Living Room Curtains

Little over a year ago I found this wonderful fabric on sale at Jo-Ann Fabrics.  The color was perfect and the weight was just right to make tab curtains.  I was planning on working on this project at home in my sewing room last year but do to the never ending work down in the basement I just do not have the room to sew.  My sewing machines are buried since this room is being used for temporary storage.

I pinned in a 3-inch hem.

I finished working on the patio umbrella in my upholstery class just before Christmas and had no new furniture projects at the time.  So I decided the only way the curtains would get done was to do them in class.  One panel is done except for the hem and I should have the second panel ready this week.  I will hang both panels up and allow them to hang awhile before putting in the hem.



I brought the first panel home over the holidays, so I could hang it and determine where to hem it.  I machined stitched the edge hem on each side of the curtain and after allowing the curtain to hang for a week I could see the machine stitching gathered the fabric just enough that the edges were notably shorter than the center.  I spent the next two classes ripping out the machine stitching and hand blind stitching the edges.  I would like to have both panel hanging up for a week to determine if the hem needs to be adjusted to look even.  On the right is a picture of the first panel with the machine stitched edge and look can see shorter edges compared to the middle.



I stilled have the double-hung window on the south side of the living room left to do but once I finished this project I will start on my new chair.

Sauk-Columbia Area Restore

Sauk-Columbia Area Restore moved from Sauk Prairie last fall to Baraboo.  This January I finely found time to make a trip up to the new store located on 1212 8th Street in Baraboo, WI.  The store is on the east side of town and 8^th street also Hwy 33.  The store sells furniture, recycled building material and other items.  I have been looking for a 24” two-panel door to use for a linen closet for about 2 to 3 years.  I kept hoping I would not need to make a trip out of the state to find one.  I got lucky this January and found a door for $5.00 while checking out the new store.

I need to do a little work but I am very happy with it.  I have been planning to divide the front bedroom closet.  There is a dead space in the closet which you cannot easily reach things and this would be the prefer place to divide the closet.  I am going to put a door in the hallway to access the linen closet.  I will need to hire a carpenter because the opening will be put in a bearing wall.  Here is a picture of the door and where I want to open up the wall.

I not sure when I will get around to this project but I will slowly gather all supplies until that time

Another Upholstery Project

Early this month I acquired a new upholstery project from Craig’s list.  It is a 1930’s wingchair and will nicely compliment my other antique wingchair from the turn of the last century.  Here are pictures of it.  

I been looking at fabric swaps and I believe I will be buy this Barrow fabric from the collection “Catherine”, color “Bamboo”.  I will not start on this project until I finish working on the tab curtains for the living room.
 

I will write about that project soon.

Latest Activities

Yes, I have been remiss on keeping my blog up to date but I just needed a vacation from everything.  I did a slay-cation off over the holidays and did nothing on the house except housekeeping.  This is very unusual for me.  I did enjoy working on pictures to put on a digital frame for my Dad.  I only managed to review the 2004 Alaska pictures and still have many more pictures to sort through before sending Dad his frame.  I am trying to add a cation to each picture; where it was taken and who is in it.

Tuesday night I got all the outdoor Christmas lights down before the Thursday’s snowstorm.  I just did not want to pull the lights down with snow on the ground.  I need to untangle the lights from the garland and put them back into storage.  Right now they are heaped in two piles, one is lying in the 3-season porch and the larger heap is on the basement floor.  All interior decoration are back in their boxes but I still need to put year around knickknacks back in place.  Right now they just stack on shelves or the dining room table until I can organize them.  I also need the put the two 4 feet trees up in the attic.  I hope to finish cleaning up all the holiday decoration this weekend.  I will have a 3 day weekend because of Martin Luther King Day.

I been thinking about my 2012 To Do List and what I need and can accomplish this year.  Here is the list.

1.      Finish waterproofing and painting the unfinished section of the basement:  NUMBER ONE PRIORITY.  I am tired of the mess down there.

2.      Add an Asparagus patch to the garden

3.      Plant one or two more rhubarb plants.

4.      Put in supports for grape vines and raspberries.

5.      Finish the outside back bedroom wall.

a.       Finish scraping it,

b.      Prime it,

c.       Caulk it, and

d.      Finely paint it.

6.      Weather proof window on scraped wall.

a.       Reglaze window.

b.      Put new cording on weights.

c.       Add insulation to weight’s pockets.

d.      Caulk window.

This is more than enough for me to do this year.

It’s The Little Stuff That Makes You Happy!

I sure all of you are wondering how this picture of cabinet space below my bathroom sink can made me happy.  I lived in my house for 7 years now with a shelf so warped that anything would slide and tip over toward the big dip located front and center.  I kept telling myself that I could wait until I remodeled my bathroom since I would like to replace the bathroom sink with a pedestal sink.  After living here for 7 years it will be a long time before I remodel the bathroom.  I still have a lot of weatherproofing and insulation work to do on the house before I can fix up the interior.  So why not make life a little easier by fixing it.

