have a bunny friend to play with and sleep with. Claire says it's a "bunny pillow".

Meet Little Miss Bunny, she is created with LOVE! Whitney says it's a girl because she has eyelashes. Of course!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now it's Thursday and it's quite a rainy day again. 

I'm really glad we didn't go camping. We would have gotten one nice day out of three. The rest were rainy and cold and damp. 

Steve was pacing around looking for a couple of jobs to work on indoors. We had never finished installing the baseboard molding on the long wall in the she shed. This is where my quilting machine was before we rearranged things. Now that the machine was moved, it's easier now to access the wall. The big barn loom slides away easily as well as the cabinet in the corner. 

I had pre-painted the baseboard the other day, set on saw horses in the yard while Steve was pressure washing the side of the garage. It's a lot easier to paint this stuff outside, rather than after it's nailed up into place. Not to mention, having to cover all the beautiful floor flooring to protect it from any stray paint splatters.

Steve crawled around on his hands and knees and got it nailed into place. Now he is happy that job is finished. It's been bugging him in the back of his mind that the She Shed was really not complete, until he finished that piece of baseboard.

Steve is also getting antsy about starting the French doors that are going between the living room and the guest room. He took care of puttying up any little scratches or nicks and started sanding off the varnished finish. We will be painting them all white. Well, really our trim color is called String of Pearls. It's a little bit pearly grayish off-white. If the weather warms up enough, I will be able to get a couple coats of primer and paint on them. Then we will we will remove the plastic covering the beautiful beveled glass panes and brass caming.

We are tossing around the idea of changing the guest room into an office. Then the French doors will be leading into a nice office area. Our present smaller office we will make into a tinier guest room and playroom for the grandkids. 

We will see what happens. For now, as long as he has a project to work on ---- like installing these doors in place of the present configuration, he will be happy.

Brrrrrr, Brownies, Building and Burglars??

I guess it was a good idea to come home from camping. Both mornings have been at 32 degrees with frost on the ground. It hasn't even gotten above 50 degrees during the day. I think we would rather be at home and work on projects and be comfy than trying to enjoy time in the woods when it's this cold. It has been raining almost constantly since we got home. With these kind of temps, it could easily turn into snow.

The other added plus for being home, our son-in-law Jesse asked if I could watch Whitney for Wednesday evening. We invited over her little cousin Claire as well. These two girls sure kept us busy!

Here they are pointing out their names on the "Grandchildren Sign" made by our daughter Erin and son-in-law Waylen.

We decided to bake some brownies. Whitney has a special way for breaking the eggs. Here is her first video she made with her mom, telling us how.

(It was on Facebook and I didn't know how to transfer it into the Blogger format. So I videoed it playing on Steve's phone so I could insert it here)

Here is the video that we made of our attempts on Wednesday. It works out pretty good and you don't get any little pieces of shells.

They helped follow the recipe and took turns adding each of the ingredients. They very carefully measured and poured everything into the bowl. Baking is wonderful when they can learn about things like math and also learning that things don't just come from a store. You can create them at home just as well. 

Often homemade things taste better than store-bought. Plus, there are usually leftovers.  We always leave more than enough batter in the bowl so they can enjoy the extra with the spatulas.

Isn't this the best part, being able to eat the leftover batter? I have fond memories doing it when we were kids, but we had to make a bowl stretch out among six kids!

While the brownies were in the oven baking, these two decided that they needed to be veterinarians and take care of all of the stuffed animals.  They spread out all of their patients in the guest room and took out all of their doctoring tools. They were very concerned over each patient that came into their veterinarian office. Elaborate stories were made up about each case.  But the brave veterinarians saved each and every one! 

Next activity on their idea list was that they were going to write letters. We dug up a stack of odd-sized little envelope that I wasn't using for anything else. They took out the crayons and the colored pencils and started writing cards and letters for people that they know.

Whitney was delivering letters to Grandpa down in the she shed. He got a whole stack of wonderful envelopes and notes.  He had to read each one,  and then they took the notes back to re-deliver them all over again. 

Claire was busy bringing all of the little cards and letters to each room of the house. Every place had a new address and she was being the mail lady. I am sure that I will find more letters throughout the week as I clean house from room to room.

Speaking of rooms, both girls love to play in this cute little Hideout. It is actually a built in cabinet for storing wood next to the fireplace. Because we no longer burn any wood in the fireplace, it's a great little hidey-hole room. They go in there with little blankets and pillows and flashlights. It's a wonderful little hiding spot and they also wrote their names and messages on the walls inside with magic markers. Kind of like a time capsule for kids to find in the future.

