More from The Woods house…

I wish I had taken some before photos of the living area of the Woods house back in May… you’d really be impressed now! But I didn’t. You’ll just have to take my word for it that a major transformation has taken place.

Mostly we threw away the stuff that just had to go, and then I cleaned up the space. Everything with upholstery was too dusty and dirty to keep. The carpet remnant was gross. Some of the chairs and tables were too rickety to trust… It’s all gone now!

The walls in this part of the house had one coat of paint already, but the ones I could reach got another coat of bright white paint. The wood walls and high ceilings are going to stay the way they are.

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The turquoise is the new coffee table, at least for now. It adds a nice pop of color and it’s already there. The wood chairs are solid, but the webbing in the seats had rotted away. Steve cut plywood to fit and I found cushions at Lowe’s. They are very comfortable now!

The upstairs is big and will mostly be used for beds. It gets hot up there in the summer.

There is a wood stove that will be wonderful on cold winter days (and nights). This area is way, way cleaner now than it was just days ago.

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The black chairs will have blue cushions to match the other two chairs. I spray painted the old, stained lamp shade white—it’s on an interesting lamp on the table. There is another shade that I’ll spray paint when I go back to paint the bedroom.

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The dining table and chairs are solid and comfortable.

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Steve and I both are pretty happy with the results of our efforts. This is a nice place and should see more use now :-).

Working on The Woods house…

While I was out of town teaching in Indiana last week, Steve made progress on the shed. I’ll share more pictures of that later because today I want to show you how the work inside the house is coming now that ‘stuff’ has been moved to the shed.

BEFOREs

Here’s the bathroom, before cleaning and painting…

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And the bigger bedroom, downstairs…

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And the room that used to be way too full of the ‘stuff’ that is now in the shed, or that has gone to metal recycling, or that just had to be thrown out… There was a lot of stuff in this room!

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AFTERs

You know, elbow grease and paint will help any interior. The bathroom still needs a toilet paper holder and towel rack (or 2), but that can come later. It’s getting a new toilet in a week or two (yay!).

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This bedroom is in good shape now. It just needs a couple of bed platforms, a night stand for the lamp, and maybe some sort of table to put stuff on. Steve has to tape and bed the other bedroom (that used to be the storage room) before I can paint it.

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Steve built a  cabinet-high table on locking casters to make the kitchen more usable. It will look better when his tools are off of it :-). He used reclaimed wood which was nice.

Since there isn’t a refrigerator in the house, we figured the bottom shelf would be a great place to put coolers and the top surface will be good for food prep.

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After 2 days of work, my hands are sore. I’m glad I don’t have more jobs to do until the other room is ready to paint. Steve, on the other hand, is still cleaning up the site, building bed platforms, and whatever else it is that he can do better than I can. Everybody needs project, right?

I’ll post a few more pictures tomorrow, and then later in the week or next week.

You just don’t want to miss this…

I sent a newsletter last Friday to say that Linda and I formed Piece O’ Cake Designs 20 years ago. Amazing! We wanted to celebrate with you because it’s only because of you that we are still here. So, until August 3, 2014, everything (except the Stella lamps and any eBook or print on demand book that comes directly from C&T) is 20% off. Click here to read the newsletter to find the coupon code. (I don’t want to put it here because months from now someone will read this post and be unhappy that the code no longer works.)

I don’t expect to have a sale like this again, at least not for a very long time. So if you were waiting until the perfect time to order something, this is it. We have run out of some things but have re-ordered. Some fabric may sell out and not come back so if there’s something you want order it soon.

Happy anniversary!

A wonky house show and tell…

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Gail from Ontario sent me a photo of the little quilt she finished from a block started in my class at the London Friendship Quilter’s Guild in Sept 2013. She added some button flowers and embroidery and hand quilted the block into a little wall hanging. It’s way cute!

I am always happy to see the projects that you all make from our patterns. Happy stitching!

Summer time is flying by…

Although my husband tells me that time passes by exactly the same way, minute by minute, day by day, I swear that time moves faster as I get older. It makes him sigh, deeply. At any rate, I can hardly believe it has been a week since I last wrote. (FYI: the new bras are amazing! I hope you found time to shop as well.)

I’ve been working on a new quilt for the revised edition of our Piecing book. I can only show you a snippet of it, otherwise it would spoil the surprise for when the book comes out…

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This is the pile of scraps that were left from cutting strips. It’s a very happy quilt!

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I enjoy piecing and am finding it fun to crank out some quilts… as long as I still have applique to do at night :-).

Taking care of the ‘girls’…

After we discussed Maya Angelou‘s ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings‘ at my book club last week, we found ourselves talking about bras. I’m not sure how we got there, but I know I did some of the talking because I had recently learned things I didn’t know about bra fitting. As it turns out, Jacquie knew way more… and she shared links!

The video by Caty 135 is worth the time it takes to watch it. Here’s what I figured out. I have been in a bra that was both too big and too small since I have had boobs. Sigh.

And then you should read this blog entry from Brittany, Herself. Very informative.

As it turns out, cup sizes are not the same at each band size. It is a proportional relationship. I am not particularly well-endowed and had mostly been fitted in C cups. For that to fit my body, I had to have a bigger band size. I’ve been covered, but never supported, forever. Amazingly enough, I am now in a 32 or 34 band and, gasp, a D or DD cup. That cup size on a bigger band would be bigger as well. On a smaller person than me, that same D cup would be smaller.

If you already knew all this and have been in the correct bra size forever, good for you! If you know someone who obviously needs to know what you know, please do gently share the information. Lorna, Elanor, and I went to Nordstrom’s today and we each came home with bras that fit and we are happy, happy, happy!