Orange Bingo Whirl

I finished piecing my Orange Monochromatic Challenge top this morning. i even used a Judy Laquidara pattern from her book...Weekend Quilts. it is called Bingo Whirl.

This is a great book...there are 3 more quilts in here that i want to make.

I took a few liberties in Judy's pattern. mine was scrappy and the background fabric didn't go in border #5 to match...i didn't have enough. and i made the final border 5" instead of 4".  but i used a lot of orange.....it was easy and quick to piece.  now i just have to get it quilted in the next 2 weeks.

I like the way this border....the striped one....turns the corner.

And i like the pieced border, too. shoot...i like it all.

I even have an orange backing. it wasn't quite wide enough so i inserted another orange fabric down the middle.

I will quilt it all with orange thread and it will be delicious.

Demolition Days #4, 5 and 6

Three more days of tearing off plaster walls, moving doors to the garage, and taking off window and door frames. going up and down, up and down, and up and down some more on the ladder. my feet are TIRED.

I figure i am about 10% done...maybe. all the windows have the frames removed and look like this. i cover the windows with paper when i leave for the day. the broken windows have a piece of plywood nailed over them. it  is so ghetto. LOL

And all doors are removed to the garage and doorways now look like this.

There are a lot of walls that look like this.

Since i took that picture....all the slats that you see are gone. i think there are now 6 walls that are just studs. and lots more to go.

My worker has figured out the easist way to get the job done. first he knocks off all the plaster and then carries it out to the garage. then he pulls all the slats off and puts them in his pickup...he and his friends are using them for firewood in outside fire pits. then he bags up all the blown in insulation from the outside walls and carries that out to the garage. it seems to make less of a mess that way and keeps the debris manageable. he cleans up every night before he leaves and does a good job. i am so happy to have found a guy that will work hard for what i can afford to pay him.

After taking out the closet walls and part of the living room.....we found the chimney. whoever put this chimney in did a poor job. the mortar is all slopping out and about halfway up the bricks no longer match up. can you see it there....on the far right side of the picture?

I got ceiling tiles off the living room .... i just have the kitchen, hallway and laundry to go with those ceiling tiles. i don't even want to think about getting back on that ladder and pulling out all those dang staples. and i knocked down all the plaster in this room, too. i was feeling a bit guilty that Rick was doing all the 'nasty' work. LOL

Plus i have to get up there and take down ceiling fans....in every room. there are 6 or 7 fans that are trashed and need to be replaced.

While Rick was taking down walls in the living room i was trying to stay out of the way so i wandered over to the other side of the house and started taking out trim and plywood off walls in the kitchen. i found drywall under the plywood here....so this was remodeled in later years. i found this grossness on one wall. and i pulled up a piece of cracked linoleum only to find more linoleum under that. that layer seems to be glued down better. but the piece i pulled up is tacked down with upholstery nails...yep....all the way across one wall by the basement door. guess it was coming up and they figured that was the best way to fix it....upholstery nails....EVERY INCH. the kind with the big fat decorative head...that is about 1/2" wide. hahahahahahahahaha

I got tired and needed a sit down job so i wandered into the laundry room to take out trim and a shelve and light and tried to take up some floor tiles. it's pretty gross, too. everywhere there was a water connection.....there was a leak. there was a florescent small light tacked to the wall...one of those kind that are about 18" long and usually mounted under a kitchen cabinet. they had the cord cut and then wired to a switch to they could turn it on when the switch was flipped on. the cord went into the light switch...and then back out at the bottom and plugged into the wall plug. how dumb was that? if you're gonna hard wire it into the switch, at least hide the cord in the wall. people!!!!

I emptied kitchen cabinets.....why do people leave junk when they move....throw that crap out. i filled a trash bag with plastic lids from who knows what...a frying pay with a broken handle....pot lids..glass and metal...a pot.....rock formations for an aquarium..along with plastic plants. many curtain rod holders...and lots of miscellaneous stuff....an allen wrench, a small double sided wrench, some fuses, etc, etc.   siggghh!!!

Each night i was so tired that i fell asleep about 8...but then woke up about 2....ready to roll. well, if i had electricity at the duck i probably would have gone on over and went to work. but i waited till daylight. one morning i just got up, took a book and a bottle of water and went downstairs, found a chair and a lamp and read till daylight. manual labor wears me out. LOL

My sister said i was no fun this weekend. i worked my house and she worked hers. we usually got together for lunch and in the evenings. but i fell asleep early. LOL

I won't get back out to the Duck for about a month. got to catch up on some quilting and then have a trip planned to visit my son in Texas. gives me time to rest my weary feet, my thumb to get all healed up from being repeatedly whacked, and scratches to heal on my hands and legs. but then i'll be anxious to go do it all over again.