I use a rubber mallet to knock out the warped shelf.  Then I cut some salvage 2”x4”s to make a platform to place a shelf.  The 2”x4”s left 1¼” gape to be filled in with leftover plywood.  I found ½” plywood cut two pieces to layover the base and nailed it in place.  I found some ¼” plywood, cut it to size and glue it in place.  The shelf was now even with the cabinet.  I finished it off by put down shelving paper.

After seven years I can finely can used this space for storage and that is what makes me happy.

A 2009 Checklist

I wrote in my last post that my next project was to thoroughly clean my house. Last Saturday, I spent time washing all the surfaces in the kitchen that included walls, floor, cabinets, and appliances. Before putting back all the notes and magnets back on the refrigerator, stop long enough to review the notes and found this note named “NEXT YEAR 2009 TO DO LIST”.

Reviewing this list has brought back memories and there are still many unfinished items.

1. Finish Swan: Years ago I brought my Mom a topiary swan frame from http://www.topiaryinc.com/ and used sphagnum moss to fill out the frame. She received this one Mother’s Days. In 2008 the Kickapoo River flooded town of Gays Mills, my Mother was lucky the yard, garage and basement were flooded but not living area of her home. The topiary swan was sitting in that dirty water and all the old sphagnum moss was removed and need to be replaced with fresh moss. I did finish working on the form in the spring of 2010 and it now back in her garden every summer.
2. Put together the Turtle: Another topiary frame, Rittenhouse use to sell a turtle basket frame. The turtle was finished in the summer of 2010.
3. Fix electric outlet hole on the outside of the house: The hole until this year plugged with a broken shovel handle until this summer. I filled it in with foam but need to fill in the remainder of it with wood putty. This is the wall I stripped off the paint and will finish next spring or summer.
4. Paint dryer hole cover: Before I brought the house the washer and dryer were placed in the northwest corner of the basement. A previous PO finished the north side of basement and the washer and dryer were moved but the old dryer vent was never closed off. I filled in the vent hole sanded it down and painted late 2008. So I must have made this list sometime in the fall of 2008.
5.  Make Bamboo Trellis: Completed in the spring 2009, this is the trellis which I weave my squash vine through.
6.  Wash unfinished south basement wall: completed in 1/3/2010
7.  Fix crack in wall: South basement wall, 2/3 of the wall was finished early spring 2010 and the remaining wall this spring 2011.
8. Fix Cracks in floor: Complete over the 2009-2010 winter. See Moisture and Water Problems Part 3 
9. Paint Finished Craft room floor: See #8.
10.  Wash Closet Walls: Not done closet show in Moisture and Water Problems Part 3 
11. Paint Closet Walls: See #10.
12.  Shellac Closet doors: My bedroom closet has wooden bifold door which only ½ of the bifold door is done.
13.  Hang Closet door: Not done do to #12 not being completed.
14.  Lay out garden around telephone pole and box: Still on my To Do List but other things become more important so this keeps dropping down on the list.
15. Call for a Watch Dog before digging up the garden around telephone box: Waiting for #14.

This is the fourth winter I been working and the basement and hopefully the last. I found that if I just put waterproof the basement as a project and had to wait four years to cross it off my TO DO List it would be discouraging. So I have been breaking down large projects into smaller projects so I feel like I accomplished something.

House Progress Report

It took about a month for my back to heal. The only thing I decide to work on was getting the house and yard ready for winter.  My brother helped lifting up and putting in the storm windows.  He was a big help with this and cleaning up the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants.  We hauled four large lawn bags to the community compost. 

After Arthur went home I worked on cleaning the gutters.  We have two large white pine trees on the south lot line.  The neighbor on that side of the house commented that he like to cut those pines down.  I could not understand why he would like to do that when I first moved in but now I do.  White pine trees are dirty trees examples are the dipping sap all over my back deck, shedding pine needles and cones all year long.  The second week in October is the worst about third to half of the needles turn yellow and fall off the tree.  The long needles continually clog up my gutters and cause the water to pour over the sides.  I will not cut those pines down because they keep my house cool and protect my house from the hot summer sun.  If you want to include white pines in your landscaping, do plant them within 30 feet of a house.  There is one good thing about them the cones make wonderful decoration.  I used them in my Christmas garland wrapped around the front porch railing.

All the gardens are cleaned up except the garden with the broccoli, red cabbage, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts.  I plan on harvesting that garden this weekend.  We had several nights this past week where the night time temperature reached the low 20’s.  The Brussels sprouts should be nice and sweet with the hard frost.

The last two weekends I have been working on getting up the outside Christmas decorations.  I brought two four foot candy cane and put one on each end of the front porch and also tied the pine cones to the garland.  This year I brought lights and a timer for the back deck and wrapped them along with the garland.  I still need to set up the deck timer which I will do this weekend.

My next big project will be to clean the house since it has been negligent all summer.