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It took me almost all month to finish up Clue 5. gardening and life got in the way. but i have it done.
Ready for Clue 6 next month.
But i am thinking the summer months are going to be busy with gardening, canning, book sales, yard sales, mowing and who knows what else. but i am determined to stay caught up.
Bring it on!
LOL
I bought a flat of different flowers at the high school a couple weeks ago and finally got around to planting them. there are a couple of tires by the house from previous owners....so i cleaned out the weeds and made them prettier.
Coleus, impatiens, petunias, vinca, and others i've forgotten the names of.
And Friday evening found me in line at the gate of a yearly yard sale in a neighboring town. the picture in the ad that got me there was this.
Then i found this crow...primitive and cute
This little jewl with the hooks will probably hang in the kitchen at the Duck so i have a place to hang keys rather than throw them on the table as i usually do.
This is a metal sign...i have seen places with these kinds of signs all over the walls and think that will be my inspiration for the Duck. the kitchen may be coffee themed. LOL
These were irresistible. little ceramic vegetable signs and little spice boxes.
This reminded me of the government sign....We Want You....i think from the Army....that pointing finger. might go in the office.
And who wouldn't love this little vignette of gardening items. i like that they are rusty. might go on the back porch.
The Duck might not have walls yet but it is getting pretties to hang on those walls....
some day
My handyman, Rick, was in the midst of a roofing job when i pulled him away for the weekend at the Duck. but, since it had been raining for days, and was continuing on Monday, he couldn't do any roofing.....so i got him for another day.
I am installing old barn wood on the walls in the dining room. since it has cracks and holes and such....i am installing 1/4" luan first....and painting it black....so it will look like a shadow through the barn wood knots, holes and cracks. so, Rick installed the luan for me on Monday. i was going to do it myself but since i had his services and his rates are ridiculously reasonable, i figured i would take advantage and let him do it. he is much faster than I.
I had gotten 10 sheets....and that covered 3 walls and a bit of the 4th. i need 2 more sheets to finish. so far, i have this....
Left doorway goes into the living room....there will be pocket doors there....right doorway goes into the office.
Left doorway goes into the office.....right doorway goes into the kitchen. you can see a chair and part of the table. and look...a lamp is on....i have electricity. yay!!! only took me about 2 years. hahahaha
This doorway is a hallway...go to the right and wind up in the laundry room...go left and wind up in the kitchen. that is the top of my dining room table leaning against the wall.
The next time i go down i will start painting those walls black.
While this was going on....i sanded barn wood boards. i got 15 of them done. then i had covered the garage area, me, and everything around me in dust. had to get out the shop vac and clean up.
This only took 2 guys about 3 hours to complete. so, i picked up stuff and put stuff away and headed for home. it's a 3 hour drive to home and i was tired. but a lot got accomplished and i am happy. now to save more money for the next big project. will start on drywall for the walls next. i'm gonna have a put together house one of these days. but not...
tomorrow
Sunday was plumbing day. time to install all those pesky pipes to carry water throughout the house.
First, the plumber (who is also my carpenter and general all around handyman), and I went to the home center so he could fulfill his long list of plumbing parts. i had brought some pipe with me....so we didn't need that....and i had brought buckets of elbows and Ts and so forth, but he still needed plumbers tape, other little doodads and whatever all those plumbing parts are called.
I sent him off with his basket to the plumbing aisle while i wandered around, checking in with him from time to time.
I made the mistake of looking in the bathroom 'furniture' aisle. i had a bathroom sink in my garage that i was going to use. it was a free one that i salvaged from my sis. it was small and not all that pretty....but it was free and i was going to use it. i only had to find a cabinet to set it on. i had been scouring thrift stores for a cabinet.
Well, I came across this at the home center and fell in love....and it came home with me. it is 36" wide...which is a bit wider than the free one that i had. the top was on a different cabinet...but i switched it out. and after a bit of negotiation with an employee at the home center, i got the top free if i bought the cabinet and took it with me that day.
I love the green of the top. the bathroom will be greens and blues...sort of a Caribean feel.
