Joe Recycles, Reuses

Joe did a neat reuse project with his old duffle bag...he turned it into a log carrier (we have a lot of fires in the fireplace). The bag had a broken zipper and was just like this one...which is his new one.
He cut the ends off... and across the top on each side, close to where the handles attach. Note the concentration on his face. Cracks me up, that man. So serious.
Works great and is easier on the arms and sleeves than carrying wood in your bare arms!

Here's a poll I got at Starrgirl's:

1. Explain what ended your last relationship? I'm still in my last relationship...almost 25 years.

2. When was the last time you shaved? Last night.

3. What were you doing this morning at 8 a.m.? Brushing my teeth getting ready for work

4. What were you doing 15 minutes ago? Taking pictures for stuff I'm putting on eBay

5. Are you any good at math? I'm good enough to get along alright

6. Your prom night? Was fun...I went with Joe. We've known each other that long. And we double dated with my sister and the boy who is now her husband! Occasionally those high school romances do work out!

7. Do you have any famous ancestors?Nope.

8. Have you had to take a loan out for school? Gosh yes. I was absolutely broke when I was in college.

9. Do you know the words to the song on your myspace profile? Don't have one.

10. Last thing received in the mail? A new Home Companion magazine-yea!!

11. How many different beverages have you had today? 2: water and diet coke

12. Do you ever leave messages on peoples answering machine? Sure. Otherwise I'd never reach anyone.

13. Who did you lose your CONCERT virginity to? Little River Band

14. Do you draw your name in the sand when you go to the beach? Naturally...doesn't everyone?

15. What was the most painful dental procedure you have had? all four impacted wisdom teeth out at once

16. What is out your back door? A screened-in porch...one of my favorite places in the summer.

17. Any plans for Friday night? Maybe go to see the movie Miss Potter

18. Do you like what the ocean does to your hair? My hair looks bad most of the time...being by the ocean just gives me a great and pleasant excuse for it!

19. Have you ever received one of those big tins of 3 different popcorns? No.

20. Have you ever been to a planetarium? Yup, several. Adler in Chicago is great!

21. Do you re-use towels after you shower? Sure for a few days...we'd be doing laundry 24/7 otherwise

22. Some things you are excited about? I'm excited about drawing and going to see the show Wicked pretty soon. I'm excited that I'm finally getting my basement organized....quite the exciting life I lead.

23. What is your favorite flavor of JELLO? Cherry

24. Describe your keychain. Church key, home key, car key, bike key. Discount cards for supermarket and sporting good store. Unfortunately that keyring is, ahem, misplaced not lost, Joe, so I'm using a spare.

25. Where do you keep your change? In pockets and all over the bottom of my purse...see how organized I am?

26. Do you sleep with the door to your room open or closed? Open a crack

27. Did you read this far? Consider yourself tagged.That would be me!!

New Books!

My sweet father-in-law gave me some cash for Christmas. I used some of it to treat myself at the bookstore: Cloth, Paper Scissors I used to get in the mail, but I must have let the subscription expire since I haven't received it yet. Must fix that. Where Women Create by Jo Packham is a lovely book just packed with inspiration. I have my sewing/art stuff in one of our bedrooms and I am starting to think over all the things I would like to do to make that room easy to use and an inspiring place to be.Well the Christmas decorations have to start coming down tomorrow. Before they do, I thought I'd share my favorite decoration. Since we celebrate Christmas, the story of Christ is central to our holiday. We put the nativity in the center of our home this year...on the dining room buffet. The figures are by Fontanini and we started buying them when our kids were little because they are unbreakable. I liked the idea of the kids being able to move the figures around. Our brother-in-law made the stable for us and we just love it. Over the stable I've hung a star that is one of the ornaments from Germany that the great grands brought with them.Isn't this cute? It's my dad and me on New Year's Eve 1962. Each of us with bottled refreshment. We lived in Hawaii in military housing. Isn't that pink couch terrific?! Mom says the furniture was really nice and came with 2 sets of custom slipcovers so you could change the look. And I thought that was a new idea.

