New Sewing Room

When I first moved into my condo, I decided to put the sewing room in the basement.  After all, it was a nice big space; plenty of room to spread out.  Only one problem:  I found I never really wanted to go down there.  It was dark and uninspiring.

After I moved my office out of the small upstairs bedroom on to the indoor balcony (yes, my place is a little quirky), I quickly came to the conclusion that the now empty bedroom would become my sewing room.  But first I needed to take down the ugly curtains and paint:

I rather liked the purple, but was not fond of the tan.  Additionally, the place hasn't seen new paint in awhile, so it was time.  

While logic told me a quilting room ought to have neutral paint, I'm afraid my taste in paint is rather like my taste in fabric:

With the outdoor balcony and the door connecting directly to the bathroom, I believe this is supposed to be the master bedroom.  However, it is rather small.  The place was built in 1973.  And if you look at the bathtub, you'll soon realize it still sports the original harvest gold that was such a popular color at that time.  Not my favorite.

Finally got the sewing essentials moved in:

There is still a lot of fabric to be moved up from the basement, but the room is now functional.

And now I'll leave you with this:

Favorite Things Friday--White Paint

Mrs. P. over at Quilting in My Pyjamas is hosting the last Favorite Things Friday for 2010.  So this is your last chance to participate this year.  If you can work it into your busy holiday schedule I urge you to link up.  No worries though.  Favorite Things Friday will be back on January 7th.

My favorite thing this Friday is white paint.  The reason is very simple.  It will turn this:

into this:

Still need to paint the gold door

Until we meet again for FTF in 2011, I hope everyone has a joyous holiday season!

Miscellaneous Monday

Painting:

Although I do not care for the paint job in our new house, the wood work is absolutely lovely.  Unfortunately, it is not really noticeable at this point, because the wood kind of fades into the colored walls.  Although I didn't get much of the slider (sliding glass door) in the picture below, if you look carefully, you'll see that the door is framed by wood.

Dining area BEFORE

Notice how the wood work pops with white walls?  (Please ignore our fancy window covering.  We're waiting for Home Depot to install our vertical blinds.)

Dining area AFTER

Speaking of blinds, normally we would install them ourselves, but we have a window over a stairway that we are unable to reach, and since Home Depot would do a whole house for $118, we decided to let them install the three blinds that we need. 

Quilting:

My mom is starting a new quilt.  She is making it for her cousin who was so helpful in regard to our move.  Naturally, the quilt inspector could not let her sally forth alone.

Let me make sure you're doing it right.

This fabric is delightfully relaxing.

It's Curtains For Me:

The previous tenants liked dark colors--dark paint and dark curtains.  I'll admit that I don't see the appeal, but perhaps the colors felt cozy to them?

These curtains were in my bedroom.  My bedroom is in the basement.  While the window lets in a lot of a light for a basement window, it's not exactly glaring.  Yet these curtains could block out the searing desert sun at high noon.  When I wake up in the morning, I have to look at the clock to ascertain if it's daylight yet, that's how dark these curtains make the room.  The only good thing about them is that they make the tan paint look light.

A quick little sewing project and I had new curtains.  You can't imagine how wonderful it was when I woke up this morning to find daylight coming in through these light-colored lovelies.  You can also see that the tan paint isn't as light as it looks, however, it is one of the lightest colors in the house.

I intend to make some beaded tie backs for the curtains like Mrs. P at Quilting in My Pyjamas made for hers.  I got permission from Mrs. P. to use one of her pictures of the lovely beaded tie-backs she made, but Blogger will not let me load it.  Not sure what's up with that.  Maybe Mrs. P.'s blog is snubbing mine?  Trying to keep this bit of loveliness all to itself?  So I encourage you to click on the link for a bit of eye-candy.

Monday Miscellaneous

The Button Bandwagon:

I've jumped on the button bandwagon.  Everybody climb aboard.  Seriously, anybody who would like to have my button feel free to take the code, but don't feel obligated.  Mostly, I was interested to see if I could actually make a button.  Since the directions and the code are easily had with a little bit of Googling and some tweaking, it wasn't overly difficult.  Although HTML is essentially a foreign language to me, I enjoyed doing it.  Kind of like exercising the few Spanish words and phrases I can put together.

