Grandma Dust and Making a Sewing Room

Since we are kinda hanging close to home and waiting to see what is happening in Ohio with our step dad, it's like marking time.  We don't want to start using any vacation time, instead we are holding on to it to help mom afterwards.  Each time the phone rings, I jump.  We are so thankful that mom got her laptop going, so we can keep in contact hourly.  Hospice is now there round the clock with our dear Lowell...  and he is so very frail.

We are having sub zero weather this weekend, and the wind chills are in the 30 below zero range. No dog walking, no outside projects and no going anywhere unless we need to.  Plus, I am feeling a half-arsed cold coming on, arggghh!


I was looking at my Loom Room the other day.  Since I have also taken up quilting, the studio known as my Loom Room is getting "crowded"...  I am primarily a weaver, and need to have access to my looms at all times for custom orders and rug creation.  So that is the main purpose of having the room set up exclusively for weaving....  Looms, shuttles, supplies and materials are a mainstay of my job.


But... the quilting is fun!  I don't make much money at it, but I enjoy creating the wonderful hotpads, wall hangings and quilts that I have made.  Soooo keeping those things set out, in the way in my Loom Room is taking up space.  I have three sewing machines in there!   My big 101 year old Singer Treadle machine, my 1941 Singer electric from my Grandma Groop (which I also use to hem rugs) , and then a newer computerized Janome for the actual quilting process.  On top of that, I have a Singer Quantum for the motorhome!

Add to that, I have a "Big Board" ironing board which Steveio made that takes up a lot of room, and I end up setting it up in the dining room each time I want to work on a quilt.  Then I end up putting my big Olfa cutting mat on the dining room table. We use our dining room a lot, and it is a main walkway between the kitchen and living room.  So I can't just shut away the stuff in the dining room either. It's right "there" in our faces while I am working on quilting projects. Then I have to move all this junk errrr stuff at the end of each sewing session back into the Loom Room.  Things get "dumped" in there on nearest available flat surface and soon I have a mess!

I was thinking.... hmmmmm we have a whole third bedroom upstairs that we fondly call "The Grandtot Room"  We use an inflatable queen size mattress in there for when the grandtots come to sleep over.  We filled the room with toys and books, but in actuality, they don't play up there. When they do come over, they play down in the main livingroom, foyer and diningroom by us, the grandparents.  We keep a toy closet in the foyer, completely filled with toys and a reading nook with books too.  Now that most of the grandtots are of school age, the overnight visits are less and less.  Hmmm why are we keeping a whole room set aside for them?

We have a perfectly good guest room with a queen sized bed for visitors. Now that the grandtots are all potty trained and sleeping in big beds at home, they can do the same thing here.

I decided to clear out the toys, condense them down to the toy closet on the main floor and clear out the room in preparation to make it into MY SEWING ROOM!  Heck, we could even inflate the mattress in the middle of the sewing room if they do want to sleep in there. Just have to remove the scissors and needles first I guess.

On Friday night, I brought up the idea to my partner in crime, Steveio.  I was hoping to get his help in carrying up the sewing stuff to the grandtot's room and help me make a Sewing Room.

One glitch.. that danged perfectionist husband of mine!  He said there will be no moving ANY sewing stuff into the room. Why? Because he said FIRST we need to skip trowel new plaster on the ceiling BEFORE I can move any of my sewing stuff up there.  Dangnabbit, he threw a monkey wrench into my plans.

Our home is a sturdy stout 101 year old Craftsman home.  The plaster is thick like cement on the walls and ceilings.  But over the years the ceilings look "wavy" and he doesn't care for that. It's not cracking or falling down.  He just doesn't like the look of the wavy plaster.  The walls are fine and smooth, it's just the ceilings he is bothered by.

When we bought the house 3 years ago, we skip troweled the ceilings in the living room, dining room, Loom Room and our master bedroom.  We never got around to plastering the ceilings in the other two bedrooms.... (or painting them either, but wait, that is going to foil me even more!)

Off to the store we went to get a bag of the proper plaster (the 210 wt size for good adhesion) and then we cleared out the last few things from the room.  First thing Saturday morning he was hard at it, doing a skip trowel technique on the ceiling. He mentioned we should PAINT the walls too...  He HATES painting, and that means it's left up to me to paint the ceiling.. and now the walls???  Well, the walls were perfectly good and nice pale blue, from the previous sellers, and there was nothing wrong with them!