My plan for the New Year is to set a couple of goals at the beginning of each month instead of the usual New Year's resolutions. This month I want to get the valance made for the kit/family room and make a collage I've been mulling over for a while now. I hope everyone has a good 2007.

Kitchen Today

Today our kitchen looks like this. Our TV can hide behind a roll down door. Behind the black glass is a VCR and stuff-the black glass so you can use the remote while the door is closed. At the far right you see a smidge of our next project...the stair and area at the bottom of the stairs is currently gutted.
I think the undercounter lights make a huge difference. We used nice halogen lights and they are on a dimmer. I'm currently considering and trying to convince DH to remove the lights over the sink and put in cans behind that valance....because I'd like to hang more plants in there. We reused all our old appliances (20+ years old) to save money. We replaced the dishwasher with a quieter one (Bosch) and I love it...you can't tell it's running unless you lay your hand on it. We are hoping to replace the stove and fridge with black ones this year.
This is what you see when you come in the back door. The black spot on the floor is the hind end of our napping dog. January's goal: get the valance finished for over the window. I had Joe put an outlet up there for Christmas lights, but it is supposed to be hidden by the valance. The cabinets around the fireplace are extra deep because of the depth of the fireplace. The cabinet to the right of the fireplace has roll out shelves so I can reach the back of them easily.

The floors were a money saving measure that we ended up liking very well. We wanted wood but the wood floors we priced out were just not going to fit in our budget. I just could not see putting this big an expanse of vinyl in our old house (we do have it in the bathrooms). We ended up installing car siding with the flat side up and staining it dark enough to contrast with the cabinets some. It's rustic, and not for someone who cannot stand to see their floors get worn, since pine is a soft wood. We like it though. It's easy to clean and it seems to be holding up.
This is standing at the sink looking back. We use bottled water so we put in place for that. I figured if we ever opted to get rid of the water bottle, we could put shelves in that spot for cookbooks...or wine storage. There are recycling bins in the big drawer under the water.
Behind the couch is our computer desk....so you see, from where I am I can see the TV, the computer, and the fireplace.....and I'm a step away from the fridge. This is definitely a favorite room for everybody. I'm rarely alone when I cook anymore and I love that. Used to be, every one was in the front of the house watching TV together and I was way back here in that old brown and orange kitchen cooking by myself. This is much better!

We put the backsplash in a year after we "finished" the kitchen. It's tumbled marble we found at a home improvement store. The counter is corian-like laminate edged with solid pieces of the same in a darker color. I like it. It's easy to clean, not over the top expensive and looks good after 4 years.

Story of the kitchen is in 5 posts. In order they are:
Before
Money Saving Cosmetic Fix
Big Remodel-walls come down
Paint and Cabinets Going In
and this post which is where we currently are!

Paint and Cabinets

I painted the walls before the cabinets came....it isn't really a teal as it appears here....actually it is more of a woodsy green. Looks good with the hickory.
The French doors lead to a closet that we built into one end of the room. Before this we had only a tiny closet for all downstairs storage. Now that closet is a broom closet, and we hang our coats in this new closet. Dick, our wonderful cabinet maker kneels on the counter to install an upper cabinet. We just had the hickory clearcoated to let the natural color show.
My husband Joe, in the plaid, helps install the counter. I love the nice big window over the sink.
This is how it looked when they left the day before Christmas in 2002....well, imagine a little different paint color. The glass in the upper doors is beveled and the cabinets are lit from within. Tomorrow when I have some daylight, I'll take some pics as it looks today. We are the slowest of remodelers, so we are actually still working on some projects in this room.

The Kitchen Big Remodel

On the other side of the refrigerator wall was this room:

It was so narrow you really could not have a sofa in front of the fire place and still get around it. We were using it as a office/sewing room/ junk room (obviously!). Ugly rock on the fireplace, with cork squares above (which I painted green in an attempt to reduce the ugliness). Unfortunate because you had to walk through the end of the room to get to the bathroom we used all the time. In my defence, we had started to tear this room up to clear it out for the remodel when this pic was taken.

Here's that baby boy using a power tool to bust up rock.And Joe keeping a watchful eye on him. As you can see under the wallpaper was ugly, cheap panelling.

