And The Renos Begin

Over the weekend we went over to the house a few times prepping for the plasterer/painter guy. Actually Larry, the plasterer/painter, was there when I arrived after teaching my class yesterday. He started plastering around 11am. The house now looks like a bomb hit it! Base boards and door moldings are down, shelves are off the walls, wallpaper is gone from the porch and in the porch off from the kitchen, new door moldings cut and nailed gunned in, electrical plug and light plates off the walls.

Today, I woke up feeling like I am coming down with a touch of a cold. I have been feeling low on energy and feeling blah, but we went into the house again for a few hours this afternoon to tear up more stuff. The closet organizers are all down and ready to be plastered, the bathroom mirror and more baseboards are gone, and we removed the chair rail in the kitchen. Trevor plans to go in for a full day tomorrow while I'm at work to start some caulking work and remove more of the 2 x4s down in the sewing room.

Here are a few photos of what we did today.

The Living Room. Soon the fireplace will be gone and the wall patched, plastered and ready for painting

The hallway looking toward the master bedroom. The compressor is in the hallway. We used it later this afternoon to put more trim up over the doors with the nail gun! Nasty yet cool little tool!

Spare Room. Shelf is now down, walls plastered and ready for the painter

The front entrance way. Wallpaper was stripped off yesterday and plastered.

The wall is almost down between the two rooms that will make up my one big sewing studio!!!

Look at this AWESOME shelf!!!!!! This was removed from Trevor's future "man cave" room. It is HUGE!!! It will be PERFECT in my studio to put all my books, patterns, binders and sewing stuff!!!!!!! I know exactly where I want to put it! I just need to give it a lick of paint to freshen it up!

Move out of the way Tim Taylor.. arrrhhh arrrhhh arrrgh!!!!

Poor Trevor, the battery had to be recharged in the drill and he had to remove the rest of the chair rail in the kitchen by hand!!!

Taking a break and testing out my new tub!! Ahhhh what tub times I am going to have here!! Perfect space for a few candles and a glass of wine!! All that's missing right now are the bubbles!! I thought I would lie here and watch Trevor work for a bit. I was watching him take the old moldings around the doorway. At this point I can feel myself coming down with a touch of a cold and was running out of steam. So I decided to lie off in the tub!! LOL

This is looking out my back patio deck. Up to Friday we had really nice weather and lots of grass and little snow. Yesterday we had a bit of a snow storm ("Sheila's Brush" as we call it here. An Irish term for the one last snow storm of the winter season. It usually happens around St. Patrick's Day, but this year it was a week late coming. We were starting to think we wouldn't get it this year). Anyway this morning when we got up, we noticed we had some freezing rain overnight and coated everything in ice! It was so pretty to see all the trees covered. Later this afternoon the sun came out and everything sparkled!


So that is the update on the house so far. Tomorrow after work, Mum and I are heading to the Paint Shop to get out paint for all our rooms and bring them back to the house. Our painter should be back on Tuesday morning to start painting again. I can't WAIT to see the paints I chose on my walls!

But for now, I think I am going to sign off here. It's 9:30pm and I'm starting to run out of steam. I think I will be heading to bed early tonight. I have work in the morning, as well as a doctor's appointment. Maybe he can suggest something for this upcoming cold I seem to be brewing. :(

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

I'm officially a homeowner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WWWWhhhhhoooopieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Um yeah, so as you can see I'm just a teeeny tiny bit happy that I have my very own house!!!! Everything closed yesterday on time without a hitch!!! I feel lucky considering I have heard horror stories of friends who bought houses and the closing day was a nightmare! I did wake up this morning with a nasty migraine and had to just lay low at home today and get over this thing. I'm not as bad as I was earlier today, but the headache is still there. From all the excitement and tension the last few days before the closing of the sale, I guess my body and noggin' finally said I need a break!