I asked... "Why do you want the walls repainted?"  He just grinned and replied: "So I can say they are all repainted since we bought the house"  Huh??? I sure couldn't see that logic!   Then...then... he pulled a fast one on me!

He had a little repair to do on the bump structure from where the roof line comes down into the room on that side of the house.  Seems while doing the repair, he just HAD to mess with the trowel against the walls too.. making gray streaky metal marks on the light blue paint, knocking some pieces loose in the joint and making a real mess of the wall!   Geeesh!!!!   I had no matching paint to touch any of that up, because it had been original paint from the previous sellers when we bought the house.

Dangnabbit!  Now the wall looked awful!  I went to my "paint stash" in the basement and found a nice gallon of pale yellow paint I had been saving to redo the laundry room (which is already yellow).  I guess we were going to be doing some wall painting too.

He mixed up the plaster to the right consistency. He uses a big beater device in the end of a drill to mix the plaster.

While he was troweling it on, I was running back and forth with buckets of water, damp rags, and moving the step ladder around for him.  I am the "Go-fer" to his projects! In the photo on the right, you can see the wavy ripples in the 101 year old plaster that he is talking about.

The ripples don't bother me one bit, 

but they bother him enough to do this project 

on a lovely Saturday morning!

See?  He's bothered, all right. 

While the plaster was drying, we attended our neighbor's birthday party at Hilde's Deli in Chilton.  It was a nice break in the day's task, with a wonderful lunch, good laughter, and so nice to be included with her family and friends for her party. 

Once we got home, we changed into old clothes and time to get to work! 

We took the paintings and print picture frames down, 

pulled off the curtains,

 and covered the hardwood floor with tarps.  

Time to PAINT! 

Here is where the "GRANDMA DUST" part of my blog title comes about.  This is my prized possession, hand made by my maternal grandfather, Harvey Kafehl.  I never knew him, he died 10 months before I was born. He loved to dabble in woodworking and made a lot of cute wooden items in his spare time. He was an electrician by trade.  This crescent moon and star hung for years at my Grandma Kafehl's house.  The little bear on the star was something my daughters gave to Grandma years later and she stuck it there too.  See the Grandma Dust???

I had made her a set of little ceramic Christmas Carolers that she kept up year around, setting on the steps. 20 years ago I took it off the wall in her apartment after she passed away. Dust and all!  I never dusted it off.  I rehung it in the studio at our house in Oconto. When we sold that house, I took it down carefully, dust and all, and wrapped it in plastic.  When we bought this house, it came out of my treasured steamer trunk and I hung it up again on the wall.  Yes, dust and all!    So again, I carefully took it down to paint the walls.  And I warned Steve that I would skin him alive if he wiped the dust off these little moon stairs! LOL 

I rolled the white paint on the ceiling while Steveio was cutting in on the walls with the yellow paint. He had to brush around all of the doors, windows, baseboard and crown molding.  Did I say that he HATES painting?  So I gave him the hardest part of the job because he is the one that ruined the wall in the first place. LOL   

A second coat of ceiling white went on while he was just finishing up the cutting.  I rolled the pale yellow on the light blue walls kinda thick, and it covered in one coat!  Wheeee I hate doing two coats of paint.  So many of the new paints now are made for just one coat, and low odor too.  Being closed up house on a subzero weekend, the smells would have been awful with old paints. 

We finished up in no time flat, and cleaned up our tools... and we both took a nice well-deserved nap! 

Ahhhhhh by the time the Packer Game came on at 7, the walls were dry. We started carrying in my sewing items bit by bit during commercial breaks, and we carried up the super heavy parlor cabinet for the treadle machine during half time.  

By the end of the game (which the Packers sadly lost) we had the Sewing Room complete! 

I kept the rocking chair, some story books, and the little Raggedy Ann and Andy in their chairs for one corner.  The tv will keep me company while sewing, or can be for cartoons if the grandtots inflate the mattress in the middle of the room for sleepovers.  I guess, afterall, it's not changing the room too much for them, but it's making a huge change in my Loom Room accessibility.

 I just love this 101 year old treadle machine, 

it was made the same year as my home. 

My friend Paula gave it to me.

The cabinet opens up and the treadle is inside. 

The machine raises up like an elevator to the top surface to sew on,

and the treadle belt is hidden in a compartment on the right side.

