Ugh.... this has not been a good week. Definitely not a good way to start February.
But I try to look at the good things. And one good thing are these blossoms!
In my last blog, I had posted about the blooms on this amazing amaryllis plant. I have never had a plant like this before. It was given to me during the fall and I never really knew how to care for it. I didn't even know it was 7 or 8 individual bulbs in the one pot!
My friend Connie sent me this email with some really nice explicit instructions:
This is how I treat mine.
Usually the single flower stalk will have four blooms. It's good that you have propped up the flower stalk. Cut each blossom off as it droops down and be careful of the sap as it can stain. After all are done cut the stalk as close down into the leaves as you can do it without damaging the leaves. Set the pots outdoors when the weather gets warm enough and water all summer. I usually put them on one side of the house for partial shade. Stop watering about Labor Day and it'll take a long time for the leaves to dry out. Bring the pots in before a severe frost and take off dry leaves as they get brittle. Then I put them in the basement. This year I brought the first one up in mid-December watering it and putting it in a sunny window., I've brought one up every two weeks since but the three are all at about the same stage of development. The first one took forever, it seemed, to put out a shoot and the third one popped right out so maybe the sun intensity has something to do with it. Last summer as I put them outdoors I divided the new shoots, which are little bulbs off of a big bulb, into separate pots. As gifts they came in pots without drain holes which I think is a BAD idea. I've repotted all of mine into pots that can drain."
I now have four tall stalks full of beautiful peachy orange blooms. There are five more stalks poking up their heads, ready to give me more as these die off.
It's hard to get a good pic against the open window---
I tried with the mini blind down.
I think all of the blooms will be the same color.
It sure is a cheery sight to walk around the corner and peek into the office each morning. Seeing the sun streaming in on these beautiful blossoms reaching 2 ft or more higher than the flower pot that they reside in.
~~~~~~~~~
I am finally starting to feel a little bit better after being sick for more than 7 days. About 3 days after I started feeling sick, Steve fell right into step after me. So he's about three days behind me on the increasing wellness factor.
I did take a home covid test that said negative. But I am beginning to doubt that. I have heard a lot of these home kits give false negatives. I suppose short of actually going in and taking a PCR test at a clinic or at the doctor office is the only way to know for sure.
But since I'm starting to feel better and Steve is slowly getting better behind me, I think we will leave it as it is. But I'm pretty sure we have covid again because this is no ordinary flu. And yes, we both have had our flu shots, as well as our covid vaccines and boosters. Sigh.
~~~~~~~~
We put on hold our beadboard project of last week because neither of us had any energy to do anything. I did wake up yesterday morning feeling the urge to get the final coat of paint on the beadboard that Steve had added around underneath the windows and by the cuckoo clock. Honestly, it took all of the energy I could muster to get that much painted. But it's done!
The last step will be to add the rest of the little bit of trim where the bead board meets the baseboard. Plus the top cap of what ever of the two designs that I had previously talked about. But we can't do that until we feel better and take a run to Green Bay to the Home Depot to pick them out.
Sometime later this month, when we feel better, we will start the beadboard in the bathroom.
~~~~~~~~
Last week the littlest granddaughter had helped me weave the caterpillar rug. I posted about it in my last blog. I had finished it up but never got around to unrolling it or cutting it off the loom yet. After a little bit of rest from my painting, I got up and decided to unroll the rug and see what we had created.
The next step is to cut it free from the loom, fold-over the woven header ends three times, and hem each end securely on my grandmother's antique Singer sewing machine.
~~~~~~~~~~
Steve was finally feeling good enough today to get up and put on some clothes. We've been wandering around the house in jammies and slippers and sweats for the last 7 days. Today he got dressed because he needed to get down into the basement and change our whole house filter, as well as check the little filter on the new tankless water heater system. We are proud to say that both are operating perfectly and it was worth it to double-check everything and maintain it. Even if it took all of our energy to do so.