In the meantime, here are some photos I did take when I was in the house yesterday. I thought I would share with you all some photos of my BEFORE shots of my house. There is no furniture in the home and I don't plan to move in until all the painting is complete. I have paint chips to share with you all too further down this post. I know some of you were curious to know what colours I'm putting in the home. SO without further ado, I will now take you on the first of many guided cyber tours of my new home!

Home Sweet Home!!! (ooh btw, I am removing the basketball net from the front of the house, it is over the grass and an eye sore. That will be hauled up when the warmer weather is here)


The front entrance

Be sure to take off your shoes before coming into the house. You can put them in the shoe shelf provided!!

Up the stairs and to the left we come into the living room. The propane fireplace will be taken out as I have no interest in having it. Not to mention the mantel is HUGE and over powering.

The Dining Room right off from the living room

Looking from the dining room into the living room and the big front window

Off the dining room is my beeeeeeeautiful kitchen! I plan to have one kick A-s kitchen when I'm done! I have big plans for this room. I can't WAIT to see my kitchen transformed! The kitchen cabinets and counter tops are all brand new and in AMAZING condition! There is even a little pull out spice cabinet right next to the stove! I plan to have an Epicure party in May/June.! Wait til you see what I do to this room when my renos are done!

Looking from the back porch to the other side of my kitchen. What I didn't do was take a photo of the area in the kitchen where I can put in a little table, and my shelf that will have all my recipes books!

Going through the doorway by the fridge, the first door on the left is the bathroom. This room will also get an overhaul... The purple walls are DEFINETLY going! New vanity, new tile floor and back splash coming soon!

See the little pot light in my shower??? Now I will feel I'm in the big time when I sing in the shower. I'll be in lights :) LOL


Trevor's Future "Man Cave". Although tonight, he says he plans to call it "The Bunker" LOL


Spare Room

Master Bedroom. Hard to take a half decent photo in here til the doors are back in place in the double closets. I am DEFINETELY changing the closet organizers!

and we need to remove the sheers off the floor. We just threw them in there to get them out of the way of the painter.


This is the doorway that is to the right of the door by the fridge to go downstairs to the rec room


And now the most IMPORTANT room of all.. THE SEWING STUDIO!!!!!!!
There are two rooms in the downstairs rec room area. The wall between both was a temp wall. Trevor went into the house tonight and tore down this wall and ooooooooooooh what a difference the size of the room!! Oooh I have big plans for this space! See the following photos of other angles of the two rooms

This is looking from room one into room two. I am standing next to the staircase at this point

Inside Room #2, where there are huge bright track lights.. PERFECT space for my Horn Sewing Cabinet!

Looking the other way in Room #2 at the door and temp wall that is now down to the 2 x4 wooden posts. Now that this wall is down the room looks HUGE!!!!!!!!!!! I can't WAIT to start playing in this room!


So here are my paint chips!!!! I'll be picking up the paint over the next few days. I have the primer paint and plaster ready for the painter, so he will have something to do before the fun paint goes on!

The photo was turned right.. oops me sorry. ... Anyway, the Golden Needles colour will be the main colour in the living room and hallways and down into the entrance way. The rustic colour will be my accent wall. The long wall that makes up the living room and dining room. If you look up further, it is the wall with the fireplace.


Chocolate for the kitchen!!! Appropriate colour name me thinks!!!


This will be the colour for the walls in the bathroom. I will replace the bathroom vanity with a nice brown updated model with a nice granite top.

My bed room walls will be the light colour at the top right side of the photo. I will use blue and brown accents for the room. I am making my offwhite trapunto quilt for my Queen size bed, and I think I will sew a nice brown bed skirt. I will put a pretty blue and brown topper over the window and then LOTS of pillows in blue and brown and cream!

The Safari green colour for the spare bedroom.


Trevor still needs to choose the colour for the Man Cave.. err sorry "The Bunker" an I still need to pick a colour for the landing going down into the studio which will probably be the same colour of my studio!

So what do you think????

