I Reached 100!

Posts, that is. 100 posts.

This blog started as a lark. Maybe get the whole house decoration and remodeling thing out of my system, while documenting what we're doing for our own records, and spurring ourselves on to actually finish some projects.

And now I've reached 100 posts. Hurray!

Just for fun, here are some of my favorite projects:

• The Front Door: From Boring to Primed to a Beautiful Red...it still does need a second coat. The lockset also needs some attention, but it looked nice when I first painted it!

• Bedrooms: from the coral reef to the garden, these two were so fun to do!

• Curtains: they just make the house feel so cozy and, well, homey. I customized curtains for the kitchen and the front room. Love them!

• Gardening: oh, yeah. Basically the entire summer last year was just gardening. And more gardening. Personally, I really enjoyed the basil.

And some that are still in progress...

• The Upholstering Project: I haven't forgotten about it. There are just so many pieces and it is taking time to find the time to get through them all and get them all back on the naked chair. Got all that?

• The Front Room: There was the plaster, that is now gone. There were brown and red walls, that are now repainted (off-white). There are the continual on-going conversations about color and texture. No worries. I think we have a resolution on this one - and soon!

Thanks for hanging in there with me and encouraging me!

No More Plaster!

With a deep breath and a lot of effort, I removed the last of that fake-block-look plaster. My hand is now killing me, although I don't seem to have any trouble typing (lucky you!).

From the left, Sophie's coat modeling itself on the stair rail

From the center, including some of Sophie's stuffed animals
(they just had to get into the picture)

And from the right. It's DONE!

So now we have a very featureless opening to our hall and stairway. Soon it will even be painted. Dance of joy. We do still have some clean-up from the plaster, although that will be worked into a child's chore. Why not?

Making Custom Curtains from Purchased Panels

Now that I've found decent curtains for the front room, I need to make them long enough.  Here's the high-water look they were sporting:

And although we do love tubing and rafting and water sports of all kinds, we won't ever be taking the curtains along. So there is no need for them to be ready. JoAnn's had a great fabric on sale (I am really into the brocade look - have been forever) that I can sew onto the bottom of my original curtains. This took a bit of unpicking, so that the new look is seamless (pun intended).

The material was easy to cut to size, since I could use the original curtains as a template. The original hemline hung right underneath the windowsill, so I used it as the start of the new material - the perfect height to make a visual change!

The material sewed on (again, using the hemline as my stitching line), and then I did a zigzag stitch along the seam so that it would hang nicely. The thread is matched to the brown so that it melts away into the pattern.

Then I had a lot of material left on the back from the original curtain. I was going to line these suckers, but I think the extra light coming in through the drawn curtains is actually a nice thing in the front room. They are opaque enough to not be worried about see-through after dark, so I left them as is. I don't want to ditch the extra material, though - you never know when you might want to use the original curtains again - so I turned up the hem again and just stitched it along the same stitch line I'd already done. The back looks just fine.

That done, I turned in the sides and stitched them. Then it was time for the hemming. I actually tried one with a five-inch hem and just hung it up. My original idea was to have it "puddle" on the floor, but the brocade is too heavy and the curtains aren't quite long enough. So instead of a puddle, I had an awkward hem that doesn't quite turn underneath. The others went up without a hem so I could mark the floor length. No puddle on these babies. Maybe the next time I have the cash for silk curtains? Or maybe after the kids aren't around to spill chocolate milk on them, and after we don't have an inside dog? Okay, we don't have the dog yet. But we want one, and a dog definitely wouldn't mix well with puddlin' curtains.

Sophie is already mixing it up with those curtains - see her cute bum?

They're all lumpy and folded over strangely

Once hemmed, we finally have our fishbowl sewn up again. I didn't realize how much I missed having curtains in that room until they were gone. And how long did we not have curtains there? Months and months. Craziness.

It looks a little bare...but the dark wall compensated a little

The back light adds a glow to the room during the day

So here's a question for you: should I put a band, or ribbon, or some sort of decoration to mark the transition from one fabric to another? What would you do?

A close-up of the transition

Let me know, I definitely would love some additional ideas!