This morning I finished hanging a few pictures on the walls, hung my thread rack, and moved a few things around. My Janome machine goes well on a rolling typing table my friend Linda found for me. The Big Board ironing table works well on the side wall.  I hung my stained glass pieces in the windows, and set up my supplies.  Ahhhhhh  

I am not putting anything on the wall over the Big Board ironing board yet, because I am going to look for a rack or pegboard idea to hold all my various cutting rulers, shapes and templates.  

Now my Loom Room is cleared up and ready for more weaving! 

And yes, the crescent moon and star are back in place,

 complete with my "Grandma Dust"!!!

It All Started With a Craigslist Post

This morning we had a bunch of tasks to do... I had to pick up some stuff at Walmart and ship out some packages.  Steveio changed the oil on the motorhome and replaced the tension pulley.  Same old, same old---  just getting some stuff done around the house.

But then... Steveio saw a Craigslist ad....

It was a wool oriental rug, for a very reasonable price. Real wool, not polyoleflin junk.  And it was JUST THE RIGHT COLORS that we wanted for our livingroom.  We drove about 50 miles to get it, and it was in like-new condition.  It had recently been professionally cleaned before the people moved and it was not the right size for the lady's new house.  So that is why she was selling it.  It came home with us for only $130.00.

Also, the new rug coordinated with our dogs....  heh heh

Okay.. so no big deal, we bought a rug, right?  Well.....  we stretched it out in the livingroom on top of the beige wall-to-wall carpeting and it was perfect.

But----  

Seems Steveio has been chomping at the bit to rip out the wall-to-wall carpeting in our livingroom.  There is nothing wrong with the carpeting, it's in great shape.  But he knows that underneath is some lovely hardwood flooring.  We had peeked at the floor when we uncovered the hearth tiles after putting in the gas log insert in the fireplace.  So he KNEW what was under that carpeting and he wanted to tear it out to highlight the hardwood flooring.

RIPPP  up came a corner to check it out (this was at 4:20 pm) 

 Soon we were cutting a seam line to the dining room

and he started to pull up the entire piece of wall - to - wall carpet.

(I had to quickly roll the new rug out of his way!) 

Finney supervised. 

We pulled the carpet out in one whole piece and rolled it up.  Then I posted on the local Facebook Buy/Sell/Trade page for anyone who wants it to come and get it. Free.  It was clean and in good shape.  A young couple who own a big old farmhouse were first to place dibs on it.  They said they would love to have it on the cold floors upstairs this winter.  They were here in 15 minutes to pick it up.  (and if we decide to pull out the matching hunk in the diningroom, they want that too) 

Within minutes he peeled back the padding to reveal

THE LOVELY 101 YEAR OLD HARDWOOD FLOORS! 

This was the time-consuming part.  Armed with a pliers and a bucket, I started pulling out the zillions of staples that were used to secure the pad to the flooring. It was a "sit down" job and I scooted around the floor pulling staples till my hands hurt.  Steve was going around all the edges prying up the tack strips for the wall-to-wall carpeting.  He used a pry bar and a piece of cardboard to pad the floor underneath so he wouldn't leave any marks.

We did take a little break for some supper, but soon we were right back on the job.  By now it was after 6 pm and we pulled the very last staple!  I went over the floor with a Swiffer and hardwood floor cleaner.  The pad on the Swiffer let us know by snagging on any little pieces of staple left behind.  Whew.....  it sure looks PURTY!!!!

In the matter of two hours, we REALLY transformed the livingroom floor...

There is a noticeable outline where a previous rug had been sometime during the last 101 years.  But we whipped out the tape measure and sure enough, it was a tad bit smaller footprint than the wool rug we bought.  So it would cover up the outline almost perfectly! What luck! 

We do have to buy some lengths of red oak quarter round molding trim. You can see the gap where the old quarter round had been removed to install the wall-to-wall carpeting. There wasn't any old trim left in the garage of that size, so I imagine it was tossed out by the installer of the wall-to-wall carpeting.  I will stain and varnish the new quarter round trim to match and then Steve can nail it into place around the room.  Some of the flooring varnish has marks pressed into it from the padding. There is a little bit of wear here and there.  For 101 years old, that ain't so bad? 