I can't wait to see it all come together and then have my furniture and stuff moved in!

I have so many exciting things to look forward to with my new home and seeing it change into something beautiful!

Tomorrow morning I am suppose to teach my class, but well that is weather permitting.. Seems we can't let March go by without one final snow storm! Seems we could have one very messy day tomorrow with accumulations of possibly 40cm of snow, high winds, and eventually changing back to rain. I am keeping fingers crossed it will only be rain. If however, it stays as snow, I may have to cancel my class. Since we will possibly be snowbound, I will set up my sewing machine on the dining room table and work on my trapunto quilt again.

Well it is heading for midnight and I should head off to bed just in case I do have to get up early for class in the morning.

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

My Trapunto Progress

Since I was off this Monday, I made sure I had a productive one! I managed to get 5 Trapunto blocks trapuntoed!!!!!! I still have a ton more to go, but hey it's a start right!!!



The other big thing I did today was pick out the paint colours for my new house! It was a really nice sunny day and the sun was just pouring into the condo living room. So I took the ton of paint chips and colours booklets I picked up last week and chose all the rooms! I'm soooooo excited! This Trapunto quilt will be for my bedroom! I used a muslin for the fabric. I want to put the room in creams, browns and blues. With the trapunto quilt on the bed, I am thinking of a nice chocolate brown for a bed skirt, then make lots of nice pillow accents in browns, creams and blues!!! ooh and my kitchen walls will be a chocolate colour!! hee hee do you see a pattern here??? Chocolate all over the house !!!! I will post some photos soon of the paint chips I am thinking of using soon. First I want to take them to the house this weekend and see how they will work up against the walls. The closing day is Thursday!! I can't WAIT!!! Soon I will have the keys in my hands!

Til Next Time!

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

The Weekend Productivity

For a weekend that felt very blah and hard to get my energy going, looking back I think I did okay. Yesterday I taught my Double Irish Chain Quilt. All three girls had their quilt tops together, although I only managed to get one photo of Joanne's Pretty in Pink Quilt. All three girls are now working on their seminole borders. They managed to get all their fabrics cut and ready for assembly. This week for homework they have to sew all their strips together and have them cut for next class. Next Saturday, they will learn how to assemble the cut strips into 4 seminole border pieces. I should have more photos to take then.

In the meantime, here is Joanne's quilt.




This is a photo of my Double Irish Chain Top with the Seminole border. Mine is a queen size.


While they were working along cutting their strips, I took out my Grandmother's Garden fabric and templates and started cutting out more pieces. I have 13 blocks completed.




Last night my friend Dodi came over with her knitting and lots of chick flicks. Our fellas got together with some of their friends to see a concert, so we took full advantage of this time and spent some quality time knitting and quilting.

We made sure we supplied ourselves with the essentials, chips, cheesies, Cadbury mini eggs, and Orangina drink.. I sooooooo love this drink!




This is Dodi working away on some scarfs she is knitting for charity for Christmas. She is a great knitter!


This is how I camped out on the sofa with my Grandmother's Garden hexagons, paper gluing the templates and fabric in place. I started block #14 too!


Tonight Trevor left to work another overnight shift. I haven't had my sewing machine out all week and I was starting to get some serious withdrawls!!! The machine is out on the dining room table now (for just a few more weeks then I'll have a REAL sewing room to play in). I decided to take out my Trapunto quilt blocks and work on them again. I really want to have this quilt made before Christmas to put on my bed in my new house!!!!



So without further ado, I think I am going to sign off here. The sewing machine is calling to me to pay attention to her again, and I just noticed that in 15 minutes Masterpiece Theatre comes on. Charles Dickens if featured this season!

Tomorrow is a day off for me from work, as this is the St. Patrick's Day Long weekend. Although St. Paddy's Day is not until Tuesday, many offices here are closed tomorrow to celebrate. I hope to spend more time at my machine working on my Trapunto!

