{Post 1,596} Parker Fixer Upper

Here is a pic of our deck (uncovered, as it will remain) through the new French doors in the living room. Our house is a dark gray siding with white trim.

Here is our living room, from two days ago and today. Blew my mind to see the comparison.

{Post 1,595} Quilty Catch-Up

I have done a lot of quilty things since I wrote last. Here are pictures. I will skip all the descriptions.

I have also machine-quilted several large quilts for customers and for myself.

{Post 1,594} Drywall Dust—Be Gone!

I got a lot more finished today than I thought I would. I knew I’d be picking up my grandson at 12:30. I had to go get my weekly allergy shots. That took over an hour instead of 30 minutes because my 30 minute timer shut off when I set it down,. So I ended up being an extra 30 minutes. Then I got some breakfast out and then went to Lowe’s to get something for my husband (that they did not have—bummer). By the time I got home, I only had 45 minutes before I had to go get Timmy.

After I picked him up, I got both of us a little lunch and then it was to the mechanic’s. They somehow overlooked letting me know my vehicle was ready, so I was THERE an extra 45 minutes at least. That’s the kind of day it has been. But I figured I was healthy and safe, so why fret?

When I got home, I wanted to do as much to get this house in shape as I could. Wes helped me move our very heavy table for 12 into the kitchen from the living room. I wiped down all the chairs to remove drywall dust. Whew—that made it a sight better already. Then I started un-dusting the living room furniture and moving it into place. It looks so bare without a rug and wall decor. I hope we can use our old rug until our new one arrives. The new one won’t be here for two more weeks.

I am trying sooooo hard not to pressure my husband (he is still working every spare moment on the floor). But I hope we can get our Christmas tree set up tonight. If he sets up the actual tree, I will take it from there.

Clean and roomy...but not very warm.

{Post 1,593} Remodel Complete Update

This last part will be short and sweet since I just wrote a long post and somehow deleted it. Here is the last-minute update. As in I literally just walked into the kitchen/living room and took these pictures.

The dark flooring is the new stuff. The light floor in the kitchen is what Wes is removing then replacing. Hopefully the frig will be put back in its opening in the next hour or so. The darker tan on the right side of the wall between the rooms is where Wes took off our kitchen built-in desk (it’s now in the living room temporarily) so he could replace the flooring under the desk as the original flooring was done.

I am eager to get our rooms set to rights. Actually, Wes just had me invite a family over for supper for the day after tomorrow. So that is some incentive to get this finished. Tomorrow. True story. This is the only night that family has available to come over, then they are traveling again for a long time.

{Post 1,592} More Recent Remodel Post (almost caught up)

Once the interior was finished, we hired a professional painter (who did a tremendous job on the ceiling and awful job on the walls). Here is a pic of this morph...

The upper picture shows the old green paint. The bottom picture is Dover white. It looks somewhat dark because the picture was taken as the sun was setting off the room to the right. At this point, our living room furniture had been in the kitchen for a month. Yes, it was getting old.

My husband is laying new laminate wood flooring by himself in the living room (pictured above), kitchen, hall, foyer, and hall bath. We are not rich or crazy...they are all connected. So far, he is finished with the living room except a small closet in there. Today he has finished the middle 2/3 of the kitchen. He is going to finish one small part in there and then resume AFTER Christmas. I still have not taken down fall decorations because our kitchen was so crowded that I could not get to them. Then we’ve had a flurry of activities that prevented me from making progress. We want to have a day or two to straighten up the living room and put up our Christmas tree before our family gathers here for Christmas Eve and the day before.

{Post 1,591} Remodel Review

So, every day (it seems) we had a construction disaster. I will skip over those and show you how things progressed. The decision to take out the fireplace meant we needed to put up most of a new wall, inside and out. Since we were destroying most of the wall, I asked if we could put in French doors to replace the single one to let in more natural light. Best (and worst) decision ever. They had to put in 3 different sets because they ruined the first two. We also had to build a subfloor where the hearth used to be and put up new drywall on the wall and ceiling on the inside. Here are a few work-in-progress pics. They loaded in reverse chronological order, and I do not know how to fix them.

{Post 1,590} Long Time No Post

OK. I have been duly chastised. Not only have a few people I know in person hinted that they thought I was dead since I haven’t posted since July 2018, but a b-friend wrote it in a Christmas card to me. What can I say? I have been so busy with one thing and another that I can barely remember what those things were. I have had to go back and look at pictures to see what I’ve been up to...and I am not a frequent picture taker. I’ll go backwards chronologically and break it up into several posts for your ease and entertainment.

If you’re a new reader, you need to know that I have a big immediate family. My hubby and I have eight children. Six of them are married. The last two holdouts are in committed relationships. We have 9 grandchildren, and 2 more are expecting in 2019 so far. I frequently help them out with various things, sometimes with very little notice.

Our most recent (and currently ongoing) project is something small that has morphed into a huge, seemingly never-ending project. We had a decrepit screened-in porch that was literally eroding. It was an all-wooden structure. We have known for years that it needed replacing, but we were not eager to spend the money on it. It finally got to the point where we had to do something.

Here is my living room before we started. At this point, you should be wondering, “What does the living room have to do with the screened-in porch? Hence, the morphing. When 2/3 of the porch and all of its roof had been removed, we made the spontaneous decision to take our fireplace and hearth out as well.