{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soulemama

The wait

As we wait to make sure the floors and walls are completely dry we are thinking about our next step. We had originally thought we would paint the wood floors and I've been pintresting many very nice painted floors.  However we pulled up the rest of the laminate flooring and discovered the majority of the room may have never been painted at all.  They had a really big rug in here.

After researching the steps to paint a floor the right way, which involves many coats of paint left to dry over night and then a coat of poly, it came to me that it might be much quicker just to sand and poly the floor.  We have done this before and the great thing about water based poly is that you can get all three coats on in one REALLY long day.  So for now that is the next step after the waiting.

The laundry room is another beast altogether.



Please please ignore the mess.  It became very obvious to us that the shelf we put in does not function.  Well here is the opportunity to fix this room.  So the plan here is to get some sort of water resistant flooring like the newer vinyl wood planks. There are two layers of vinyl tile in here and we don't plan on prying it up and releasing whatever may lurk below.

The mysterious wall with a window inside will be opened up and possibly closed back up at a much smaller rate so that the dryer door can open all the way.  The shelving will go and replaced with something so much more functional. 

Wow. 
Ugh.

This makes digging out a garden out of the rock back yard like a easy chore.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soulemama

Plumbing problems

We've made careful considerations for what we would demo and restore in this house.  The main bathroom is first because of water issues and tiles set on drywall. The kitchen? Maybe.

It had never entered my mind to work on my daughters room or the laundry room but that is exactly what is next due to a leaking water line in the wall of our laundry room.  It was spraying water directly onto my daughters closet and it had soaked the wood joists, and wood floor and wicked it's way up into the plaster.   This might have been okay, however there is drywall placed OVER the plaster so now we have a big wet mess.



This was before we were finishing tearing out wet stuff. 


New plumbing ran and big fans put on all of it to dry it out.

My daughter's room.



On the plus side there are 100 year old wood floors under that laminate.  However it is wet. :(





Luckily we live in a four bedroom house so we moved all of my daughter's things up stairs into the youngest's room and he moved over to bunk up with his big brother in the bunk beds.  I told the kids to shoot for about 2 weeks living like this.  A week to make sure everything is dried up and another week to hang the drywall back and paint and seal the wood floors.  I have a feeling it will be longer.  Maybe a week longer?  We are so lucky that my love will be wrapped up with school in the next two weeks and his schedule will open up a little more because it is overwhelming to me at the moment, but as a team we can do this.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soulemama

Clothespin Apron

We bought and installed a new pop up clothes line last weekend, just in time for it to turn cold and flurry all week.  So that gave me time to hole up in the studio and create!  I really disliked my last apron for clothespins, but it was functional.  So I knew I needed a new apron and I wanted it to have one BIG pocket.  I've been playing around with some little bird friends and thought one in her kerchief would be perfect.

Now I am waiting not very patiently for it to warm up this weekend again so I hang out some clothes.

Studio Peek

I finally got to work today!  There are several things in process, but I am most excited about this one!

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soulemama

It was Spring, now it's back to blah.

We were duped.  We all thought that spring was on the way.  And it is really.  The Crocus tell us that and the trees just starting to bud, but after that week of glorious 70's were got spoiled.  The uppper 40's feel cold and gloomy.  We are not motivated to work on making a garden despite the deadline of May 4th for getting trees and strawberries and raspberries.

We have been slowly moving rocks from our backyard to the spot by the kitchen door where the garden will be.  It's hard back breaking work, and my back is not up for it this.




In the house I am wrapping up the "ugly" hallway and hope to have pictures soon.  I have one more bump to smooth out and I need to figure out what to do with the floors.

My love made the mistake a few weeks ago in the laundry room.  I've been ticked at that little room since we got here.  When you open the dryer it hits the wall across from it making it hard to get laundry in and out of the dryer.  I can get only one laundry basket in the area and it rubs the walls as I move it in and out.  So his mistake?

He told me he didn't think that the bump out in the wall needed to be that big. (I've been telling him for months that it is a hollow wall.)
• back story•  Our home has plaster walls with drywall up over the plaster walls.  So we can tell by thumping them if they are original walls or not.

Well I heard this, " You should knock down that wall and see what's back there." Since I'm the one who usually does the drywall and the also the one who tapes and mud I give myself permission to do random stuff like this.




So I cut a little hole.  It was hollow. I could not figure out what was in the wall so I made it bigger.  The boys thought that this exploring of the walls was so exciting.  Me too.

Well here's what we found.



A window!  This is the very center of the house, a brick house with all matching windows so we know it wasn't added on it.  The only thing that I can think of is that since it was built in 1900 when there was little electricity (especially in this area) that this window allowed light to come from the dining room to the butlers pantry.

We knew the duct was there and we are happy it is small. Now the problem is what do we do with this area?  I know we want to open it  up and we will but do we show the window or not?  We can not move the duct since it is the only return from the second floor.  There is also drywall covering the window in the dining room. hmmm...