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

Sad News to Report

Since my last posting, something terrible has happened off our coastline here in St. John's, Newfoundland. Yesterday morning a Cougar Helicopter left St. John's airport to transport 16 people to the offshore oil rigs about 90 minutes off our coastline. Part way into the trip, the helicopter experienced technical difficulties and radioed for permission to return back to the airport. About 10 minutes after they turned around and their mayday message, the chopper went down into the frigid Atlantic Ocean. One survivor, one body found (the sole female passenger, only 25 years old). 16 still missing and now presumed dead. My Mum works with a woman whose husband was on that chopper. He was in his early 30s.

If you wouldn't mind keeping these people in your thoughts and prayers for us this week. Mum's friend's husband is one of the 16 missing.

Sorry I have nothing more to talk of today, but I suppose things are a bit somber right now. I hope to write of better things soon. Perhaps I will have better things to talk about tomorrow after my quilting class. My students should have the main part of their quilts completed and working on their seminole borders. I'll take along my camera tomorrow morning.

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

Good News!!!

So before I get to the good news, today was such a gorgeous sunny warm day, when I got home after work Trevor and I went for a walk in Bowring Park. This is a pretty little park here in the city that has nice walking trails and a duck pond, complete with 12 swans (yep I counted them)!! After being in a stuffy stale office all week, I really needed some fresh air in my lungs and a nice walk. Here are some photos from our walk.



Trevor taking photos of me taking photos of ducks and swans!!!


I love to take photos!


I love these type of ducks. They really widdle waddle and they have the cutest little feather curl down by their butts!


One of the 12 swans in Bowring Park.


I am a home owner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! err well I still have to wait til next Thursday for the final closing, but if everything goes well I'll be a new first time home owner as of next week!!!!! wooopieeeeeeee!!!!!! I'm excited, nervous and scared all at the same time!!! People ask me how I feel, I saw I'm FINE... Freaked Out, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional!!! But other than that, all is good!

The other night Mum and I went to some of the local hardware stores such as Home Depot and Kent Building Supplies to look for paint chips. Mum will be moving to the 2 bedroom basement apartment. She is planning to retire soon and will enjoy her retirement being close to me. I have a good idea the colours I want for my house but I grabbed a pile of colour chips and colour booklets to get me thinking. Hopefully next weekend, we will go into the house and put the paint chips to the walls to see exactely what I want.

Now the challenge is to choose the right colours. This is just a few of the MANY more paint chips booklets I have!


The house is empty already both upstairs and down, so we will paint our spaces before moving in the furniture! I will be posting lots of photos during the whole painting and reno process and of course when all my things are moved in and we are settled away. Oooh the sewing I'll be doing the next few months!!!!!!!

oooh ooh and one important thing to note is that in the basement of my home there is going to be one kick ass (pardon the french) sewing studio!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Right now the rec room is in two rooms, but I'll be breaking down one of the walls to open it into one big room. I might not be able to do much renos on the place right away, but eventually I will work on it little by little. I want to put in a nice hardwood floor, find a nice paint colour (something nice and bright, I'm thinking a mustard yellow actually), and then really pretty it up with wallhangings and other projects! I want to make a big message board and design wall, and and and...ooooh my head is hurting from so many ideas I have going around in it! Hopefully by next year (possibly Fall 2010) I'll be able to offer private quilting courses.

After looking at paint chips we headed to one of our favourite stores, Chapters for a coffee and to look at some of the many books we would love to buy. In the end we sat down to coffees and I bought two of these quilting magazines!

These two magazines have some really cute projects in them and I can't wait to get started on them!


I'm figuring I'm going to be spending so much on the house the next little while, I might as well buy the magazines while I can. I will also be going to my own stash more than buying more! LOL I see lots of scrap quilts in my future!

With all that said, I still don't have the keys to the house, but hopefully if all goes well with the lawyer, I'll have those keys in my hot little hands next Thursday!!! Keep your fingers crosssed!!!

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea