Today's task was washing the walls to get ready to paint. I thought I would breeze through that by noon and begin painting today. Boy, did I miscalulate! It's going to take as long to clean the walls as it did to scrape off the popcorns. If I'm lucky I'll begin painting tomorrow. But all is not lost – we have made a lot of progress.

This is my sister's room, before.

And later:

Wallpaper gone. The stuff on the walls came off easily. The border that you can still see here took 4 hours to remove – with stripper!!! I was not happy. Notice that the carpet, pad and tack strip are gone. As is the light fixture and all the switch plates – everywhere in the house. Steve will replace all the plugs and switches with white ones.

Below is the dining room, before.

There's oh-so-much going on color-wise in this room, before. Below you can see that the carpet (and the vinyl tile below it) is also gone, along with the curtains and the (bad) ceiling fan. The wallpaper border is gone as well but you can't see that.

All the ceiling fans are out, all the carpet, pad and tack strip are out. The vinyl flooring is out. Most of the walls are washed. I seriously hope to be painting on Monday.

I also spent 1.5 hours at Lowe's this morning with Mom and Christy ordering the countertops for the kitchen and bathrooms. They're getting the LG version of corian. It'll be lovely – and no seams. I want the same thing for our kitchen one of these days. Mom and Christy are pretty excited – this house is going to be so cute and fresh and new.

I should mention that the previous owner smoked in the house. I've been really surprised at the grit and black residue on the walls. The stench is about gone now that the carpets and curtains are gone, the ceilings are scraped and many walls have been washed. I'm so glad I quit smoking back in the day. If the walls look this bad goodness knows how her lungs look.

…on the ceilings! It took 1.5 days but I got 1500 square feet of popcorns off of the ceillings at mom's new house. And I got all but one wallpaper boarder off at the same time. Luckily the wallpaper mostly came off easily. Steve was busy doing all sorts of things in the same time-frame:

• taking the fan blades off of all the way-too-many ceiling fans
• taking off all the outlet covers and switch plates
• removing all curtains and curtain hardware
• taking out carpet, pads, and tack strip (there's more of that to do)
• beginning to strip cabinet doors
• and more that I can't remember

We have both been pretty tired at the end of the day but floating in the pool helps a lot. Mom wants to help but can't so I asked her to bake us a cake and she did! We are having cake at every meal and that helps my attitude a lot. Christy is on for soup. My initial estimate was 6 weeks to get the house in shape. That time frame is getting shorter by the day.

Here's my tip for taking popcorn off ceilings: buy a canister sprayer. I got a $15 Hudson sprayer in the garden section at Lowe's and I wish I had had it yesterday. Yesterday I used a squirt bottle and my hands are not happy. The cheap canister sprayer worked like a charm. Soak the area in front of you, wait just few minutes and scrape. My other tip is that it works best if you are in shape. The pilates and weight-lifting are paying off big time!

I've taken a lot of before photos that I'll share as we work on the house. This is the living room, looking out the front window, which is the only window in this room. It is orange and gray with a questionable floral wallpaper border.

The previous owner smoked in the house so every surface has to be dealt with. The ceilings are scraped (yeah!). Tomorrow I'll be washing the walls and then I begin painting. Everything – trim, doors, ceilings, walls – gets painted. The curtains are gone. The blinds are goings to be replaced by slightly better ones. The carpets and flooring are going out the door and then we'll lay Pergo.

The living room was almost the last room for popcorn removal and I thought to stop and take a photo. I hope it shows the popcorn/no-popcorn areas.

What popcorns do is cast shadows. The contrast between light and dark catch your eye. The bigger the popcorns, the worse it is. A smooth ceiling is quiter which is good because mostly you don't want the ceiling to be what you see when you look at a room. When you look at the photo above, do your eyes go to the swath of popcorn in the middle? That's why the popcorns are gone now.The rooms feel higher, lighter, calmer. I just wish I had the time and energy to take the remaining popcorn off the ceilings at MY house!

I always say it's good to be busy but I admit that I'll be very happy when this project is over and I'm back to regular busy. That said, it was kind of fun today. I enjoy occasional days of hard work where you can really see what you have accomplished. And mom and Christy are going to love this place once it's done.

I have been so very busy lately that I haven't had time to look at the blogs I normally visit. So this afternoon I stole a few minutes and looked at old Spidatter posts. That led me to Jillian Tmaki's embroidered book covers for Penguin. Oh my – they make me want to embroider!

So from there I went to Jillian Tmaki's actual blog post about these covers and I got to see more book covers. Now I really want to embroider! Then I went to the top of her blog and today's post is about a quilt. As I scrolled through her posts and read more about her I realized that I have seen her illustrations before and loved them.

All of this leads to inspiration. Just looking at her sketches makes me want to pick up my pencil which is good because I need to be working on the designs for our next book. I feel better! As I start scraping popcorns off of mom's ceilings tomorrow I will be thinking about what to draw.

In other news – Chuck is a boy. I took him to the vet today. He is about 7 weeks old, 1.5 lbs, definitely male, and they predict he will be a handful. He also has worms and parasites and protozoans – bad stuff that we caught at a good time. We'll be continuing to give him medicine for 9 days. And, for those of you who know we have 2 other cats, they are apparently not in real danger of getting anything from Chuck because they don't go near him or his litter box. So it's a good thing that they are best buddies yet!

I need more space in the spare bedroom for an office. The twin bed and armoire had to go and be replaced by a Murphy bed. Have you priced those things? Not inexpensive. So my trusty husband, Steve, said that he could build one.

We ordered the special hardware from Create-A-Bed and luckily the bed plans came with it. Instructions state clearly that you MUST NOT DEVIATE FROM THE PLANS!!! He didn't.

Every new project seems to require a great power tool. We bought a 30 gallon air compressor and a Husky Pro Paint Sprayer and I used it to paint the bed. More on that later. It was an interesting experience.

I bought a mattress that will be delivered this evening. Other than swooning over the price tag that wasn't a chore. Steve is going to build shelves for either side of the bed which will also require painting. We are having a seriously busy summer but by the fall our house should be back to normal and, God willing, my mom and sister's house will be perfect and they will be in it!

Whatever the name, the kitten is getting bigger! The kids are calling her Chuckles but I lean toward Chuck.

She (or he) is not big on posing. She won't be still unless she's asleep on the sofa.

I had to poke her to get her to open her eyes for this one.

But once awake, she played some before heading back to the sofa to sleep.

I've gotten the quilting done on the quilt for the magazine. Wish I could share but it's supposed to be a surprise. I did use hydrogen peroxide on the blood spot and it worked pretty well, even after I had heat-set it. Thank you to those who clued me in on this one.

I have been clearing out a closet. I found a #50 Bernina 3-sole walking foot and fifteen 9mm bobbins that don't fit any of my machines. The walking foot should fit the newer Berninas since it is the only one on their website right now. It would probably fit my new 220 but I got one to use with it when I bought it. The 9mm bobbins don't fit anything I have.

The #50 walking foot was $180 when I bought it which makes my head hurt now. If any of you want to make an offer on it, please leave a comment and I'll email you back. Someone could get a bargain :-).

Mom and Christy are doing fine. They close on the house down the street next Thursday. Steve and I have cleared our July calendars as much as possible so that we can do the remodeling. I'll take lots of before and after photos. It's going to be very cute!

Mr. Roboto* is cute, but not really amazing. What is amazing is the $25,386.00 donation that Moira and Adam Dewar of Island Batik, Inc. made to the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative! That is a huge and generous gift to such a worthy cause. I admit to being very impressed. Read more about it here.

*Elanor came over this afternoon to make another robot. Jack was not in on this session so Elanor got to use the tools. We were both surprised at how much faster it was to make this one – and it stands up better. I now need to gather some more good cans and other things for robot parts!