(the ceilings are very low in this half of the basment,
that is why he is down on his knees.)
While he was taking care of the water heater, I was watering my boxes of coleus that I am wintering over in the south-facing windows of the basement. I also have a pot of ivy growing down there as well.
The basement windows are large enough that they can bring in the sunlight even though they are at ground level. If I kept these plants up on the main floor they get a little messy when the leaves fall off and new ones grow, as well as the stems get rangy and kind of awkward.
I'm glad that I can keep them down in the basement. I can water them liberally and let the excess trickle out and down the basement drain. It doesn't matter if they are messy, I sweep up the dead leaves every few weeks. By Spring, they'll be ready to be brought outside after the danger of frost has past. I distribute them in the flower beds around the yard for summer color. I have kept the same ones going since Connie gave them to me in about 1990 or so.
From time to time I snap off the longest rangiest pieces and stuff them into a vase of water, and place them upstairs in the window. There they have a chance to grow new roots. Then I can plant them alongside the other more mature plants or I can put them into a new pot. See the tiny roots starting in the vase below?
I also take snips off this ivy plant from time to time and root them the same way. This ivy is from way back when we first had our house in Chilton in 2012 and I had the pot growing inside the front porch. It's just plain old basic ivy that used to grow outside and then moved inside to one of my flower pots, common garden-variety stuff from garden center for 99 cents.
I stick it in a vase of water until it grows roots
and then I pop it into some potting soil to create a new house plant.
Amazingly, I have been putting some of these ivy plants out around the pergola each summer and they make it through the entire winter to grow again in the spring. I had no idea that ivy could winter over in Wisconsin. Especially this plain old regular potting ivy. I guess it's pretty hearty stuff.
Well I really don't have a lot to blog about today other than my beautiful flowers that are blooming. I might get a little quilting done but I haven't gotten an awful lot done this whole week. I do have a nice beef roast in the pressure cooker today and I'm just about ready to add potatoes and carrots to finish it off for dinner this evening. We don't have very huge appetites but a pot roast is always good to save for leftovers or to turn into a hearty beef stew. Good to stick to the ribs on these cold winter days.
In the meantime, we are inside, staying warm. The dog is helping to pick out next week's specials at the grocery store. Our soninlaw offered to pick things up for us as needed. What a sweet guy.
I am relaxing and planning on just watching winter happen:
What do you do when you have 100 plus year old plaster walls?
Most of them are pretty nice shape in our house. For their age. The South wall in the kitchen was good enough. And we normally have a large refurbished old cabinet used as pantry pushed up against the wall. The rest of uneven old plaster has been covered with a woven wall hanging and plaque talking about being a grandmother. So you really didn't see the wall too much.
But since Steve had gotten a large amount of beadboard planking from a guy off Facebook Marketplace, we have enough to do the bathroom wainscotting as well as this South and East wall of the kitchen. I figure the beadboard will kind of pull together the bead board trim we put on the pantry cabinet and tie it in with the rest of the kitchen which also has bead board trims here and there on the cabinetry. I like "matchy matchy".
We pulled out the big pantry cabinet by carefully sliding it away from the wall. Fortunately we had put on those little felt pads when we first brought it into the house, so it was easy to slide across the hardwood floor. We didn't even have to take out any of the canned goods or cooking appliances out of it. Easy peasy!
Steve started tearing off the little pieces of quarter round trim along the baseboard. The register opening there is actually defunct and has been disonnected from the heating system. It had been rerouted to a different spot and this register was just kind of sitting there unused. Now was a good time to cover it up.
Steve started with the first piece of beadboard, making the most difficult cut around the lip edge of the window sill. Then he could work to the right or the left attaching the rest of the beadboard strips. Each strip is 3 1/2 in wide. This is so much nicer than working with 4 by 8 sheets of imitation beadboard paneling. As most of you know, old houses are not square. Big sheets of anything don't lay square or true in old houses.This way he could work with this type of beadboard a strip at a time along the wall and work along the uneven surfaces.
