Mending Days

We are currently on day 7 of L's stomach virus. Yesterday he was finally able to keep down 1 oz of pedialyte without immediately throwing it up. Hallelujah! But with all this home time it did give me the chance to make a dent in my mending pile. Now Boozle's pants drawer has more than 1 pair of jeans and various track/sweat pants. I found this tutorial and loved the look of it more than a traditional patch.

One tip: green thread looks rather like a grass stain from far away...

Roman shade lessons

The moulding in our new/ancient house is all original to the house, including original color (i.e. never been painted). While my modern aesthetic yearns to paint it, the history and cost have prohibited us from doing so. In the main living spaces we've made it work by using light greige almost white paint and using color in accessories but in the bedrooms it just felt so dark. So I decided to make light roman shades for the boys' room and to make them outside-mount to cover most of the trim. It was quite the project. Every tutorial I read said it was a cinch and maybe if you have an ideal sewing room/workspace, lots of free time, and sew a lot it would be, but for me it took many evenings. I love how it turned out though and that's all that matters, amiright?

Mostly I used this tutorial and thought it was fabulous but I did end up using velcro up on the mounter board instead of more eye rings for ease. So far it's holding up great.

Here are some of the lessons I learned while constructing:
1. It's very hard to cut a perfectly straight line when it involves fabric pieces bigger than 4"x4".

2. Use a huge workspace. Otherwise it's nearly impossible to fudge your not-perfectly-straight lines to match up.
3. So much measuring to so little sewing. Very tedious.

4. When marking for dowel placement, start measuring and marking from the bottom. (unless you like to erase many errant pencil lines)

5. Hand sewing the rings after a long horrible day is therapeutic. (it also means you're almost done!)
6. If using a cord clamp, install before the shade and header board are hung.

Friday

Here are a few more updates with some more details. This is how it looked on Friday:

This is the the view standing in the new laundry room and looking into the new mudroom. They closed off the old window, put the new door in which is 3/4 windows so lots of light!

This is the sewer pipe in the basement which may seem unimportant to some but the previous pipe was most likely from when plumbing was first invented and had a hole plugged with a clothespin! It was on its last leg and the plumber replaced all the plumbing in the whole house in one single day.

Here you can see the new sewage pipe connecting to a piece of the old. Quite a difference.

This is the view from the laundry room and into the new bathroom. Next to that new window will be a pocket door closing off the bathroom and to the right of the laundry plumbing will be a 30" closet/cabinet.

This is the new bathroom and the new plumbing in the corner. Amazed and thrilled at how quickly it's all coming together.

Framing!

First update in photos of many.

It's Begun!

It's been over a month since we closed on the new house and since then, T has been very busy every single evening ripping up flooring, taking down wallpaper (with huge help from Jim & Deana!), demolishing plaster, repairing cracks, etc... After all that, today was the big day and the contractors started working. I can't wait to get over there and see what they got done today. They said they should be ready for inspections by Monday so it's really happening! Hard to believe. I'm the spending committee and so far I've bought a vanity, a kitchen, all the appliances, a shower, faucets, and more. Today I ordered the flooring for the mudroom/laundry room as well as for the bathroom and we're excited about what we went with.

For the mudroom/laundry room we decided on honed travertine tile. It's gorgeous! Then for the bathroom we looked at many many options but decided on the classic 1" hex carrara marble tile. Also gorgeous. And last night I started packing up our house so it's starting to feel official. Hard to believe that in 3ish weeks, we will no longer live here. Such good memories here but we're excited for the next phase!

Best $7 I ever spent

I should have known when I bought these Ethan Allen chairs that everything would be very well-made (read: complicated to disassemble). The seat is bolted down to the frame with a screw with a square head. So off to Sears we went to find a Robertson screw driver to take off the seat. While we were there, after we took a few "rides" on the ride-on mowers, of course, I also spotted a tack remover for $7. Seemed better than my butter knife that I had been using to remove the 7,000 staples. Needless to say, it's going much quicker now.

Presenting: 13 Kenmuir

Here are the photos of our house pre-renovation. To quote Alitris, "It's like a time capsule." Indeed, it is. Original woodwork (which I am hesitant to paint but I just can't find a single room that I like with dark woodwork so most likely it will be painted white), original floors which will be sanded down and stained dark brown, original electrical which will be torn out and updated, etc... Without further adieu, here she is:

front

living room

reading nook

kitchen