Another Hiatus

This time, the hiatus was from the blog...

We have been very busy since November. My parents came up and helped to install all new windows and doors. They still need to be trimmed and painted, but it is so nice to have windows that actually open! In May we tore up the backyard and put in four 8' x 4' raised gardens. We will have enough squash and zucchini to sell at the market. We also moved a crab apple tree that was under the power lines in the backyard into the front yard. I won't post pictures of all this work in this post, but I will get myself organized and enter them in next time.

However, my favorite recent project was fixing up the back bedroom as a craft room/studio. As many of you may remember, the back of the house was an addition that was made entirely of solid wood paneling. Walls and ceiling! Since the ceiling was so short (seven feet!), it felt like I was living in a motor home with siding. My brilliant idea was to skim coat the siding and then cover it with a textured, paintable, wallpaper. My mother is a whiz at hanging wallpaper, so she came up and helped me.

Zip ahead to current time, and I am without a job. However, that has given me time to think about where I am going and what I need to do to get there. I realized that I purchased this house because I wanted to have a room that I could make into my studio. For the last three years, I have put my art on hold (save for knitting, since it takes almost no room) and I have been a little depressed as a result. So Saturday, I came into the computer room and told Brice that I wanted to finish the craft room. This was contrary to everything that I had been saying the last few weeks, which was that I wanted to complete all the little things that we have left undone before starting something new. That day, we finished hanging the wallpaper. Sunday we hung up the trim. Tuesday I primed and painted the trim. Finally, on Wednesday we painted the room...macaroni and cheese orange!

Here are some "before" pictures of the room...

You can see the old window in this picture, which was an aluminum storm window. These rooms in the back addition had their "real" windows removed at some point and there was an enormous amount of heat loss in the winter time.



In the next picture, notice that there are two light switches. One was for the porch light, but we moved it into the room with the back door. It was difficult trying to figure out what all the switches were for in this part of the house. You will also notice the plug in the closet. Although not visible in this picture, there was also a phone and cable outlet in there as well. The last owners did not have a closet door, but we will be ordering one soon. While everyone wishes they had a plug in the closet, we moved it.



Now to paint it orange...or juicy cantaloupe to be exact. Orange is said to be a creative color and just so happens to be my favorite. Being native Coloradans, the orange with the blue painter's tape reminded us of Bronco colors. But once it was removed, things looked much better.







In this picture, you can see the new vinyl Pella window that we got at Lowes. More on that later...



Definitely reminded us of macaroni and cheese or maybe even a creamsicle.