Little Binney got a lot of attention too. She came out to hang with the girls on the couch and to see if they had anything good to eat. The brownies were almost done baking, but dogs can't have chocolate. Both girls each have 2 dogs at home, and Whitney also has a kitty cat.  Binney was checking that out, I am sure. 

The brownies were done but we had to cool the pan quickly so we could get them frosted before the girls had to go home. I was able to stuff the whole pan into the freezer to cool it off. When it was sufficiently cold enough, we spread the frosting on top. We cheated and used a store bought can of frosting instead of mixing our own this time. I didn't have any chocolate powder to make it from scratch. The girls both took care of adding an abundance of sprinkles to the top of the brownies. What fun is it to bake at Grandma's, unless you can put sprinkles on top of it!

Soon it was almost bedtime, and both girls had to go home. There was school the next day. We cut up the pan of brownies and sent a container home with each girl to bring to their families. And there were a few left for Grandma and Grandpa as well. We will have to arrange a sleepover sometime on a Friday or Saturday where they can spend the night together. Their parents came and picked them up. It was quiet again in the house. Too quiet.

~~~~~~~~~

Thursday morning, Steve was anxious to get started on the interior trim for the new window that we put in last week. It was raining and miserable outside. Perfect for working indoors!

Last week, he had already cut the wood to length out in the garage for all of the window trim. I gave it a coat of primer and a couple coats of paint out there while laying flat on the sawhorses. It's much easier to work with pre-finished wood inside. I don't have to paint primer and two coats of paint all while positioned vertical on the wall.  No runs or drips either. Then all he has to do later is fill in the nail holes with little dabs of caulk or spackling. I can give it a final touch-up once it's all done.

Using tiny finishing nails in the air powered nailing gun works really well to put up the trim. He has a portable air tank so he doesn't even have to haul in the big air compressor to do this type of trim work. I will have to paint the inside edge of the spacers he needed for around the window. Old houses are never perfect, so he needed spacers to get everything to meet up perfectly with the level of the plaster wall. 

By afternoon, the sun started peeking out and we had some blue sky!!!  The new window sure brings a lot of light into the bedroom. I still have to trim off the excess strings on the venetian blind where we removed the unneeded slats.

By trimming out the window all the way around it makes it appear even bigger than before. I really like the view into the backyard.

Now Steve will figure out the complex cuts to do the top crown moldings and the sections of egg and dart trim. Here are some of the vintage pieces throughout the house that we are going to match.

We are going to try to recreate the same thing for over the top of the big window as well as the top of the new double closet trim in the master bedroom. That was never done when the room was reconfigured by the previous owners. It will be nice to make it all match. But not doing anymore on Thursday, that was enough work for the day.

~~~~~~~~~

Friday morning, Steve decided to do one more little project in the master bedroom. We have this little section of short wall between the new window in the closet. It's just perfect for this narrow tall oak cabinet. But I needed an electrical outlet behind it instead of running an extension cord. Steve took care of measuring and figuring and started cutting the hole out with his plunge blade on his oscillating tool.

When he started fishing the wires up through the wall, little Binney got very concerned. She was pacing back and forth and sticking her nose by the vent trying to figure out what was in the basement coming up through the wall! She was absolutely sure it was burglars!

She fretted and fussed and whined and barked. Good dog Binney! You protected us from the burglars....

Soon he had the outlet all wired in and hooked up correctly. Now I could just run both cords directly to the outlet without using an extension cord. One is for our alarm clock in the other is for this pretty little stained glass lamp. I have it on a timer so it comes on in the early evening and shuts off at 11 p.m. after we go to sleep. It is just enough light in the room as we come and go, in and out, or get ready for bed without turning on the overhead light.

And there it is, set in place. The cabinet can't exactly be centered on the wall because we need clearance for the bi-fold closet door. But I think that it works well in that spot. Better than just leaving it blank. Once we finish the trim and I put up some lace valances on the window, it will kind of fill things in.

Now that project is done, 

and this blog is complete,

 it's time to make some late breakfast / early lunch.

I wonder what kind of trouble we can get into this afternoon? 

Up On A Roof or Down In The Basement

Steve was Up On A Roof (I hear James Taylor singing in my head). He went up to do some tuck pointing around a few bricks, and fill in a gap where one was missing.  Since we had the chimney height reduced last year,  he has been wanting to get up there and fix that last gap.  The chimney is blocked off and not used for anything, so it's just basically for decoration. Someday, if we ever were to redo the roof with metal,  we would probably take it down completely.

