Friday, July 15, 2011

Final tour

It's taken me 4 rewrites so I hope this one sounds okay.
My life and house are in chaos I do believe. I haven’t sewn or even mended anything in 2+  months unless you count when I went to postcard bee back in June. My reading time has been limited too but I did squeeze in the book club meeting for the book I have yet to finish. But I said I  would finish my Home Tour so here goes.............with a before and after of my sewing room and  a look at my downstairs.
This was my sewing room before renovation.
 It had a desk under each dormer window with no color or curtains . I tried using my computer on one desk  and my sewing machine on the other desk to sew. I found myself feeling very claustrophobic . The whole room lacked appeal.
\Here’s what my sewing/craft/office area looks like today. Geez I wish it looked like this all the time. Trust me when I say it normally looks like a tornado came thru. Across from the cabinets are 3 closets where you'll find mending, My Fabric Resource Center  (my fabric stash), scrapbooking, rubber stamping and crafting supplies plus a few so okay several pairs of jeans to cut up for quilts and other projects. I knocked out the dormer desks and had custom cabinets made. Storage for more fabric and the second cabinet holds office supplies and some crafting supplies. The handles on the cabinet doors under the dormer windows look like tape measures. I found these fun handles on line at Sewing Hardware  along with knobs that look like spools of thread for other cabinets.  I kept the color light so it wouldn't distract from the quilting that goes on might go on in here again. Natural lighting is at a minimal. I need to learn how to take pictures for better detail.


Our kitchen today. David refinished all the woodwork, cut out a big ugly speaker control  panel on the wall that never worked, patched the hole and we textured the walls with dry wall mud over existing wall paper . It’s so easy even I could texture the walls. The only part I wasn’t ready to tackle was the faux painting on such a large surface area so I called a neighbor friend who does that kind of thing The kitchen used to have a southwestern stripe wall paper and white formica countertops that were so old they absorbed color from any plastic bag you laid on it. It now has "Ladies Dream" granite counter top and backsplash along with a manly faucet. LOL.
for a living. Deann and her business partner applied 3 different colors of glaze and were done in just a little over an hour. It would have taken me 3 times that long. 

How about a game of pool? We never used the formal living room and so we tried using it as a formal dining room and used the smaller formal dining area as a sitting room for a while. David had always wanted a pool table so the formal living room became our gameroom and  the sitting room went back to being the formal dining room. Did you follow all that re-arranging? There used to be old ugly  carpet on the floor that we replaced with hardwood and painted the walls.
Our  formal dining area is not real formal but it works for us. One of my favorite pieces is the black and white chalk picture on the wall shelf. My daughter drew those jars in middle school so it’s special to me obviously. You can’t really see the texture on the walls but we used the Valspar texture where you roll it on (very messy) and just before it finishes drying you go in with your trowel and knock it down.

Our den is big but warm and cozy with all block paneling and I wouldn’t  dream of painting it. The next owner might paint them but I won't. Downstairs you’ll notice the trend of a more rustic style like our guest room. About 3 years ago we re-did the floors with 24” porcelain tiles to get rid of the bubble gum pink grouting and smaller tiles. We had hardwoods in our formals and bedroom. No carpet on the first floor.  
This 1/2 bath is mine and Pam's pride and joy. I textured  and painted a base coat of mint julip paint and then we did the faux finish all by ourselves. It was a small area so it wasn't so intimidating. She painted the glaze on and I came in behind her to rag off the excess glaze with the remenants of old t-shirts.





The last major room I’ll share is the masterbed room. I love color but have always been afraid of painting the walls. With a push from my daughter I put color in our room. It turned out really nice. Well at least I think so. We still need to have the picture over the bed reframed but it will do for now.

Final picture... Our back yardDavid loves his potted plants. He has become quite the landscaper.
And he's good at it.

So ends the home tour as it is.   



So have you figured out. …what's happening. Generally you don't find my house so clutter free and void of personal pictures and especially the sewing room............. After many long hours of  deliberation and tears we decided to take a chance and put the house on the market and we found a 1 1/2 story house on a piece of land while some say its in the suburbs it's country to me. Okay so there's no chickens or pigs but there's ducks, horses, cows, turtles and other wild life around. Good thing we found another house already since our home went under contract on in less than 10 days. I had told our realtor she only had 10 days to sell but I never dreamed it would really happen. 
The few friends and family we have told so far had one comment.... "David must have run out of projects". David complains about projects but at the same time he feels guilty when he relaxes so they may be right.

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed my home and I'll post pictures of the new house in future posts. I'm off this weekend for  a 2 day bus trip to see 6 quilt shops all over Texas. More on that next post. I should be packing for the move but I had booked the trip prior to house buying and selling.


So until my next blog.......I have six locks on my door all in a row.  When I go out, I lock every other one.  I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three.  ~Elayne Boosler
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Carla.♥