My first attempts at free motion quilting

Is that what it's called? I called it 'squiggle sewing' LOL

It's a gift set for Ben and RuthAnn from our church:

My first ever table runner:

RuthAnn said she wanted coffee-themed stuff for her kitchen :)

The Bedroom Project - Part 5

Do you remember earlier I mentioned "The Wall"?  Here are some shots of it.

Couldn't get the whole wall in one shot --  you'll have to use your imagination :)

They really loved this wall and seriously debated whether to paint over it or not.  Two sons (who shall remain unnamed) really didn't want to repaint it but finally decided that it would be better to paint it... :)

The little boys wanted to paint so badly... here they are applying primer.

What fun!

So last night while the girls and Nehemiah and Joey and I were at the ladies supper at church Tony and the big boys primed half of the room.  I think Luke did most of the priming while the others were removing the sheetrock at the closet ceilings and working on the new supports for the ceiling.

And Tony removed the sheetrock from the ceilings of what were the closets.

Wanna guess what his project is for tonight while the girls and N and I are at a bridal shower?  :)

The Bedroom Project ~ Part 4

My guy is quite a guy!!

First Tony framed up this new closet for the boys.  The closet Caleb built is to the right, behind the melon door, see it?  It's the shoe closet. 

This closet is for all their clothing, dress up totes and the top of the top rack is for sleeping bags and misc stuff that boys seem to accumulate.  ;)

First Tony had to hang all the shelving because it wouldn't fit in the doorways after the front was framed up. 

Then he framed the front of the closet.  That makes it sound so simple.  Let me rephrase... he Framed The Closet!  I think he/we reworked the plan about four times.  See we already had that existing bit of wall to the right beside the shoe closet to contend with.  We are trying to make everything equal and look like it was originally that way.  It took a lot of planning, figuring, measuring, replanning... Then you must remember that this concrete is 35 years old and very cured.  Very hard.  I think he went through a drill bit every two holes.  It was a LOT of work.  And he smashed his finger.  The same finger he bumped with the saws all.  :(  Very icky.  Oh and then he got a couple of splinters in that same finger!!  Remodeling is dangerous stuff!

See?!  A nice big closet, I think it's nearly 12 feet wide.  This closet will have louvered bifold doors as will the shoe closet.

Now the other part that my Super Guy did I don't have pictures of.  He moved a receptacle from the demolished wall to a new wall.  He moved the light fixture over so it was centered with the light fixture in the other room.  He hung a light in the closet and moved that light switch over to a double gang box (I think that's what he said?).  He and Luke spend a couple of very squished, itchy, cold hours up in the attic getting everything wired and rewired.  Tony even figured out how to use the existing electric to branch off and make a switch for the closet light and get it in place!

We now have all the electric stuff   D-O-N-E!  He never ceases to amaze me.

And now he has decided that he doesn't like my 'make do' idea with the ceiling and he is removing the sheetrock and doing it the right way :)  It's gonna be so purty!!

The boys are cleaning up the tools and Molly is prepping the walls for painting.  We are so excited, it's all coming together so well!!

The Bedroom Project ~ Part 3

So Tony had off last week Th-Mo.  Everything we did took at least five times longer than we though it would.  Typical, right? LOL

The first thing we had to do was find places to put stuff.  I'm telling you... we have stuff everywhere.  There's a twin bed in the living room, there's a love seat and stacks of totes of dress up clothes in the dining room, there are dressers in the hallway, there's a load of stuff in the storage building, there's a dresser in the bathroom... I'm not kidding!

Here we go... our work days in order...

Caleb built a closet!  This was his first 'start to finish' framing job he did all by himself!  He did a great job.  Let me try to explain.  Our hallway is like a capital "T", the left end of the T going into our bedroom and the right end of the T going into was was the boys dressing room.  Caleb framed up that opening and made a closet.  So now the hallway looks like a "7".  Make sense? 

I am always amazed to watch Caleb work.  He is so strong.  He did a great job with all the measuring and cutting.  And those of you who know our home will not be surprised to hear that the walls where not square so it made for some interesting cutting!

The finished framed wall.

He's making a silly face at his sister -- imagine that!

We used a piece of the paneling that we removed from the dressing room for this wall.  A wonderful (haha) side result is that the yellow paint we had left over from when we painted originally has gone bad!  LOL  So we had to get more paint.  However, it didn't seem to make sense (cents) to me to buy a whole gallon of paint for that one section when I really want to repaint over all the yellow anyway.  So we bought a lovely 'hopsack' color and will repaint the entire hallway (which will eventually lead into painting the living room too!  woohoo!!!)

