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.

Best baby announcement, ever…

First, let me clearly state that no one that I know of in my family is pregnant or otherwise expecting a new arrival. But our friends, Karen and Hunt, are indeed expecting a brand new grandbaby. They made a youtube video with the other set of expectant grandparents that is just too good not to share. Enjoy!

Summer project—2014…

If you have read my blog long, you know that Steve and I usually work on some sort of big ‘house’ project during the summer. Since we just had our house remodeled last year, we don’t have a project to do at our house. We helped Chris with his bathroom remodel in the spring and early summer. Now what?

We decided to work on the McCarley Woods. Howard and Marian McCarley donated a wonderful property to Austin College a few years ago. It is primarily used by faculty and students in the biology department.

The cabin on the property is solid but needs a bit of spiffing up. Steve and I decided that this would be a great project but first we needed a place to put the tools that are occupying one of the bedrooms. Se we decided to build a shed!

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Steve designed an 8′ x 8′, pier and beam structure. Last weekend he put in the foundation and built the framework for the front and back wall. Tuesday morning (after Pilates) I showed up to do my part which is to be both foreman and gopher.

I helped him raise the end walls and secure them in place. Then the framing for the side walls went up. After that, we added the 2′ tall extension that he had prepared to the top of the front wall. The roof will slope from front to back.

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Christopher joined us after lunch and I, for one, was very happy. The siding is Hardie paneling and it is heavy! Drilling holes and driving screws through it was hard on their hands… I have a feeling I could not have done it at all.

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Once the back and two sides were paneled, Steve and I hoisted and slid 4′ x 8′ sheets of chip board up to Chris, who nailed them to the rafters. Next we sent up metal roofing sheets. All of that sounds a lot easier than it was :-).

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It was a long day and we called it quits at 6:00. Wednesday it rained. Luckily I had found time to put a coat of water seal on the plywood floor while the guys were doing other things so it didn’t peel apart.

This morning Steve went out early (because I went to Pilates again) and started getting Hardie panels cut and installed on the front wall.

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I helped him get the remaining, small wall panels up. Next we worked on enclosing the roof rafters to keep the critters out. And we wanted to trim out the corners of the shed before we broke for lunch. At some point it started to drizzle, and then rain.

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We were wet and muddy when we called it quits at 12:30. Steve is going to build the doors later and maybe we can hang them Saturday. We’ll paint the shed in a couple of weeks, when I am back after teaching in Indiana next week.

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It is solid and functional. Once painted it might even be cute!

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!

Taking a ride on the way-back machine…

You know those emails that you sometimes get? The ones with lots of photos that have been forwarded so many times that you have no idea who actually wrote the first email? Every now and then I get a really good one. This was the subject line: a dose of nostalgia. Thank you, Nancy for sending it :-).

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I made these, by the dozens! Gotta say that they were lousy potholders but they kept me busy. My mom surely loved that part. Below are my grandmothers good highball glasses. Looks like she wasn’t the only one who had them.

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I wonder what happened to my diary? It looked just like this.

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I think Mom’s table and chairs were pink. Or red.

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I hated this vacuum, with a passion. But my mother loved it.

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My first mascara… I don’t miss it one little bit. For those too young to know, you wet the brush and swished it on the dark cake of mascara and then applied to your lashes. What a mess it was!

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I miss the feel of this phone in my hand, and the sound of the dial. The noise was good in both directions. Dial enough and it could make your finger hurt.

Now that I think of it, I miss the experience of talking on an old phone. Talking on the phone was more special then than it is now. We didn’t just call for any little thing—and we for sure didn’t call long distance often. I don’t miss that part—I love being able to call anywhere in the country as if I am calling across town.

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I have Mom’s watch that is similar to this one. I wish it could be made to work.

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I wish I could find these diaper pins now, for Bear who wears cloth diapers now.

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Remember this nasty glue? It dried brown and didn’t work. What’s to love?

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I was a tomboy and played cowboys and Indians with the neighborhood boys when I was 6 or 7. We all had metal cap guns that these strings of caps fit in. I remember the smell of the burning powder and paper! I suspect that is a toy that cannot be found these days.

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Hose, that came in a box, and required a garter belt. I am so thankful that hose are out of fashion.

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Remember the roller rink?

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I still have my bronzed baby shoes! and several leather baby shoes that didn’t quite make it to the bronzer. I don’t know why I love them, but I do.

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How could something be both gross and good at the same time? I actually preferred the cherry Luden’s cough drops, which are still around.

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Oh, if only the penmanship the nuns tried to teach me had stuck. I type much better than I write by hand.

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Anodized aluminum glasses are pretty but they sweat too much and, as I recall, they have a subtle metallic taste. Even so, they are just too pretty! If I had any, I’d use them.

I tried googling ‘a dose of nostalgia’ and did not find the source for these images but there were some interesting pages. If you want to, use ‘the google‘ and see what you find!