Besides using his little finishing nail gun, he is slathering behind each piece this type of adhesive made for this very product. He needs to trowel it on the wall, and then get the boards nailed into place a section at a time.
Yesterday he started working from the first board going out to the right. It really was going very well. The beadboard is 4 ft high and the bottom baseboard is about 9 or 10 inches tall.
Along the top edge we are going to put a piece of plate rail trim. I looked online at Home Depot and there are two different types that I like. The upper one is only an inch and a half tall but has a little lip edge for a plate rail. Plus it already has a notch cut out to set along the top edge of the beadboard planks. The bottom one looks a little more chintzy or pressed into the wood with the egg and dart motif, but is 2 in tall. No notch, so we would have to router one on each piece.
I guess we will reserve our choice until we get down to Home Depot and see which one we like better? I haven't been feeling too good and have to make sure it's not Covid before I venture out in public.
Steve worked his way down the wall and got all the way to the corner. Now it was my turn. Having experience with knotty pine, (we lived in a home for 13 years that was ALL knotty pine), we knew we had to cover the knots with two coats of clear shellac --- otherwise they bleed through the paint. I bought low older clear shellac and gave every single knot two coats before I started painting.
Last night I started the first coat of primer / paint. This morning I gave it a second coat. And this afternoon a third. Now all we need is the top trim cap! But that necessitates a trip to Green Bay and we might not do that for a couple days yet. In the meantime I think it looks pretty nice.
While we are working on the wall, this big pantry cabinet is setting right in the open doorway. We don't want to push it anywhere else in the house and will soon be able to slide it back into place. Fortunately, the kitchen is wide enough that we can walk around it.
This afternoon Steve started working on the wall underneath the cuckoo clock and across underneath the windows. That takes a little bit more work down on the hands and knees. He had his kneeling cushion to take the brunt of it. I have the feeling that I will be rubbing some aspercreme or ben gay on his knees tonight anyhow.
Working a section at a time, he came across from that original starting strip and worked to the left, up to the corner underneath the window.
Before supper this evening, I put two more coats of shellac on all of the knots of the newest section. I took some AlkaSeltzer Plus and felt pretty good.... so after supper I got around to starting the first coat of primter/paint. It doesn't take long and I have a small roller with long nap that gets into the grooves pretty well.
In between watching the end of PBS Finding Your Roots and then the starting of HGTV Fixer to Fabulous, I was able to get this portion painted! The episode of Fixer to Fabulous was a couple from a town about 25 miles north of here who were having a winter retreat home redone down in Arkansas. They wanted to get in before winter struck up here, and it looks like they did. We like that show.
Anyhow, this is OUR Fixer to Fabulous! Tomorrow I will get the 2nd and 3rd coats done.... Then it only needs the top plate rail trim. Steve said let's push the pantry cabinet back for the few days until we can get to Home Depot. We will also add a small piece of trim along the bottom edge to meet and cover the edges at the baseboard, maybe flat stock or maybe a tiny quarter round.
~~~~~~~~
On to the second word of my title: "barking". Our backyard has become a pit stop on the raceway of all of the deer in the neighborhood. Every night there's usually between 5 to 10 wandering past on their cruise through, looking to see if there's anything good underneath our bird feeders.
Their appearance is much to the delight of little Binney. She considers them her "friends" and she barks like a crazy dog when she sees them out there. She dances from the window, over to our chairs to tell us that her "friends" are here. Then she dashes back to the window to bark at them. Then over to our chairs again, and then back to the window. This can go on for 15 or 20 minutes. But we figure it's her entertainment.
If we can watch a good TV show,
she can watch a good deer show.
~~~~~~~~
The third word of my title was "blooms". Even though it's the dead of winter, our house is feeling very spring-like. When the sun shines in, it really makes us feel warm all over. When we were at Aldi last week, they had these beautiful hyacinth bulbs in little glass vases. They grow completely out of the water itself and no soil. This one is blooming beautifully in gorgeous shades of pinks. I smell it every time I walk past and I have it in the middle of the sun shiny windows at our kitchen table. Every day it needs to be rotated a quarter-turn to keep it from growing too much in one direction.