Stay safe and think of me if you are doing your own demolition.

A 103 year old treasure and more....

Here's just a bit of miscellaneous 'stuff' from my 3 day demolition weekend at the Duck.

While taking window frames off, this little postcard fell out. wonder how long it was behind that window frame and was it put there on purpose.

I think it is the cutest little card. It is dated 1908 by the post office stamp....was this a pin-up girl in those days? LOL  the address on the card just had the man's name and city....but the street name added as an afterthought on the bottom corner....no street number. yet it got to where it was going. and the postage was 1 cent.

I'm going to keep this little treasure. i have found all kinds of stuff in the walls...and continue to find cd's and numerous pennies and other things. when i opened up the walls between the living room and the bedroom i found rollers at the top which told me that there was another pocket door there at one time. but it was replaced with a glass door with inserts around it. i like the glass door but would have liked the pocket door even more. here is the glass doorway that is there now...there is a door, too, but i have removed all the doors into the garage for now.

My sister took my tiny 1" tiles from the bathroom floor to use at the beast in her bathroom. after working on it for the weekend, this is what she has now.

Aren't they cute? those tiny tiles look good the way she has them laid out. she is gluing them to a netting in rows and then gluing that onto the walls. that way she doesn't have to fit in each tile individually. smart woman.

Also, before i left i embroidered out this cute SunBonnet Sue Geisha.

There is a Samuri Fred to go with this Geisha. i hope to get him done soon. they will become a wallhanging for the studio.

Stay tuned for a few demolition pictures next.

Demolition Day #3 --- Sunday

Sunday...the day of the Lord....another day of demolition....and a few prayers to the Lord so i wouldn't whack my thumb yet again. it didn't work.....i whacked it for the third time...same thumb.....it didn't even faze me this time...i think i am getting used to it. i better pray harder.

Same routine...crawl out of bed....take some ibuprophen....head on over to the duck.

Today my helper should show up...perhaps with a buddy....and this place will get cleaned up some. we agreed on 9am....but he didn't show until 9:30...not a good beginning. and, his buddy wouldn't come with him...so he brought his girlfriend. well, she was quite the worker and hauled trash for over an hour. then just went behind Rick and cleaned up after him.

I put Rick to work on the bathroom wall. i could not budge that plywood that they had nailed up there.....nails about every 4 inches....long 3 inch nails. not enough muscle in me. And it took Rick a bit of work, too. but after about an hour he got both pieces of plywood off the wall and we are now down to studs for the wall between the bathroom and the office area. yah!!!!  it's good to have help with muscle.

The bathroom door is now removed. under the ceramic tile...the wall was once purple...and see the cute fish decals there on the left?

Here is the view from the office to the bathroom

Progress. yeah, all that other stuff still has to come out of there...but the wall is gone...baby steps.

Next i put Rick to work taking the plywood out of the closet area. i had trouble there, too. the plywood was nailed securely and there wasn't a lot of manuvearablility (is that a word?...did i even spell it right?) LOL  let's just say i couldn't move around in there well enough to get some umpphh behind the crowbar. but man muscle took care of it. check it out...down to studs on the wall between the bedroom and the closet.

Along with hauling out all the trash that my sister and i had accumulated....Rick and Carrie also cleaned up all the mess that he had torn up. they were both hard workers and earned every bit of their pay. in fact, after wrestling with the bathroom plywood wall...rick said....hey, i have a small generator that i can bring next week....and some man tools....and we can do this much faster. hahahahaha    i agreed that was a good idea.

So, friday of this week will find me back out at the duck...getting ready for Rick on saturday. he will bring his generator and man tools and take out more walls. and i will be busy taking down window and door facings and baseboards and trim and try and keep ahead of him. perhaps i won't whack my thumb anymore.

Oh, and i found a sledge hammer in the bedroom wall. after finding the ice pick and the sledge hammer...my sis said if i find a body next...she is out of there. LOL     the body is probably in the basement....it is FULL of trash.

And somehow we managed to lose a hammer. i think it got shoveled up with all the plaster debris. but i went and bought 2 more hammers and another pry bar. and some red duct tape and wrapped it around the handles in the hopes it will be seen better in the trash.

