February 22, 2018

Tour of the Remodeling Blitz on the PH House (Picture heavy)

Apparently it takes a deadline to get Hubby and I to the finish line. We're great off the blocks and down the first quarter, but we tend to run out of steam on the home stretch. We had remodeled the house when we bought it in 1995, but started updating it again in 2010.  Then, a small kitchen change eventually morphed into a whole house update.

When we decided to sell our PH House, we set a summer deadline, but first had to finish all the projects we had not quite finished, mainly the kitchen. Stripping all those cabinets, ai, yi, yi. I had taken a good, long break from that and never gotten back on it. The laundry hall cabinets weren't finished, the family room needed paint, there was unfinished bits of trim here and there. But mainly it was the kitchen. We started working on it in the spring, and as the summer wore on, we had to step it up. There was just no time for pictures. So, finally, here are the 'after' pictures, almost two years after selling the house.

Outside Front - After:




And the original Before:




Outside Back - After: (Two photos stitched together)




I can't believe I never took a picture of the back of the house after it was finished.  Here is mid-addition but before the gate was added:


And the Before:



A peek into the courtyard off the dining room.  After:


Before:  (Or as close as I could find.)


Now the inside tour.  First the foyer, which has no before picture because it was too small to get a good angle.  We took down a wall and combined the original foyer with an adjoining hallway.


Straight ahead into the living room.  The After:



And the Before:


Moving into the dining room added in 2012 and the kitchen.  The After:





The Before: of the kitchen (which used to be a kitchen AND dining room)


Around the corner is the laundry hall with built in washer and dryer.

Hall with laundry closet Before:


The original garage converted to family room.  No before photo; you've seen one two car garage, you've seen them all.  

After:

One of the two small bedrooms.  The other one didn't photograph well with a larger bed in it.  After:

Before: (taken after the first remodel)


The hall bath, which did not get an update except for wall paint.  This is from the first remodel and of course, no before photos.  I would apologize for being a bad blogger, but I wasn't a blogger then.  It would have been nice to have some before pictures to truly appreciate the condition of this bathroom though.
 
After:


Then, the master bedroom.  After:



And the Before:





The master bath did not have an update either other than wall paint.  These are the same photos I've shared before.  We didn't take pictures of this bathroom for the realtor listing.  He thought this bathroom was so small that people shouldn't see it until they came to look at the house! lol

After:



And Before:


And last is the office, coffee bar, and bathroom.  We built this part with the garage in 2003, so no Before photos.




Thanks for going on this tour with me.  Looking at these photos of the finished house makes me wonder if we'll ever get there with our current project.  It seems a long way off right now.


February 21, 2018

Spring One Day and Winter the Next

Monday, we were near 80. Yesterday (Tuesday), we were just over 70, and right now (Wednesday noon), we are at 39°F. Wind howling, of course. Yesterday the electricity was on and off all day and today it's the internet. Maybe it will stay on long enough for me to post this. It's raining again and I hear thunder. We've had days of fog and rain and have standing water everywhere. Should be a good first hay cutting though.

Meanwhile, the cat and I are trying to stay warm inside. I would show you a picture of Buddy, but he is curled up on the dirty laundry I was about to stick in the washer; I'll spare you our unmentionables. Of all the places to sleep, he always seeks out the pile of laundry. Because the sides of our RV tend to sweat when it's cold outside and warm inside, I've got the cabinet doors open to let air circulate and he found the laundry basket.

Edited to add photo. I put the sorted laundry in the washer, and pulled the laundry basket out of the cabinet so Buddy could get in it for a photo. No dice. He sniffed it and then settled onto the rug, and on the lumpy spot over the slide too. I guess he prefers jeans and work clothes. Or maybe it's the heater just out of sight behind him.


The last time it was really cold, Buddy knocked at the door. Actually, he pushes the screen door, but it sounds like knocking. Anyway, he knocked at the door, and I let him in. He strolled over to the carpet by the steps and settled in for a nap. I didn't pay much attention to him after that but the next time I looked up, he was gone. I looked under the table, under my chair, and finally went up the steps to the bedroom, and there he was in the middle of the bed. Buddy isn't allowed on the bed. He knows he isn't allowed on the bed. But there he was in the middle of the bed. He lifted his head when I walked up and when I told him to get off, I swear the look he gave me was "I saw it first!" He did not get off willingly.

This time of day he is usually snoozing in an attic window. He prefers the windows up there because the sun isn't blocked by a porch roof. There is no sun at all in the attic or RV today. In the RV, he usually prefers sitting between our chairs. Or dirty laundry, it seems.

Saturday, while Buddy was in the attic window, an American Kestrel landed on the porch roof right outside the window. I heard the wavering cry that means there is prey within sight, turned around, and Buddy had his nose glued to the window. The bird looked at Buddy and then calmly soared off the roof.

 Monday, Buddy was snoozing in the window and I saw movement out in the field below. It was a big cat leaving our porch. He was black with white markings just like Buddy. I had wondered how long it would be before a neighbor's cat came visiting, or someone dumped a cat out here. It's a good thing Buddy didn't see him though, I don't think Buddy would win if they met. Besides being older, and now with a cataract, Buddy has been living the soft life too long.

February 16, 2018

Ready for the Weekend?

I think I am, but I'm always ambitious in the middle of the night. Morning is a different story. Technically, it is already Friday, but mentally, it is still Thursday night to me. Today was warm and muggy with a howling wind - something the local weatherman would probably call breezy even though I had to go tie down the cover on the electric meter to keep the wind from pulling it off and banging it against the barn. That was loud!