I love the rope detail on the cabinet. and the cream color. the bathroom is kind of small and i am not a fancy person....so this is great.
Then the guy said i needed to choose faucets, too. i hadn't even thought of faucets. hahahaha so i picked this one. it really doesn't match the cabinet but i like it. it is black with copper trim. i will see if i can find the same type for the shower so at least they will match.
I was all excited and ready to have it installed. Alas, first i need plumbing...and a floor...and walls. details, details.
So, we headed for home with my goodies and the plumber and his bag of goodies. before we even get back to the house....which is only about 2 or 3 miles....he says he forgot something. so, we stop at Ace Hardware so he can pick up a few more little goodies and head to the house.
He is cutting holes and making noises and doing plumbing things.
In about an hour i check on him to see how progress is coming. he says...i had to re-arrange something here and need blah, blah, blah. so, off i go back to the home center for 6 or 7 other plumbing parts that i wrote on a note. Ts, reducers, 90 degrees somethings....i don't know. but i get it all and make it back.
So, after about 4 hours of plumbing business ..... i have:
Bathroom sink pipes...
Kitchen sink pipes
Shower drain pipe. there are pipes going up for the showerhead, too...but i failed to get a pic of that.
There is Rick....intalling pipe for the toilet. the pipes between the studs to the right of him are pipes for the tankless water heater which will be installed above the toilet.
would have been nice had i taken pics AFTER sweeping up the mess, right? hahaha
My ugly basement ceiling now looks like this with pipes running everywhere.
If you are a plumber and care about these things...here is a closeup for you. hahahaha
He also ran pipes to each wall to install outside faucets. but we haven't knocked out a hole and put them in yet. the laundry room pipes were perfectly fine so that didn't have to be done. but still need a pipe to vent the dryer outside.
While all that was going on....i was pulling more nails. i didn't work all day but did get a few hours in. when i quit there were only about a dozen boards left to do and my shelves are twice as filled as yesterday.
Another full day. it rained on me coming down here on Thursday, rained all day Friday, rained off and on all day Saturday, and again on Sunday. it was kind of a chilly gloomy weekend. guess what we are doing...
tomorrow
Today my carpenter decided to install my 3 new doors.
First there was a front door. actually, not THE front door. previous owners enclosed the front porch ..... sooo, once you come in the front door, you are in the enclosed porch, which i am calling the foyer....then, you come through ANOTHER door (the one that was installed), into a small entry area....which then has even another door to go into the living room of the actual house....OR...yet another door to enter another room that i will use for my studio. this house has no shortage of doors, believe me.
Here is the (second) front door that was installed. those red cutains that you see through the window are on the enclosed porch...or foyer. hahaha
The door that goes into the actual house needed the casing finished off and tightened up....so that was done, too. i will repaint this door .... probably some exhuberant color....depending what color the living room will turn out to be. my first thought was red...we'll see. this side of the door is in the living room.
Then we moved to the basement door. yet, another 'door' story. previously, you came down some wicked high, dangerous steps and turned left to go down the basement. whoever put those steps in was a maniac. in order to leave room for the left into the basement, the steps were like 18" high. my short legs and arthritic knees were having problems with that. plus they just looked stupid.
So, those steps came out and new regular steps were installed. then a wall was built to eliminate that left into the basement. here is that new wall area. that open, bright spot at the right of the picture is the garage area.
Now, you go down the steps from the kitchen....out to the garage....then there is another door to the left to enter the basement. a little strange...but much better than the previous arrangement. here is the new basement door. the opening to the left of this door goes back up into the kitchen. this is the area of the garage where i will install a garage opener and drive my truck in to access the house. i have enough room in this garage to house 3 vehicles.
Another new door got installed out in the garage. the garage is a 3 bay garage with an office ... which technically makes it a 4 bay garage. .... yeah, a man's dream. LOL the door from the office opened out into the alley and was a really, really crappy door. so that got taken out and this got installed instead.
Much more secure and looks better, too. we had to cut out a piece of carpet by the door so it would close properly and not drag on the carpet. not that i will mind....that nasty orange/brown carpeting from the 60s is coming out some day anyway. right now this office is kind of a storage room. it will get renovation somewhere down the road in a few years.