Painting:

The utility room is done.

Before (sort of)

After

We've moved on to the kitchen.  I failed to take a before picture, but will certainly have an after picture.  Yep, you're going to get the blow by blow painted run down.  But I'm not complaining.  The effort is worth the result.

Speaking with Authority:

Have you ever been fooled by the Voice of Authority?  It happened to us the other day in regard to having paint mixed at Wal-mart.  No, we're not using straight Arctic Blast white (my name; not theirs).  The color is called Swiss Almond, and is essentially white with a bit of warmth, for lack of a better description.  The first gallon mixed was lovely.  It required a gallon of "Base One" and few drips of other colors.  When we went to have paint mixed the next time, Wal-mart was out of Base One.  We were told to check back in a couple of days.  No biggie since there are plenty of walls that need priming.  When we returned there was still no Base One, but the gal who helped us said, "You don't have to use Base One, you can use white.  Some people don't know that."  She used no uncertain phrases that would have caused me to question, like, "I think it's all right to use white instead of Base One."  Nope it was just a flat out statement of fact.  Not knowing much about paint, I listened to her Voice of Authority.  That was a mistake.  In retrospect, I remember wondering in the back of my mind that if the two are interchangeable, why would Base One even be necessary.  However, the Voice of Authority trumped my doubt.

Skip to today's painting session in the kitchen.  I'm doing the edges nearing the ceiling using the bit left from the first properly mixed can of paint, and my mom is rolling using the newly mixed paint.  At about the halfway point, my mom steps back, and says, "Does my paint look different from yours just because it's not as dry yet?"  It didn't take much studying to figure out that the two paints were different.

Wal-mart graciously refunded our money, and as luck would have it the Base One had come in.  We will finish the kitchen that we thought we'd finish yesterday today.

Monday Miscellaneous

Painting:

I'm afraid dear readers that you're doomed to listen to me whine about painting in the same vein that we listened to Mrs. P. of Quilting in My Pyjamas whine about kitchen renovations.  And so it begins.

We had four days in the house before our furniture arrived, and we didn't pass the time idly.  No, we began painting immediately.  Decided we had just enough time to prime and paint behind where the fridge and washer & dryer would go.  Here is a picture of that work:

Then our walls sat like that for three and a half weeks.  Today we finally got back to it.  Got the remainder of the laundry room primed today.  The previous owners did something a bit odd; they painted the door with flat paint instead of semi-gloss.  You can see how grubby it is near the knob.  We'll be using semi-gloss.

In priming, I realized that part of the issue with the paint job in the house is not just the color, but that these shades seem to suck the light out of the room.  It may also be because they used a flat paint, as opposed to the satin paint we are using.  Not sure.  Just know I'm tired of walking around and feeling like it's dark in every room.  (Really, I'm not crazy.)

Joined A Gym:

On Saturday, my mom and I joined a gym for the first time in our lives.  We know the Kansas winter will preclude any outdoor activities like walking much of the time.  In Nevada, we could almost always go out and walk at some part of the day.  But I'm excited about having access to the weight machines.  I've got creaky knees--which I'd like to blame on old age, but I've had them since my late 20's.  My uncle, the physical therapist, told me what he would recommend to strengthen the knees, and the exercises really require weight machines.  We've got our orientation appointment tomorrow afternoon at 3PM.

Latest Book Read:

Undue Influence by Steve Martini
Genre:  Mystery/Courtroom Drama

This is the 2nd book I've read by this author.  Steve Martini has written a series of books featuring defense attorney Paul Madriani.  The basic formula is that the attorney must solve the mystery in order to defend his client.  Good mysteries with a twist.  The courtroom action is intriguing because it demonstrates how the same set of circumstantial evidence can be viewed logically in two or more ways.  Also a little unsettling for the same reason since it must play out in real life in a similar way.

I hope you all have wonderful days in the week ahead.