WHAT was I thinking?

You may recall that I purchased fabric at Ikea to make a dog bed cover for the fancy new beds that we got for the dogs… I must have been having delusions of grandeur to think that I could sew a bed with 4 round bolster edges AND piping, because I couldn’t.

Oh sure, I tried. Saturday I made the pattern. Sunday I cut the fabric to make piping and then started pinning the pattern onto the fabric. Frustrated moment #1 out of, oh… maybe 100, when I couldn’t get the pins through the doubled fabric. They stuck in my fingers pretty good though.

I moved the big table and lay the fabric out on the floor again, this time single sided and started pinning. That went fairly well, except for getting dozens of pin pricks.

I don’t think I mentioned yet that I was tired – bone tired, and my head was full of cotton. I really didn’t want to be doing this, but forced myself to keep going.

Cutting went well and didn’t shed any blood.

I moved onto the piping – this would be easy I thought, after all, I’ve made piping dozens of times. My sewing machine seemed to be possessed by stubborn demons who tangled the thread and jammed the machine countless times. By the time I gave up I was near tears, not to mention so frustrated that I wanted to burn the fabric (but figured with my luck I’d burn the house down while I was at it).

I remembered wise words from my doctor – listen to your body and let it rest if it has to. Thinking back to the weeks of busyness I knew I was done for so crawled into bed and watched old movies. When I finally emerged from my quiet cocoon I felt great! Instead of frustrated tears I just felt mellow.

The dog bed still waited though… Monday morning I pinned one side – it was difficult, but I didn’t get too frustrated. Carm oiled my machine which banished the jamming demons. I got the first side sewn by the end of the day.

Tuesday morning I started back at it, determined to get it finished. Pinning, sewing, seam ripping, sewing, swearing, more swearing and then it was done. I will say that I’m under-whelmed by the result.

 

The other thing I didn’t think about: wet dog slobber spots show up as if they were outlined in fluorescent crayon. I never even thought of that. The old fleece blanket never showed a thing…

 

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward. ~Kurt Vonnegut

Master Bedroom Remodel–photos

It took 33 days from the time we ordered the flooring and purchased the paint, to when everything was put back in place. At times it seemed like forever. We had to empty the walk-in closet at the 3 day mark to make room for the flooring installers to measure. Piles of clothes were all over the living room – I had to climb over the treadmill to get to most of my clothes.

We had no idea when the floor would be installed so we worked on painting areas that didn’t require us moving the bedroom into the living room. We got the 2 bathrooms and hallway to the bedrooms painted – the first of the pink to be covered up.

Then we got the call for the hardwood – we had 1 week to prepare. We wrestled the rug out that afternoon; what a job that was! From there we did the rest of the flooring prep – staples out – check. Painting was next on our list. There was even a day of rest before the installers came. They did their work in just over 1/2 day; once they were out of the house we installed and painted the quarter round, and touched up a few spots with the green paint. Darkness descended well before we were finished those jobs.

Now for the photos – I haven’t included the ones of the painting as you’ve seen them before.

This is what the bedroom was like before the changes – pink and a bit messy.

 

 

 

Wow – was that ever pink! I gotta say though, in the morning it was like a beautiful sunrise. I suppose it felt like a warm, welcoming womb! Maybe that’s why I loved it for so long – I wanted to escape this world?

The carpet was 20 years old, and aside from the main traffic areas, and the imbedded smell of dogs, it was in fairly good shape – thankfully our builder put in quality materials. We saved the underpad – again, good quality and perhaps useful for in the basement when we get that finished.

 

 

Painting was done and the floor installed. The room looked much smaller once the floor was in – that thing about stripes I guess!

 

 

The chaos in the living room lasted until the last day. I had gotten used to it – having so much mess was almost like having no mess at all – there was nothing I could do about it so didn’t stress about getting it cleaned up. Reverse logic?

 

Yesterday – day 33 from when we ordered the wood – we loaded the contents back into our room. The closet is full (but not quite as bulging as we purged some stuff) and the furniture is in place.

I’m not sure what I think about the colour yet – sometimes I really like it, while other times I’m not so sure. It doesn’t show up properly in the photos – the lighting was dark, plus I probably had the white balance off. The green is a bit like a chameleon as the shade changes constantly. I think that I’m just a bit slow to adjust to such a huge change – you get used to things after 20 years!

 

The dogs even got new beds – I have to get to Fabricland to see about getting something to make easily washable slipcovers. (more sewing – yay – not)

I’m sure it is no surprise to you that we had a small celebration with some bubbles! Phase 3 will be coming up soon – the front hall. It will be a tricky one as there are stairs to the basement and lots of weird little walls; the laundry room is attached so we’ll tackle that at the same time. But I’m not ready to think about that yet!

 

The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. ~Maya Angelou

Dislike, like, hate, Love!

Those were the emotions that went through me today as we painted the bedroom. I had chosen the colour quickly - we were in Home Depot looking for a new colour and while I had a few promising swatches in my hand, something on the wall perpendicular to me caught my eye. It was a display for another kind of paint, and this colour reached out and grabbed me. Talk about making a quick decision on something we'll most likely live with for years!