Looks better already! This all started because we just wanted to make this room pleasant to live in...maybe as an office. At this point my mom and I came in started musing about what a nice kitchen it would be if we could knock that wall on the right down. Joe decided that maybe we could and so the wall came down and the kitchen got knocked out.

In this picture, Joe and our BIL Kevin are working on getting the two floors the same level....the family room was an addition and an inch or so different from the kitchen. That's a new window behind them and over the sink area.

During this time Joe's job took him out of town for months at a time....so I cooked in the dining room where we moved our appliances and washed dishes in the new restaurant sink in the laundry room. We expected this to last 6 months but it streached to 2 years....pushing my sanity to the edge.
We decided to have our cabinets made by Dick Leonard in Cornell, IL. Using his software, this is the plan we came up with. We wanted the kitchen to be able serve as a sitting area also...so I wouldn't be lonely cooking any more. We left the fireplace where it was and planned built-ins around it. We have a sofa by the fire, but it would be cool to have a big table there if you wanted to have an eat in kitchen. We eat in the dining room all the time.

More in the next post......

Sanity Saving, Money Saving...First After

As I mentioned in the last post, we needed to do something to the kitchen so we could live there and not go crazy. My husband came from a long line of "don't paint wood" folks. I needed light! So since this is basically "my office" and I spend a lot of time in there, I convinced him that it would be ok to paint those cabinets. I painted them all in oil base paint...and I am glad I did because we lived with it like this for many years and that paint wore very well. Walls were painted a pretty yellow and the orange formica was replaced with more formica in an easier to live with color. We still did not build more cabinets which is why you see the microwave hanging from straps and missing cabinetry next to and over the fridge. We did put new hinges and hardware on the cabinets though.

The little door to the right is the entrance to the "broken bathroom."
As you can see this was when we moved the washer and dryer out of our unpleasant basement and for a long time they lived here in the kitchen. On the other side of the fridge wall was a truly ugly, small family room. Tomorrow, I'll try to round up some pics of that and show you how we opened it all up for a nice big "keeping room."

Kitchen Remodel Part One-The Before

This post will start the story of our kitchen remodel. It will take several posts because first we just did cosmetic fix up so we did not go crazy. Then eventually we did a real, true, bite the bullet and spend money remodel. But first, when we moved here 19 years ago our kitchen looked like this:

It featured very dark brown cabinets made of some kind of unattractive wood, a very small north facing aluminum window, and several layers of unattractive vinyl flooring. Not to mention that it was just yucky......tons of cleaning before we moved in. Yes this is my unattractive stuff in here---but rememeber it was 1988. I had a lot of unfortunate pseudo-country decorating stuff.


This is our adorable son making OJ. He was a joy....he's 6 foot 5 inches now! And still a joy, but back to the kitchen. It was just depressing and we just had to do something because with a little one and another on the way, that kitchen was not getting remodeled anytime soon.

Befores and Afters

These are from a project we did a few years ago........but sometimes it's nice to look back and remind yourself that we are progressing. We bought our old house in sad condition and basically we have been working on it for 19 years. We do pretty much everything ourselves since both of us are handy. Joe especially. He is an electrician and an engineer and can figure out almost anything. In this pic he had already busted out the old tub.

This really was the bathroom from hell. There was just nothing to redeem it except that all the plumbing worked...I realize that's no small thing. But just look at it. Cheap plastic everything. Depressing.

Now that's better! This is the same corner where the tub was. We moved our washer and dryer in here...they started in the yucky basement, then moved to the kitchen, and now they have a real home. I wanted a restaurant sink in there so bad, but it just wasn't in the budget. Then I went to a moving sale...and the people moving were restaurant owners....I got this sink still in the crate, brand new for $30. I could not believe it! In this photo you can see a little bit of Joe's custom drop ceiling. It's all made of wood and you can move some of the panels. This is because we plan to put a bath in our master bedroom someday and the plumbing for that is right above this ceiling....we wanted to be able to access it easily.