The other exciting "bloom" subject is in our office.
Last summer, when we had picked up a loom, a woman insisted I take this strange flower pot with me of dilapidated old green leaves laying down in all directions. It look like it was almost dead. She said she wouldn't be able to grow it anymore because she's going away for the winter and her brother could no longer take care of it for her. She insisted I take it. So much so, that she physically put it into my car and made me take it. I didn't even know what kind of a plant it was for sure. She said something about it being an amaryllis. But I had never grown one before so I had no idea what to expect.
I took it home and started giving it little bits of water and it perked right up. That was last September. The leaves were growing while I had it an East window. But then Steve moved it to a South window and suddenly we started getting little stalks coming up in the middle of each clump. It turns out there are eight amaryllis bulbs in this one pot. I guess they like to be crowded. We now have eight stalks growing up and reaching two feet high!
I am trying to keep them from bending over too far by supporting them with some little wire devices and loops. I keep rotating the pot. I have no idea if they are different colors or all the same. I was very excited to see the first one spread wide open and start exposing the beautiful petals of the blooms,
It looks like this first one is going to be a peachy orange color!. I don't know if all the rest will be the same, or if they will all be different. I looked them up online and they come in many many different colors. So it will be a surprise. I'm anxious to see them open up because I have never grown this type of a bulb before.
So as the sunshine streams in, we are embarking on February 1st. There's still a lot of winter left. But I guess I don't really mind as long as we can sit here and look out the windows. We are cozy warm inside and we can let the winter pass by outside. Today was pretty nice and sunshiny and up into the high 30s.
But there's a big storm coming across just south of us. We aren't going to get much from it, other than the cold temps. Temperatures will be diving the back down below zero again in the next day or so. So we got to enjoy the sunshine while we can.
We sure are taking our hibernation seriously in January. We really have been snuggled in and not doing much. Sorry, I let this blog slide for three whole weeks before I realized I haven't posted!
In the middle of the month on the 17th I held a meeting of our Home and Community Education group here at our home. It's a County Extension group commonly called The Homemakers. Steve calls it The Homewreckers! LOL Our membership numbers are down due to some people not feeling well, and doing social distancing to prevent the spread of covid. A few of them have traveled to the South as snowbirds, and one of our members happened to break a leg and now is at a rehabilitation center!
For the six who had made it here to our home, we had a delicous potluck meal and I had set up the dining table for our meeting after our dinner. It was a nice social event afterwards and it was really good to see some people again. Steve escaped to his brother's house down in Menasha for the day. Everybody is fully vaccinated and boosted, and practicing as much social distancing as possible. Hopefully, the numbers are falling now in Wisconsin and we can start doing things again. I had still kept all of the Christmas decorations up both inside and outside to have the house look it's best during our meeting. (plus it had been too danged cold outside to take them down yet).
The next day after the meeting, Steve said it was time to start taking things down. We came up with a different idea this year for our 9 ft tall artificial tree. Instead of taking it apart into five individual pieces, which take up a lot of room on the shelves in the garage, we came up with a different idea. Someone else had mentioned doing this and I looked it up on YouTube. A lot of people have tried different techniques to do this, but we came up with a few of our own.
First we wrapped from the base of the tree stand up around the top and back down the base again in quadrants around the tree. About 10 good strands of this plastic rolled shrink wrap. It took two of us to get around the base and through the openings and back up again over the top.
It also took two people to do the next part. One to hold the tree and keep it from rotating while the other one used the wider roll of pallet shrink wrap to go around the tree. Around and around and around we went. Working as a pair to get the tree completely wrapped. The tree still has all of the ornaments and lights and ribbons all in place. We did remove a few precious glass ornaments, but the rest of them are wrapped right into the branches of the tree.
