14 May, 2012

cracking on

Thank you for all your kind words.  It really has been a tough year for us, with Matt's woe's and my cancer.  As much as I love living here, I think a clean break will probably do us all some good.  And we're keeping our house in VT to rent out as a seasonal rental, and hopefully so we can come back for a few weeks each year, so it's all good.  Although I am going through a bit of a grieving period for all the knitting, spinning and crocheting that I won't be doing over the next few years....SIGH.

SO, on to what we I've been doing with the house.  Obviously, with time fast running out, we are trying to get our little bit of paradise up to being a wonderful rental for people.  So Kit and I (who had a field trip to the beach on Thursday) hot tailed it up north to do some work on the house.  We had our delivery of building materials arrive on Friday (thanks to some very successful craig's listing during the week I was able to afford my supplies), and we worked like demons for 4 days.


We plastered, painted the ceiling (two coats), built a wall (woo hoo first time!), primed, patched holes where vents used to be, mixed our own paint colour, painted, painted trim and scrubbed the floor to get rid of paint and plaster splats,

The previous colour with our framing (looking through into Ella's room.  Oh and me in my glam painting gear)

From Ella's room looking at our newly made wall.  GESH!  This little alcove will be turned into a wardrobe for Ella's room, using the door that used to be between the two rooms.
 
And here's some "finished" shots.  I need to rehang curtains, add some pictures and more furniture, and of course, I haven't built the bookcase yet.
 The bookcase is going all across that wall next to the cupboard.  The alcove there (with the new wall where the door used to be) is 11 1/4 inches deep - perfect for shelving.  That's why I didn't bother with painting the trim or continuing it across: the new bookcase will cover all of that.  And you can see the colour that all the trim was. Those louvre doors were all cream.  A coat of primer and 2 coats of white paint later and they are lovely now.  But louvre doors are my new least favourite thing to paint!
 I really want to change the light now - it just looks too dark.  The ceiling took 2 coats to cover the weird muddy green colour that was on the ceiling.  Made the room SO MUCH LIGHTER!
 What do you think of the colour?  I was having trouble choosing a paint colour.  I knew I wanted something blue-ish.  In the end, I mixed the grey from the hallway (I had nearly a whole can of paint left) with the tropical blue which is on the back wall of the bunk room (I had half a can left) and added a few other paints to lighten it a bit to get to this colour.
 I call it sky blue, because, like the sky it changes from a grey to a blue to a really light colour depending on the light durning the day.  It looks gorgeous with the white- almost like a wedgewood blue.  This is a shot from the hallway (with the grey I used) which now looks dark and dreary in comparison to the new bright room.

 I am absolutely exhausted after 4 days of solid work (plus all the driving), but of course I feel like I didn't get through nearly enough of what I wanted to do.  I've moved Ella's bed into Oscar's room as it's smaller....which means Ella's room is next on the list (as well as building the bookcase in Oscar's room).  SO much to do, so little time.....

4 comments:

  1. good stuff, I was going to recommend the 01 approach of using a door frame as a book case, but by the time I had read another couple of paragraphs realised you had...but if you had put the shelves in first you would not have needed that middle upright (whatever their correct name is)...and I also was going to mention the need for some frantic knitting as well but you beat me to that too.
    love
    Dad

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  2. I really like the sky blue colour - it's a great looking room. And lovely to see Kit!!
    Maggie XXXX

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  3. Wow!! That's an amazing difference to that room! I can't believe what you're doing, and what terrific skills Kit is learning. mum xx

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  4. Anonymous8:31 AM

    you seriously amaze me with your skills. I wanna say that Ill buy a doer uperer one day and fix it like you could...... but you are the bomb! xx Chels

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