So much for 3 days of destruction. now for some pretty quilting for a few days. and rest up for next weekend. what are you doing next weekend???...want to tear up stuff?

Demolition Day #2 --- Saturday

Ahhhh....a new day....crawl out of bed....bed being a relative term....bed is actually a blow up twin size mattress sitting on a cold floor with an electric blanket over it. but, hey, technically...it IS a bed. we are sleeping at the beast....where there is no heat or water....but we have a roof over our heads, tv and a refrigerator. LOL  well, we do have a small electric heater in the room.

Anyway...where was i...crawl out of bed...pop some ibuprophen....and head on over to the duck. i got there about 7am...ready to rock and roll. today's project is to take out a bedroom wall that has a closet on the other side of it. i want to remove this wall entirely and eliminate the 'closet'. in the meantime, my sis is taking tiles off the wall in the bathroom this time....she wants those, too.

It's kind of funny...when we were doing demolition at her place...the beast...i was dragging home her closet doors and cabinets and other things that i wanted for the farm. now she is taking tiles and slats and trim from the duck for the beast. we are just recyling things back and forth. LOL

Here is what that bedroom wall looked like before i worked on it. see how that wall is right up against that window. i know (hope) the original contractor didn't do that. i think somewhere along the line they put that wall up to make a 'closet' between this room and the office. the closet runs the whole length of the room and has a door from each end into each room. i don't like it and it is going.

I have removed the door and door framing from this wall. at least the plaster in this room is much thinner than in the office area. i can run my pry bar behind it and just knock it down.

When this wall was taken out....i found a pipe in the wall....coming down from the ceiling...no cap on the end of it....wonder what that was all about? when i started knocking the plaster off....i saw the end of that pipe between the slats and was thinking...what in the world is THAT?....so i pulled some slats off to take a peek. right by the end of the pipe someone drew a little arrow...pointing into the room. i wish i knew the story behind this. LOL

All the windows in the house have these cute little valance things above them. i don't know if i will put them back up or not but i am saving them for now. i don't know who added that piece of plywood over the top of the window...they are all like that. there were venetian blinds hanging right under that....the only thing i can think of is that the blinds were too short if you hung them all the way to the top of the window...so someone improvised by adding that lovely piece of plywood to cover the window....yuck!!

Just makes me wonder....what do people think about when doing these things....that is so ghetto looking. siggghh!!   under the valance scrolly thing are rods to hang curtains. AND....they are hiding beautifully detailed corner blocks at the tops of the windows. so those valance things probably won't go back up....so the corner blocks will show. i have a LOT of paint stripping to do.

I also took down a lot of ceiling tiles today. here is the bedroom ceiling before....

And after... notice my lovely ceiling fan. every room in this house has a ceiling fan.....and every single one of them is in some sort of disrepair. they will all need to be trashed and replaced.

And ceiling tiles came off the office ceiling....

And off the dining room ceiling...this ceiling is in the worst shape...there was water leakage up here from days past and it disintigrated most of the plaster ceiling. i will knock off the loose stuff but not remove slats. all the ceilings have the 1x4's up there to hold the tiles that were in place. i will take out all the staples and use those pieces of wood to attach my ceilings....whatever they may be.

My sister was studiously removing wall tiles in the bathroom and filling up a huge box to save them. there were different colors. and whoever 'remodeled' the bathroom at some point put up some fiberglass fake 'tiles' over the ceramic tiles. so that had to be removed first. it was a supreme pain in the you-know-where. by the end of the day....she had removed all the tiles from this wall....the one that i wanted to move. they had plywood under these tiles. big sheets of heavy plywood.

And, being true to form....i whacked my thumb once again today....same thumb. this time even harder...knocked off another piece of skin and turned it a lovely purple color. i'm dangerous....to myself. LOL

My sister's other job of the day was to install a new doorknob for me. the old one was giving me trouble getting in....seemed like it was all loose and about to fall apart. so i stopped by the hardware store and got a new one to make do until i get a new door. she's very handy....my sister. she just installed the knob....that ugly metal part around the door was already there.

During this tear down period....we have pretty much filled the living room, hallway and part of the dining room with bags of trash (slats)....and piles of wood and paneling and plywood. so it really was time to haul it all out to the garage to await a dumpster. but you know...tearing it all out is the fun part....hauling it out the house....down the steps....across the yard...and into the garage seemed like WORK. so, while i was at the hardware store i asked the guy if he knew someone who wanted a bit of work hauling trash for me. and as it happened, he knew a guy that was a roofer who was out of work and could use some cash. so i left him a message and he showed up and we made a deal for him to clean up after me....what a deal. so, tomorrow he will show up and haul all the debris out to the garage. it gives me more incentive to pack up more stuff into bags. LOL

I worked from 7am till about 5pm then gave it up. i don't have electric so when the sun goes down it gets a bit dark. i actually lasted until 9pm until i crashed for the night....not bad for an old lady.