I think if I do a light sanding in some areas and a thin new coat of poly will take care of it.  That is what I did in the foyer this past spring, and it looks great.  So a little touch-up can be done here and there once we get the quarter round all into place. 

The fireplace looks even bigger now with the tile hearth is nicely featured. 

Years ago the tile hearth had been hidden under the carpeting by the installer. 

Why hide that beautiful tile hearth?

In the famous words from HGtv's Nicole Curtis of Rehab Addict

(and I quote)  "Why in the Hell would you cover that up????"

Now it's 7:30 pm and time for us to set the furniture back into place.  I bought a pack of heavy felt pads to put under the legs of all of the furniture.  We carried in each piece and set it back into place. It was all coming together and felt soooo good!  I think the most time-consuming part was hooking up all the tv/recorder/modem/antenna wires to the tv in the corner.

Looking from the staircase in the foyer into the livingroom...

it sure looks like 

HOME SWEET HOME 

to us! 

What started with a Craigslist ad

 has ended with a transformed livingroom.

(and I have a feeling he has his eye on the diningroom next) 

Muggy Icky Humid Yucky.... and more stuff around Our Old House

I know most the country is in a heat wave and I shouldn't add to the negativity by grousing and complaining.  (but I will)    ICK!   I can not take this 100+ heat index crap!

I am suffering from a kinda summer head cold, and that makes it even tougher. I was going to take a couple grandtots on Friday, but I felt too icky to even do that. I stayed inside my air conditioning and got some sewing done and whined about the heat and humidity.

Saturday was a bugger too, and we sure didn't enjoy any of it. We started out with thunder and lightening, and high winds but only about half inch of rain.  We could have used more of the rain, as things are getting brown and dry around here.  I kinda flipped and flopped around the house all day Saturday, but I did manage to brush out both dogs...  Binney is finally shedding her winter coat.... that big pile of fluff is from only one side----

 She is finally getting a longer silkier Shetland Sheepdog Coat... 

and not just tufts of short fluff. 

I think her coat was sooo bad when she got taken out of the hoarder's pit hole from Hell, 

that her heartworm infestation

 and horrid skin & bones condition 

took it's toll on her coat. 

Now they look so PURTY! 

By bedtime I was running a fever again, so I dosed up good on Nyquil and went to bed with the AC blasting. Take THAT heat and humidity! There.... 'nuff said.

By Sunday morning the weather broke, and it was soooo peaceful and quiet.  I woke up at 6 am and we enjoyed coffee out on the front porch.  Soooo sweet and quiet, with chirping birds and golden sunshine and soft breezes.  I guess we gotta appreciate the good days when they come.

I even shot a little YouTube for the morning... just to play it back on a freezing cold winter day when I am complaining about that weather!! LOL

I decided to work on a project today around Our Old House, redoing the upper shaker porch railing. See how it's just two horizonal railings and not nearly anywhere close to being up to building codes.

The railings are too low and there is too big of a gap between the railings and also the floor.  Since it's summer weather, we do like to keep that upper back door open to the porch to let in a breeze.  Any child or dog could easily slip between those railings and it would be Bad News! We do keep the screen door locked at all times, but all it takes is "once"!  Duke zoomed out between my legs once and almost dove headfirst under the railing and onto the garage roof!~   I grabbed his tail at the last minute and pulled him back! Soooo it's a good time to get this task underhand.

 This is the "Before" shot of the second story shaker porch railing

During the week we bought some new spindles from Home Depot (thanks Dan and Heather for Steve's Fathers Day Gift Card!)  and got two coats of solid colored white stain on them.   I like solid colored stain because it can be applied right away on green treated deck wood and it "breathes" so the wood can still dry out from under the layers of stain.  It doesn't flake or chip off like paint does.  I used Cabot's Solid Acrylic Stain in white.

Steve moved the topmost horizontal boards up higher to meet code

and moved the bottom horizontal boards to a lower level for more strength.

We squared it up and leveled it, and started to put on the spindles! 

Even the neighbors complimented us on the good looks....

now it matched the porch rails and gate below 

We kinda changed the way the corners met with the spaces at the posts, so we needed to get 11 more spindles. I got those stained up and drying while we had breakfast and another cup of coffee.  I wanted to get them all up before the sun came over to that part of the house in the afternoon. It was warming up into the 80's but at least the humidity was down.