The chimney is pretty ugly. Originally, I had been thinking that since the bricks don't match in color, it would be nice to just paint over each brick surface with my red paint on a roller and make everything match. But once he got up there he said the lower darker red bricks are much rougher and will be harder to paint, compared to the lighter bricks above. 

So instead, he is going to parge over the entire surface with masonry cement and paint the whole chimney solid red. It's going to warm up later this afternoon so he will work on it then. For now, he took care of wire brushing down any loose spots and dirt. He gave it a light scrubbing with a degreaser and he will let that dry.

While he was up on a roof, I was down in the basement. Well, almost. I gave a fresh coat of paint to the bulkhead doors that lead to the basement in the newer half of the house. They had gotten slobbered up when Steve was painting some of the white trim and siding up above, especially the soffits--- he got some drips that landed down on the bulkhead. So it needed a new fresh coat of my red paint anyhow.

I never wanted the bulkhead in the first place. 

That's the whole reason why I got the bedroom window!

See, we made a deal. Last year Steve wanted to rip down the regular shed type entrance to the basement that had an upright door and a roof, etc  I thought it was fine the way it was.  

Here is the blog post about that process:  and-walls-came-tumbling-down   I didn't like the idea of the bulkhead cuz you have to lean over, open up the slanted doors and walk down into it like going into a bomb shelter! LOL. So if he wanted to put on these bulkhead doors, the deal was then the space left over on the wall I could have the big window in the bedroom. So he got what he wanted and I got what I wanted --- and it's finally done! 

Well, almost.

This morning, right before we were making breakfast together, he took out his ladder and the two red shutters that I had already painted for the bedroom window.

While I was watching him, I was standing on the patio looking at the surface and texture of the new siding we had put up. This isn't plain old vinyl siding. It's called LP Smart Siding and it has a beautiful texture embossed into the wood strips. It's put on a strip at a time just like regular old wood siding but it lasts a lot longer. I like it so much better than vinyl siding. I like looking at the natural texture of it where it looks like it could be real wood.

Anyhow, back to Steve. 

Zip Zip Zip in no time flat he had both of the shutters mounted on each side of the bedroom window.

Now we just need one more set for the bathroom window. They will be 74 inches tall and not as common as the shorter ones. I have been watching the ReStore shutter bin for a number of months, and haven't seen any that tall. 

Here is the East side and back yard that we did this year. New siding, new windows all around and the screen door, along with the patio stones and rain chain. We fixed and painted the foundation surface too. The bulkhead doors are the same color as the shutters and picnic table, just the angle and light make them appear brighter.

We didn't find any shutters on our last stop at the ReStore in Marinette. But he is going to Green Bay today with the neighbor to do some other shopping. He will stop and look at the ReStore in Green Bay. But if they don't have them he might just bite the bullet and pick up a full price set at Home Depot! Can you imagine that? Paying full price? At the ReStore we usually find them for $5 each. At Home Depot it'll cost about $60 or $70!

Okay, back down into the basement for me. I had a few more bunches of my coleus that I had dug up in the yard and some that I had rooting in glass jars in the window in the kitchen. Time to get them planted for the winters retreat in the safety of the basement. I keep enough plants growing all winter in the south-facing windows. In the Spring, when the danger of frost has passed, I am able to transplant them outside again

This year, Steve made it easier for me to water the flowers in the basement. I used to have to carry buckets of water down from the kitchen each and every week, all winter long. Hauling buckets of water from the kitchen, through the She Shed, through the side door, outside through the snow, then lean over and lift up and go down through his dang bulkhead doors, down the steps and into the basement. Now, it's so much easier because he added a laundry sink to the basement. Not only is it good for watering my plants, but it's right there for washing out paint brushes and roller pans and even to bathe the dog.

I have some painting of the trim to do to finish out the inside of the bedroom window. Also the big wide old original mop boards can be put back into place.  We are recreating the top crown and egg and dart trim for the top of the new window, as well as the top of the new closet trim.  Then it will match the other window and both doorways. 

So that's it for our home improvements today. Like I said, Steve is off to Green Bay with the neighbor for a couple hours. I will finish up this blog and get my own stuff done.  I might get in a couple hours of quilting or weaving.

This evening we're babysitting three of the grandkids so I have a list made up of fun stuff to do after we pick them up from school.