I wanted it light and bright in here, since laundry is not my favorite chore. We kept the stool and sink, because we really needed to keep a second bathroom on our first floor.
You will find out that I love maps. I just think they are beautiful. For years I had been saving the maps out of National Geographic Magazine and I used them to paper the walls in here. I sealed them with a couple of coats of water based poly so I could wipe them clean.

We had the old ugly bathroom for almost 15 years....we mostly tried to keep the door shut and not use it because just looking at it was depressing. When our son was a couple of years old he called this "the broken bathroom" because we never used it. After that we all called it the broken bathroom! This is soooo much nicer!

Christmas!

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care. I was inspired by all the recycled sweaters I've been seeing on blogs, so I made new stockings for my son and daughter. I meant to make one for Joe and Louie too, but ran out of time. The "Joyce" stocking was made for me by my Nana when I was a baby. Mom and Dad gave it to me last year. I had to do a little reinforcing on the hanger---you know it's probably an "antique" now! LOL Joe got the santa hat this year.
We had the grands and my sister's family over today. Yummy feast.
Louie and his new toy. He opens his own presents.

It's Christmas Eve!

I've stayed up so late fiddling with pictures that it's now Christmas Eve. I spent the day cleaning and putting the finishing touches on decorating. Our family comes on Christmas day, with more family coming for our town's New Year's celebration. So I feel like I have another whole week to enjoy the decorations.
Here's what I put inside the coffee table...I had to go raid my mom's ornament stash to get enough to fill the trays. It's sparkly and pretty though!!
The outside of our front door is painted berry red...one of these days I want to paint the inside the same. Aren't these curtains wonderful? Someone put a lot of time into making these. I found them in a box of stuff I got an an auction.

Here's the top of the TV cabinet. The map is an old school map...I loooove old maps.

Tonite I started making some new stockings out of sweaters I felted in the washing machine. I got one done. As you can tell, many times I do things at the last minute. but then I don't have little children like many of the bloggers I read. Things are definitely less hectic on Christmas Eve when your kids are bigger. Tomorrow is for church and cooking!

Christmas Goodies

I found these at the local antique mall. The little reindeer hanging was 4.50 and the crocheted ornaments only 2.50 each. I love them....I'd sure want more than that if I crocheted them!I arranged them outside the back door on the little shelf that holds extra shoes. Now it's starting to feel like Christmas! When I get the nativity up tomorrow, I will start to feel like I'm ready for Christmas. Tomorrow I'll find something to do with the crocheted ornaments. Love the old fashioned green on them!

Christmas Cards

Sometimes when you are a thrifty soul, you just love the chance to do something with only the supplies you have on hand. That's how I made our cards this year. I already had the pack of card blanks and envelopes, scrapbooking supplies, ink and stamps. Left from some previous year when I aspired to making cards but ran out of time. We always put a picture in our cards, so this year that was the only thing I had to buy. They're simple, but I like how they turned out. Some people would probably call me cheap. But not me, I like to think of it as good ole yankee frugality. I have to admit though, that whatever I saved in cash, I spent in time making these.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Thank goodness. I think Joe did a wonderful job on our lights. He does all the high stuff and I do the low ones. We love the old fashioned C9's and C7's like we grew up with, but we mix them with the fairy lights to brighten it all up.

I'm not the best with night time photography. It sure makes you think about how wonderful God made our eyes. We have no trouble seeing this scene without overexposure around the lights! I still have a lit garland to put around the front door.

On the inside we have the tree up and I will be finishing the decorating tomorrow. Things at our house have been put on hold because I have been working on scenery for a Christmas play at church all week....I'll have to take some pictures of the stage tomorrow.

Snow Day!!

Today we woke up to this! I love snow. I just don't like that everyone has to drive in it. My husband left verrrry early this morning and I haven't heard from him....I'm hoping he got to work ok.
This is my wonderful son. He is training as a pipefitter, but since they are working outside installing water mains, he did not work today. So instead he is digging out his grandparent's house.
Here was the view this morning out the kitchen window...warm inside, very chilly out! They called school off, so my daughter was elated!
This is my neighbor's cute puppy. He was having a great time playing in the snow, but when I came up he hid behind the tree. He is a rescued dog and still a puppy, so he may have very good reasons to be shy.