Wow.. that looks SO much better if I do say so myself!   I strung the little clothesline across from the corner posts. I like using that to air out bedding, even in the winter months. Better than trudging through snow out to the backyard washlines in the middle of winter.

We thought we had enough spindles, but nope, we need FOUR more! Steve wants to replace that center 4x4 post too as the original was too short. (that is the old height that is below the height needed to meet building codes)   I will get more of them from Home Depot tomorrow on a trip up to Appleton for a weaving guild meeting and then the job will be complete!

So that was another project for Our Old House! 

We also cleaned up a few weeds, 

trimmed a few shrubs

and refilled the birdfeeders.

This evening after dinner, I finally felt good enough to wash a few windows on the front porch.  Last week we tried that Windex type unit on the hose sprayer and all it did was muck up the windows, make them blotchy and streaky and clouded. You can see how bad they are on that You Tube video clip above.

Since we sit a lot on the front porch and enjoy the view, I decided to use the good SpryWay aerosol can of foamy cleaner and a roll of good thick papertowels and get the windows done right.  Steve hauled out the ladder for me and I got the lower outside ones done. He had to reach the highest ones while I did the inside windows too.  Sure improved our view while I type this blog, sipping wine and listening to soft music on the MP3 player.  

Ahhhhh two doggers curled at my side, hubby with his 'puter reading Craigslist, and life is good. 

Guess I will stop complaining about the weather now, huh?

Pool Puppies and Scallops and a Leak???

Okay, I have not posted a lot of stuff about the doggers lately.  So here is a video clip to get your fill of my two silly pups!

Now, if you are not into playing YouTubes, or are low on bandwidth, here are a few photos below.  But you REALLY need to watch the video to get the gist of it.  

Neither one was too thrilled about 

being put in the pool, 

to say the least! 

When I took them out, they immediately went and laid down in the DIRT!!!  So I had to rinse them off again and put them on tie out ropes on the clean cement of the driveway instead.  Geesh!

The rain finally ended this morning, and I think we got almost 3 inches here around Chilton.  Some areas south of us got even more. When the sun poked out this afternoon, I set up my sawhorses and put out some of the scalloped edging pavers to get a couple coats of solid colored acrylic stain on them.  Using a small roller, it went quite fast! 

So I stuck an extension handle on the roller and did up the ones waiting in the garage.  Why handle them twice? Each one weighs over 10 pounds. I did them right on the garage floor, and flipped them up to to do the top edges. 

By the time Steveio got home from work, they were dry enough to set into place! Wheeeee

We do have to trim one block by 1/3 to get it all to fit, 

I kinda did a quick measurement and guesstimate before buying them.

 I think it will look great when it's all done! 

Tomorrow I will fill in around the plants with the bags of black mulch that I have waiting in the garage.  Now that the soft maple helicopter mess is just about over, and done falling to the ground, so we can have a clean slate to work on now.  Otherwise it didn't pay to put down the black mulch if it was going to get buried in dried out tan/brown helicopter pods.

We do have to keep the 3 rain gutter downspouts there

or else we get a lot of water in the basement.

Speaking of "water in the basement" .... we have noticed a minor leak coming down the drain pipe from the upstairs bathroom.  It has been running down the pipe mostly when draining the tub or using the shower.  Fortunately it has not damaged any walls, floors or ceilings.  Just a trickle coming down the old cast pipe from the second floor, directly down inside the wall in the laundry room and runs onto the floor in the basement.

Soooooo tonight Steveio started to knock out the wall in the laundryroom to see where the leak was.  The pipe runs up a space alongside the chimney, all boxed in by plaster and lathe, and a surface layer of some milkhouse board in the laundryroom (it used to be a panty/kitchen until we converted it).

He pulled off the glued-on milkhouse board and then chipped away at the plaster until he exposed the lathes.

Just look how thick our plaster is?  it's like thick cement, not lime type plaster.  No wonder our 100 year old house doesn't have any cracks in the plaster like most old houses do.

He cut away all the lathes and held his breath as he took a look.... hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.  YAY!!! The leak was right at eye level in the section of pipes that join in an accessible region!  (he had been worried he would have to pull up the floor in the bathroom upstairs) 

Now that it should be an easy fix to cut that portion out and put in new PVC drain pipe, he might also cut out the hot and cold supply pipes and swap them over to PEX tubing at the same time.  

So here goes the weekend at 

Our Old House!