Stay tuned for day 3

Demolition Day #1 ---- Friday

I got to the Duck all excited about demolition as i hadn't been there due to cold and nasty weather for a month or more. i have great visions (in my head) for the bathroom and i wanted to move the existing bathroom wall over 2 feet...so i decided to start there. the future office area is on the other side of the bathroom wall.

This is what the office wall looked like before i started....this is the left side.  see, i have a nice tall  10' ladder....my ceilings are rather tall.

Here is the right side of that wall...there is a doorway here that they sealed shut..it used to lead to a tiny 'hallway' area that went into the bathroom. see how straight that door was hanging?

This is the wall i want to move....so the first step is to rip off all that ugly warped paneling and knock out the inch thick plaster and take out the wooden slats. and take the door and door frame out. here it is after i worked my magic. LOL  you can still see all the plaster dust in the air....hahahahahaha    or perhaps it is on the camera lens. i did keep the camera in the kitchen...under wraps...but everything, including myself, was covered in plaster dust by the end of the day.

In that first pic the door is still there...but here the door and framing is gone and you can see right through the tiny hallway straight into the kitchen....that door goes down into the creepy basement.

I found some lovely old 1/2 inch thick black fabric covered wiring in the wall. i also found an old rusted ice pick in this wall.

While i was working my magic here...my sister was removing tiles from the bathroom. she fell in love with the tiny 1 inch tiles on the bathroom floor and wanted them for the beast. also...notice the toilet seat in the bathtub???....that is the bucket toilet. there is a 5 gallon bucket under that seat. LOL   the plumbing is missing parts in the basement and can't be used so we are making do. actually, we haven't used it YET....so far we are going across the alley to the Pizza Hut. when you walk in their door...the bathrooms are right there....sometimes no one notices that you popped in and out and didn't come to eat pizza. LOL   AND...since i took the door and wall out in the bathroom.....i have moved the bucket toilet to the pantry area....off the kitchen.....a nice relaxing out of the way area. hahahahahahaha 

Aren't they cute?

She has been cleaning, counting and sorting these tiny tile....i believe last count was over 2100 of them. this is what the floor looks like now.

I'll tell you...after just that little bit of work on Friday....i crashed about 9pm. i did manage to whack my right thumb early in the day and take off some hide. it sort of smarts!

But i think we got a good first day going....tomorrow will be much better....i'm sure.

Pink Cats and Geisha Girls

I've been absent a few days....but i've been busy....playing with pink, cats and geisha girls.

I have had this Geisha Girls fabric for a while...thinking it would make a good 4 patch posy quilt.

It's maybe not the BEST for the job...but i got some cool blocks. over several days i made many, many blocks....about 100 of them.  there's these....

And these...

And these and these....

Don't worry....i won't show you all of them...LOL   but i think it will be ok. i have to find my 4 Patch Posy book...i believe there should be a strip around the blocks. have to figure out how to use them. i also embroidered about a dozen 8" blocks of Japanese designs in redwork style on a pale orange fabric. i was thinking they would be in the border...but now i am leaning toward the design in the middle and these little blocks around the edges. don't know yet...still thinking.

And the Cabin Cats saga continues. in case you have lost count...i am on #6..Boxed Squares. pattern courtesy of Mary Johnson at (I think)  www.maryquilts.com     that might not be quite right....but the site is on the other computer at the house.

So far i have done 2 blocks...a dark and a light. i have 80 blocks worth cut out so that will be the focus of next week's night work....my second shift. LOL  they will be 6" finished.

And in between all that...i am working on some pink crazy quilt blocks a bit. i dyed some lace and rickrack and things hot pink. they all came out different shades of pink. rickrack hardly holds dye at all....i thought it would. love those little froggies. i had more pink scraps than i thought i did.

So now you are caught up with my crazy life at the farm. once warmer weather hits i will be into yard projects....i have a list.

Tomorrow i head to the Duck for serious wall demolition and bathroom madness. i shall be back on Tuesday with pictures (i hope) and tales of destruction.

In the meantime, carry on without me. be safe