On another completely different note....did i ever show you my fancy lamp.....the shade is all different colors of glass....all welded together. pretty cool. and also very heavy. what is it with me and heavy objects? this lamp is about 100 years old according to the lady that i bought it from. i know....i have no walls....some insulation...but i have lamps, chairs and some furniture. LOL i don't always proceed according to a normal person's plans. but then...i never claimed to be 'normal' either.
While the guys were installing doors....i was pounding and pulling nails out of wood. i had a huge pile in the garage of boards that i saved from the demolition that were good .... plus boards that i rescued from my sister's garage demolition. these are the boards that they used many decades ago. when lumber was heavy ... there i go again with that 'heavy' thing. LOL when 2x4s were actually 2" x 4" and not the 1.5 x 3.5 that we have today.
I had gotten a huge metal shelve to hold my boards. it kind of looks like a lumber yard display.
This is what i finished by the end of the first day...2x6s on the bottom...along with a couple of 2x8s
2x4s on the middle shelve
And, 1" thick boards of various widths and lengths on the top shelve.
This is what was left at the end of the first day. that was 7 hours of pulling nails...using hammer, flat bar and heavy crow bar. my hands were sore.
I slept well Saturday night. hahahahaha but i had 3 doors installed, a fourth door fixed, and a wall built. plus all those nails pulled. a good day. stay tuned for ....
tomorrow
Thursday i went to my sister's .... for the first leg of our adventures for the weekend. we did some thrift store shopping...actually a LOT of thrift store shopping.
We found a couple new stores in Belleville. and visited our old haunts in St. Louis. i found this heavy wooden table for the dining room at the Duck.
This pic shows it sitting in the garage at the Duck....which is as far as we were able to haul it. when i got there on Friday, i took the legs off of it and took them in and then had the guys haul it into the house on Monday when they finished working. the legs were a bit wobbly, so i have to tighten them up. but it is pretty cool. and, did i mention heavy?
On Friday we went to an annual book sale event in Belleville at St. Paul's church. it was half price day ... which is the day that we usually show up. i managed to snatch up a few dozen books....westerns for the hubs ..... and some quilting books for me ..... a cool quilting book for my friend, Mary....and some mysteries. my sister managed to add about 100 books to her collection.
After a book sale extravaganza, the next step that evening is for me to alphabetize the books and then read the titles and authors to my sis so she can add them to her list. it is over 3000 books long now. the library is shaping up. but her books are also overflowing into the dining room, the hallway, the bathroom and everywhere in between. hahahha
After getting to the Beast ... sis's house....and unloading all her stuff....and then going to the Duck and unloading all of my stuff....we pretty much crashed for the day.
I had to get up early to meet my carpenter at the Duck on Saturday for our adventures there.
Stay tuned ....
tomorrow
Yesterday i pieced my I Spy 4 patches into a top. my friend, Brenda, had an I Spy like this for show and tell at class and i really liked it....so i stole her idea. thanks, Brenda. LOL
I have been cutting up fabrics for I Spy quilts. just stacking up the blocks until i get an idea of how to set them. this seems to be a good use of fabrics that wouldn't otherwise get used.
There are some baseball and football squares...and a basketball border.
There are cowboys and candy
Sports teams and houses
Love this iguana...or lizard...whatever he is. i had a piece of fabric that was about a yard that i was saving for 'something special'. hahahha every once in a while i cut a bit of it ... until there was hardly anything left for 'something special'. so now it is I Spy blocks.
Some cats and baseballs. and dog bones and penguins
And my favorite puppy. that fabric is about all gone. i love those little dogs
The basketball border came from my truckload of fabrics that i acquired. the man said his wife made pj pants for the grandsons out of this ... but i don't know. it is a thicker cotton fabric ... almost an upholstery weight. perhaps they were winter pjs.
I like this I Spy top a lot. now i have to come up with another design for I Spy. gotta think on that .... do you have an idea for me?
Let me know