We squashed it as tight as we could around the bottom to get it narrow enough to fit through our 36 inch wide door. It was a squeeze, but we managed to get it out. By wrapping it from top to bottom first, that secured the tree to keep the center trunk pieces from coming apart as we brought it out to the garage. Once we got it into the garage, we stood it up right again and tucked it back into the corner. Hopefully it will stay nice over the rest of the winter and throughout the summer months. Next December we can carry it back in and carefully snip away the plastic with a scissors and be careful not cut into any of the wires or ornaments. A little fluffing to the branches and rearranging a bit and I think it will be just fine! Sure beats having to undecorate it all, take off the lights, then store everything away in totes.... Then take the tree apart in sections, wrap them all up in huge contractor garbage bags and stack them out on the shelf. The added plus is now there's more room on the shelves to put some of my other totes and organize the garage a little better! It's kind of the "overflow storage" for a lot of my weaving fabric and supplies.
(notice Steve's insulated ceiling in the garage!)
We had one warm day before the weather turned blastedly cold. It was about 35 degrees so we were able to get out and get the decorations off the front of the house. It was warm enough we really didn't even need to wear gloves so we could snip all of the ties that held everything into place.
Our son-in-law, Jesse, does a lot of 3D printing. The raw material he uses comes on these big plastic spools. He saved us a bunch of them so we could wrap up our red velvet ribbons to save again. That is a lot better than just throwing it away and buying new stuff next year?
We carefully unwrapped all of the ribbon from the pillars and removed all of the lit garland from the railings. Everything is carefully layered in big boxes. The big snowflakes came down and were packed in a large flat box. The house looks so plain now!
The plastic spools even worked good to take off the outside lights that we had on the pergola and tiny tree. What a nice way to store them and they are tangle-free.
Now all of the decorations are stowed away and it's time to look ahead for the rest of the upcoming winter. The holidays are over and the dreary winter weather is going to set in. We have considered maybe going away to the desert for the rest of winter, but instead we are going to hang closer to home. I think we are going to plan on a trip this summer across the United States may be heading out west on US 2 and go all of the way to Washington State. In the meantime, we will hunker down and work on some winter projects.
~~~~~~~~~~
I am pleased to say that our removal of our electric water heater and our Christmas Present installation of our tankless natural gas water heater resulted in a $30 decrease in our electric bill last month! That is almost 33% of our entire monthly electric killowatt usage! We will get an even better figure on our savings by the next bill without the added Christmas lights on it. We didn't see much difference in the natural gas therms usage from last years bill, but we will compare them again on the next bill.
~~~~~~~~
The pineapple quilt that I was working on is finally fully assembled. I got it rolled up onto my big quilting frame with the backing and the batting in place. I wanted to pick up some variegated purple / pink / blue thread for the quilt so I'm waiting to get started until the new thread comes. This is a queen size that will be for sale in my Etsy shop soon.
I really try to discipline myself that I won't start another quilt until I finish the one I'm currently working on. It keeps me from getting too many projects going at the same time. Because I wasn't going to get the thread right away, I did start on the next quilt. Shame on me!
If you've been reading my blog for a while you know that all around my house I have stained glass light fixtures. Most of them are from the same line called Belle from Menards. I have 2 bedroom ceiling fixtures, a 5 shade chandelier in the kitchen, 3 wall sconces in the She Shed, 2 reading pole lamps and 3 table lamps in the bedroom and livingroom. They are throughout the house and I really enjoy them. I even have one hanging down as a pendant over my kitchen sink.
they are all like this:
I had decided that I needed to make a quilt to match the light fixtures in the bedroom. Last summer after we installed the large window, the beautiful blue and white quilt on our king size bed looks out of place. So I decided to go through my stash of fabrics and pick out everything that was coordinating colors with this stained glass. I did have to make a run to a little quilt shop up in Marinette to pick out a few more coordinating fabrics. Other matching fabrics I had picked up last fall on our trip out to the Mississippi River along the western edge of Wisconsin. I had this quilt in mind, so I had set those fabrics aside as well. Now I had enough to begin. It's a very simple pattern, only utilizing these two blocks. It's how you put them together in a big array that makes the difference of the quilt!
I started cutting out squares, carefully measuring and arranging my supplies. I like to have everything pretty much arranged at my fingertips while I start creating. I'd rather have it all there then fly by the seat of my pants and run too short later. That way, if there's extra fabric I can always make some into throw pillows to put on the bed after the king size quilt is completed.
I got about 60 blocks sewn already. The littlest granddaughter Claire was over the other day, and she helped me arrange a few on the floor to get an idea of how it is going to work out. Of course, Binney had to oversee the whole process.
I won't start sewing them into strips until I get them all laid out. I am trying hard to not let any two of the same colors touch at any of the seams. So once I get it all laid out, I will carefully number each one by row and column before sewing them together.
It will eventually end up looking like this... but king sized with a lot more blocks. Some nice borders and trim will round it off. I think I am going to like it. Then my sister wants my blue one for her king sized bed!
~~~~~~~~
The weather has been terribly cold, well below zero with awful wind chills. Claire's parents were going up to their cabin for the weekend, but they asked if she could kind of hang out here and stay warm with us. There would be no outside fun playing in the snow for her when the wind chills were twenty and thirty below zero!
It was nice and cozy warm in the She Shed and she was helping me weave on the big Sanna Kangas Finlander Barn Loom. She sets her little butt on the bench right next to me, just like many many years ago when Ron Kangas sat his little butt next to his grandmother Sanna, and wove rugs during the Depression.
One of my fellow members of our Home and Community Education Group, Charlotte, (who is also my dear old neighbor from when we lived on the river) gave me two white chenille bedspreads. They're absolutely wonderful to weave into thick rugs, after they are cut into long pieces. The only problem is the chenille is fluffy and makes a bit of a mess. But we don't care. The design of this rug is strips of the white chenille and interspersed throughout the rug are laid in pieces of knit fabric we call "Caterpillars"! They are very similar in color to the book about The Very Hungry Caterpillar. A rug like this makes a great baby shower gift when accompanied by a copy of that very popular book. I plan to weave up 2 rugs, and give one to Charlotte. The other will be for sale in my Etsy shop.
The caterpillars are actually knit pieces of surplus sock fabric that a friend buys in bales from a company out in New York called Soulmate Sock Company. These are the defective socks that are sliced apart and sold as scrap. My friend Hilary at www.crazyasaloom.com sells these by the pound. I have a box full, and I cut them a little bit smaller than how they are originally shipped. I lay them in each open shed as I weave, and they create perfectly colorful caterpillars!
Here is a little YouTube that Steve shot of us while we are weaving. You can see how it's Claire's job to pick out the little caterpillars and decide which color is next, while I take care of the beating of the overslung beater on the heavy rug loom. I am so glad that all of my grandchildren enjoy helping me with weaving, spinning, quilting, or other fun projects in the She Shed. We are making memories.
I did go to an antique sock cranking meeting last week.... It is held four times a year over in Oconto Falls. I'm glad that I did go, because a gentleman arrived from Escanaba for a first-time visit to our group. I had met him last fall when we were up there camping near the Escanaba State Fair. With the help of my sister, I had purchased my Singer Featherweight Sewing Machine from him. He restores them, as well as repairs other sewing machines. He has a fascination for the antique circular sock knitting machines and has restored a couple of them as well. I had invited him to come down from Escanaba which is about an hour and a half drive away to attend one of our meetings if he happened to want to join us. And he did! He brought along a very interesting friend by the name of Joanne who is also a very accomplished spinner and knitter. We had a great time visiting and he shared some projects with us.
He knit these sleeves on the sock machine
and stretched them over Christmas Ornaments!
We were able to share some patterns, sources, insights and ideas. Plus laugh a lot and go get some lunch nearby. It's a whole day spent with our circular sockknitting machines.
He also was able to repair one of the other member's malfunctioning sock knitting machine for her. She was delighted that he could just fix it on the fly and she was off and running again in no time with her cranky machine.
Here is my sockknitting machine. It's an oldie but a goodie. I can get a pair of socks done in about an hour, with no interruptions. But of course in a room of other knitters, that isn't so easily done. But we learn a lot and share sources of good yarns or parts or patterns.
I got a couple socks cranked up as well as a good day of fellowship and being out of the house for a bit.
~~~~~~~~
So basically that is how I was spending the month of January. Working on a couple quilts, working on some rugs, doing some knitting, and enjoying the warmth of inside of the house.
As for Steve, he was fiddling around with a few things in his garage and installed some new shop lights. He now has the entire ceiling of the garage insulated which makes it much warmer out there to work on things if we need to. The winds are no longer blasting in through the eaves along the soffits vents or the ridge vent along the top of the roof line. Nice! In the spring we will take care of hanging sheetrock on the ceiling to finish it off nicely.
So he was thinking it's time to start another project.
A couple months ago we picked up 18 bundles of new beadboard strips from a guy on Facebook Marketplace. They are 8ft long and we are going to cut them in half into 4 ft pieces. There is a section along the wall of the kitchen that we would like to cover in beadboard wainscoting 4 ft high. It will tie in the beadboard pantry cabinet we restored last summer and blend it more with the rest of the beadboard type cabinetry on the other side of the kitchen. I think it will draw it all together and coordinate it nicely. The top edge cap will have a bit of trim kind of like a plate rail and a bit of egg and dart molding underneath that will mimic the trim around all of our old fashioned window and door frames in the house.
He brought in a couple pieces to lay on each side of the pantry cabinet. Of course they will be about 10 inches higher because they will start at the edge of the baseboard molding. Also they will be sealed with shellac on all of the knots to prevent bleed through and then painted the same color as the cabinets and trim in our kitchen.
Then---- in the bathroom we are going to do the beadboard all around 4 feet high as well. I love a beadboarded bathroom. We had done beadboard in a varnished and stained type in the bathroom at our last house in Chilton. It gives such a beautiful old fashioned look to the bathroom.
This bathroom, we are going to install it and it will be painted to match. I think we're going to pull off the wallpaper on that one wall because that's too busy. I think I will like the plain clean lines of the beadboard. It will be good to get something on that wall along the side of the tub. When using the handheld shower, sometimes a tiny bit of overspray does hit the wall. I would rather it hits beadboard than the wallpaper. I'm not a fan of any wallpaper, especially in the bathroom. The wallpaper is starting to pull up a little bit on the corner near the window and I think I would prefer to get rid of it.
I got up my figures and Steve got out the tape measure and we figured out how many pieces we will need. It looks like we will have more than enough! That way if there are some pieces that have cracks or splits or big ugly knots, we can kind of cut around them and set those aside.
Steve started with one piece just to cut an outline of the lip edge of the windowsill and work to the right and then to the left. That is best to start with the hardest piece first and then work in each direction. The slabs of wood fit together with tongue and groove. We will be putting a white adhesive on the wall and then nailing them into place with his trim nail gun. Once all of the boards are up, I will shellac the knots and then give them two coats of my primer paint mix to make it all come together and it will look custom made!
That's as far as he got today--- one board --- because the football playoff games came on TV. This evening he is watching the second game of the day so I'd imagine we aren't doing anything more with the beadboard today or this evening. That's why I'm taking the time to write the blog while he is watching the TV.
Once the Packers lost last week and we're out of the playoffs, I kind of lose interest in any of the other playoff games. Although I will watch the Super Bowl, I'm just sad that the Packers aren't playing.
~~~~~~~~
February is going to be cold and I don't see much of a thaw coming. I think we will stay snuggled in nice and warm, put our feet up, and look out the windows of the She Shed at the snow.
Posts