When it first went on it was a weird green blue grey (think sea foam green) colour (this is when I first started to freak out), and as it dried it turned much darker. Against the fresh paint it looked really dark. Horrifyingly dark. I had already been freaking out about the "sea foam green" and wasn't sure what I thought about the darker colour. Not to worry – the paint kept changing colours like a chameleon until it dried to a lovely green tinged with blue. I was happy, and Carm has been saying how much he loves the colour the whole afternoon and now wants to paint the living room the same shade (not gonna happen!).

We used a different type of paint this time - don't get me wrong, we were happy with the Behr of the yellow - but this Behr Marquee brand is fantastic and covers with one coat! So instead of painting a room three times - primer, paint, paint - it is just a once over. LOVE. My aching back says that it is worth every extra penny.

My new tablet is working out great - I didn't bother connecting the two together and just using the micro sd card that was already in the old one to transfer data. Easy peasy. Files are transferred :-)  This morning I hooked it up to my PC, and using iSyncr, synchronized with the dreaded iTunes. Playlists and music transferred in just a few minutes. Happy :-) Now I just need some bluetooth speakers or headphones (hint hint Santa CarmClause).

Before the work started I got out into the field with the dogs. It was freezing and there had been a heavy frost – the low sun made the field sparkle as if it were dusted with diamonds.

 

'Paint only what you see,' his hero Millet had admonished. 'Imagination is a burden to a painter,' Auguste Renoir had told him. 'Painters are craftsmen, not storytellers. Paint what you see.' Ah, but what they hadn't said, hadn't warned him about, was how much you could see.  ~Christopher Moore, Sacra Bleu: A Comedy d'Art

The Transformation–a photo study

I’m pretty sure nobody cares all that much, but I want to have these photos print out in my annual book (a very wordy photo album!).

Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of our bathroom before we started tearing it apart with its light fixture that the 80s desperately wanted back... but the pink is still there, tired and dated (but oh, how I loved it for so many years).

~ Before

~ Along the way

~ After

 

And finally the main bathroom

~

I am so looking forward to getting the new hardwood for our bedroom and changing the paint. That will be a huge transformation!

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways. ~Oscar Wilde

Photo Essay–New Camper

Here are a “few” photos of the conversion from our Titanium 29e34rl and the new Titanium 30e35sa. It was a process!

We haven’t settled on a name for it/him/her yet, but there are 3 in the running so far: Tardis (Dr. Who) ; Brownie (cow – cottage on wheels, and it is a bit brown so brownie, a good name for a cow) ; or Howie (home on wheels). Any suggestions? Please!

I spent a few days unloading all the stuff from the 29. There was tons of stuff and I started to freak out a bit (okay, a lot) as I knew there wasn’t as much storage on the new camper.

A break with the dogs. The mornings are frosty these days, but luckily for us the weather held out so that we could pick up the new camper. No snow yet! I’ve even been lucky enough to be able to leave the slides out so we can get all settled in.

The poodles are way overdue for a hair cut, but I’ve been putting it off until we were back from getting the new camper – I wasn’t sure if they’d need their hair for the sleepover.

On the night we picked it up: Morry’s had us all hooked up so that we could spend the night. I brought a few things along to make it feel (a bit) like home then we settled down for some junk food and a quiet night.

On our drive home on Friday. Carm did a good job getting us there and back, and especially getting us through Toronto in one piece. It was a pretty tiring few days though – I’m not sure we’d want to do more than 2 long driving days in a row – something to think about for our trip next summer (anything good to see in Thunder Bay? It might be a good spot for a day layover).

 

Now the jigsaw puzzle starts. How to fit X amount of stuff into x amount of storage…

Gulp. This and more has to shoehorn in…

(Mostly) all done. I’d like a slightly different fabric for the pillows but I’m pretty happy with how it has turned out. It is much fancier than what we have at home, but since we’ll be camping… I guess we should be pretty formal? We took one of the recliners out to make room for Grace’s cage, which we haven’t put it in yet as we’d like to find a non-toxic paint to freshen it up. I love the hardwood floors and imagine that it will be much easier to keep things clean.

Doesn’t this look inviting? We will be taking the two back chairs out though and tucking dog beds against the wall. That will leave a bed for Bella and Kabira, Spike will be under Grace’s cage. It will be nice to have the beds all tucked away – no more Bella underfoot!

Kabira was enjoying the fireplace yesterday afternoon. It adds a nice ambience as well as kicking out 1500 watts of heat.

I started to lay out where I want to put the pictures. There isn’t much wall space but I like to have a few things hung up, it makes it seem more like home. For the kitchen we got hanging thing from Ikea (you can’t see it in the picture above, it is tucked under the counter – the baskets hook onto a rail that is mounted on the wall. It is very flexible and will give some extra counter space. One of the baskets is a cutlery stand – I like to keep the cutlery that we use all the time out of the drawer – the drawers are a bit&% to open! Once we see how this works out we will install another one on the other wall.

Grace will have two windows to look out of. I think she’ll be very happy here.

We were looking through the pile of manuals looking for the stereo system one. One of our jobs this winter will be to categorize everything into file folders. It would making finding stuff much easier! (and it will give us our rv fix).

Happy happy!