Tomorrow, I am going to do a little grocery shopping and stop by an estate sale that looks like it has some good sewing stuff, but is likely to be overpriced. At least the few prices listed for name brand items was like new. So I'll probably come home empty handed except for groceries. And there will be groceries. I don't think I've been to the grocery store in over a week. Avoiding sick people as much as possible. The problem is, people can be contagious before they feel too bad. I could be sick right now and not even know it. Well, maybe I couldn't. How could I get sick when I haven't left the house in a week? Oh wait. I went to book club Tuesday night. But I'm going stir crazy. I need to see people and hear the sounds of a city.

Speaking of book club, we read Angels Walking by Karen Kingsbury. It was okay, definitely had an inspirational message, but I doubt I'll read any more of her books. Right now I'm reading To Be Where You Are by Jan Karon. I loved the first books in this series, but the last two have left me a bit cold. It's like she has come up with the plot for the book and then handed off the writing to someone else. I still love the Father Tim and Cynthia characters in this book, but I just can't hack up any sympathy for Dooley and Lace.

Back to the weekend. The weather is supposed to be fairly lousy. 80% chance of rain on Saturday. That lets out putting up an antenna tower, so I'm hoping we can get a little work done in the house. We need to wire the laundry room for 220 so we can get the dryer in there. Hubby wired the 110 a couple of weeks ago and the washer is in place. But the dryer is still in the garage. And while he's wiring, it would be nice to get a few more temporary lights in place. Buddy T. Cat has a new hobby - crouching in the dark until someone is ready to walk by, and then springing out in front of them. It's rather unnerving, especially when carrying a basket of wet clothes in the semi-darkness.

I should finish putting the binding on the Glory Box Wallhanging tomorrow, and tomorrow night I plan on doing some handwork while Hubby finishes the taxes. Oh yes, Hubby. I'll do the simple 1040 stuff but he gets to do the farm schedule. That was all his idea. I'll be handy to consult or commiserate, but he has to figure out what goes where on the forms. Then, he gets a reward. Meantime, I'm working on some Ferris Wheel blocks that are English paper piecing. Stop in Saturday and see how it goes.

I also want to make a St. Patrick's Day mug rug if I can find my green fabric. I found a big box of fabric today, with several boxes of fat quarters and a couple of boxes of scraps. But no greens. In my mind, my mug rug will have some solid green space for some ruler foot practice, and I know I don't have any solid green fabric. And in the town I am going to tomorrow today, there is no fabric store of any kind, not even Walmart. So that might have to wait until next week.

Linking to:
Friday Night Sew-In at Sugarlane Designs

February 02, 2018

Friendly Friday Fill-Ins

One of the blogs I follow, 15 and Meowing has a fill in the blank series every Friday. I just discovered this lately, and with my brain-fatique, I never can think of anything to fill in the blanks. It's like a pop test in high school when you haven't done your homework. Maybe it's the drugs I'm taking. The cold Hubby brought home two weeks ago has turned into a full-fledged sinus infection. I've been dragging all day and can't sleep at night. But since it's from a cat blog, I thought I'd let Buddy take a crack at these questions. It doesn't seem to be a linky party, but then again, it could be.




Friendly Fill-Ins
by Buddy T. Cat






1. Trust no one, especially dogs.
2. I would protest having to earn my supper.
3. I have not eaten since an hour ago .
4. Right now, I want a snack and a nap .

That wasn't so hard.  If two legs would just learn to think only about themselves, every question has an easy answer.  It's all me, me, me.  Until next time.  Buddy The Cat.


It Seems I've Done an About Face

Last night I was looking through old blog posts to see if I had posted a picture of a work-in-progress quilt, now a UFO. After reading several posts from around 2009, I realized how much my blogging has changed, and how much I have changed. In one post, I griped about people who did nothing but post their stuff to linky parties. Uh, gee, toe-in-sand, yeah, that's what my blog has become. Just about every post is linked to a party of some kind. Maybe one of my 2018 goals should have been to get off my duff and actually do something worth reading.

My excuse and explanation is that I lost my blogging mojo. After moving, we used a hotspot for an internet connection and my net time was severely limited for almost a year. After we moved again and finally hooked up a regular internet connection, I was out of the habit of blogging and couldn't think of anything to write about. Or if I did think of something, by the time I got my computer powered up, I had either forgotten or lost interest.

But then, my daughter, Brownie, decided to become a foster parent, and I thought I'd make a birthday quilt for one of the boys. That was in August, when my sewing machine was set up in the attic where the temperature had to be 110 with no breeze. So after cutting out a few blocks, I stuffed everything in a box until I could find a better place to sew. Eventually, I just gave up and bought him a pair of boots. Then Christmas rolled around and the other little boy's birthday was coming up. By then, it was cold in the attic, but we had a bigger trailer, a fifth wheel, and I brought my sewing machine into it. I stayed in the attic long enough to cut the blocks and then assembled it in the warmth of the trailer and with a tv to relieve the boredom.

That quilt, the Cars quilt, revived my interest in quilting, and also gave me something to blog about. My mother's current obsession with disposing of her junk (she has had some heart problems in the last year and thinks the Big One is going to get her any day even though her tests are good now), along with my eye problems have made me determined to finish my UFO quilts and not leave that mess for anyone to deal with. Still, finishing UFOs that I lost interest in years ago isn't easy, so I joined a bunch of linky challenges to motivate or embarrass me into getting it done.

I hope along the way, I can remember how to write about everyday things again. Oh, and that UFO I was looking for? Found it, or at least a picture of it. I guess the real thing is in a box around here somewhere.

This weekend Hubby wants to get his radio antenna put together. Heights scare me to death, whether it is me on a ladder or him on a tower. Well, it isn't the height itself that scares me, it's falling from a height that scares me. But maybe between watching him nervously and putting 9-1-1 on speed dial, I can take a few good pictures and maybe think of words to go with them.