I can't find the last picture.  We recycled paneling from when we removed the living room/dining room wall (when we first moved in five years ago) to use in the inside of the closet.  It will all be painted white eventually!

Part 3 coming soon!

Lest you think I am ignoring you...

there's really nothing new to report on the Project.  We've done more removing of doorframes, etc... patched one of the closet walls ... moved furniture out to have more space to work... painted one of the walls the color the boys selected to see if we like it...

Tonight we make The Big Run to Lowe's for supplies.  Tony has Th/Fr/Sa/Mo off so I anticipate getting a LOT done in those four days.  I am a Task Master.  I have a List.  And I'm not afraid to use it.  Beware.  LOL

Girls Room ~ BEFORE

Again, this was not the most recent arrangement of the room but you get the basic idea.  The beds are no longer bunked and will not be in their new room.  They are also going with a whole different color scheme... either blue/yellow, green/brown, or blue/brown.  Decisions, decisions, decisions... :)

The Boys Room ~ BEFORE

I didn't take Before pictures but here are some I found on the computer.  Their room is arranged differently now but you can see the basic idea and the wierd cinnamon color of the furniture.  They have four dressers that are from the same collection.

The Bedroom Remodel Project ~ Day 2

Sunday afternoon we finished removing the closet walls.

Had to remove the chair rail and baseboards.  The chair rail was put up with huge long nails... ?

Destruction is so much fun!

The little boys (especially) had fun!

Done for today!  View from the boys dressing room looking south.

View from the girls room, looking north.

I wish we had some place to put stuff while we are working, but alas, we don't.  So we are just working around stuff the best we can.  When we get to the final painting, etc... we'll have to move everything out.  I can't even imagine... that will be fun!  Um, no one come to visit then, okay?  LOL

One room is paneling, one room is sheetrock... anyone have a any bright ideas as how to handle where they meet?  It's only on the one wall but still?...

The Bedroom Remodel Phase I ~ Day 1

Um, yeah, What Are We Thinking?!

Okay, now that I got that out of my system, let me explain...  Our home is a typical ranch style house.  The north end has two bedrooms on each side of the hallway and a bathroom at the end of the hallway.  The first bedroom on the left is the boys room, the first bedroom on the right is the girls room.  The last bedroom on the left is our room and the last bedroom on the right has served several different functions.  It was originally the sewing room and it was the last room we painted.  The children all had wanted to help paint (we repainted the entire house when we moved in) and had been so patient that I told them they could paint the sewing room.  :D  I'm just a good Mama like that... LOL

We were trying to use all the leftover paint (being frugal -snort-) so I mixed the golden yellow from the living room and hallway with the cranberry from the living room and it made this melon color.  Now you know why part of the room is melon colored.  One wall is sponge painted with all the leftover colors of paint.  The children painted one wall theirselves, it has their handprints, footprints and their names and ages.  It's so precious :) 

Fastforward... I moved the sewing room down to the new part of the house (we closed in the garage) and that bedroom eventually became a closet for the boys.  A huge closet.  It was their 'dressing room'. 

They have outgrown their bedroom, it's too small.  The dressing room is too large just for a dressing room/closet so... we decided to move the girls across the hall into the boys room and knock out the wall between the former girls room and the boys dressing room to make one big bedroom for the boys!

Whew.  Following me?  I, of course, forgot to take "before" pictures when it was neat (well, as neat as a huge closet can ever be)... so here goes:

Standing in the closet looking north

The hallway wall.

The view from the north looking toward the 'soon to be removed' wall!

And in case you were wondering 'why in the world did they paint this room anyway?!'... it was white and silver streaked paneling...

Luke was a little tyke when we moved in and he wanted to write everyone's names and ages on the closet wall :)

And here he is helping Tony pull down the trim from the closet. 

Thank you Lord for Luke!

Actually the first thing we had to do was empty the closet so that's why you see shelves of shoes on the other side of this room! 

Sam had been outside removing nails from wood we hope to reuse and was anxious to get in on the actual destruction.  If you know Sam that will not surprise you at all!  LOL

VOILA!  And...

I'm optimistically thinking we are 1/4 of the way through with the wall removal.  Woohoo!