WIP Wednesday - Bathroom Remodel - Part 1

So, although a lot of little things and changes have been happening around the house (new paint, rehabbing a pantry, making curtains, etc), this is the first big project. The upstairs bathroom. First you need to know that the majority of the house is carpeted. With the thin, yet practically indestructible carpeting left over from when the house was a group home. You know the type, institutional. When I say the majority of the house, I also mean one of the bathrooms. The upstairs one. Which was used by a 5-year-old-boy. Yup, I don't need to give you any more details. You can imagine what the floorboards looked like, right?

So, that's where we started. Removing all of the fixtures, pulling up the carpet, the lovely smelling carpet, and finding that the floorboards were also damaged and molding.



It looked like this for a while because of the smell. In between whatever smell was lingering and the toilet drain-pipe, it smelled really ripe for a while. In the bottom middle of the picture you can see an air freshener.

So, after the smell had left and the nasty floorboards were taken care of the floor was stripped wide open to the joists. Although they were serviceable, they needed much reinforcing. If they weren't reinforced, there was no way that 33 gallons of water and I were getting in a soaker tub and manage to NOT fall through the floor, ending up in the kitchen!



Luckily enough the 2x4's we used for the cross beam reinforcement were salvaged from a frame and glass display in another room. Now I'm sure you noticed that the window was not completely cased either. And the bottom pane has a crack in it. Score! (not so much)

After building the actual floor level, some plumbing assistance was needed. Once the pipes were rebuilt and straightened and the water lines were checked and soldered, you can lay a floor. All those internal bits had better be working now...



Not much to do at this point other than throw another layer of wood down. This time a layer of Lauan (It is apparently pronounced Luon. Which makes no sense to me phonetically). Now, I'm not sure if this step was truly necessary as I just found out tonight that the tile goes on a layer of cement board to prevent cracking over the years (Apparently when you put tile on Lauan it cracks eventually.).



I think it looks lovely so far. The walls will not remain that color, it will be more of a frosty blue-green. Think beach. Or, at least, that's what I hope to be thinking and feeling while in the tub.

Check back for Part Two on August 20th!

WIP Wednesday - Hand Quilting

Despite coming from a quilting family that skipped a generation and a half (read: my mother quilted and then my paternal great-grandmother), I am a newer quilter. I started when I was 10 or so with a puff patch quilt (that is probably in some trash bag at The Homestead somewhere in a closet), but thanks to LiveJournal and a couple of the quilting communities there, I've been more involved these past three years or so.

My great-grandmother mainly machine pieced, made the sandwich and then hand-tied her quilts. I've inherited 8 or so of her tops, one of which I've finished, in the way that she would have.



For that quilt, I mainly finished it by tying, but did do some hand-quilting as cornerstones since the sashing did not use any.



I really enjoyed the hand quilting on that project and learned so much in just doing that alone! (Most notably that you are only supposed to use one ply of thread when hand-quilting) I knew that one of my projects in the wings needed to be hand-quilted.



Which leads us to the current "quilt-in-frame":



I fell in love with the tan fabric at JoAnn's - it already screamed to me something about squares and either "wonky" or modern squares. I already had the brown and white dots in stash. The lighter blue and green were also picked up at JoAnn's and the darker blue and white backing from my LFS, Patricia's Fabric House.

After machine piecing the blocks, the top and the back, I put it in the frame. What began as stitching in the ditch with a coordinating thread, turned into inside edge quilting about 1/8-1/4" inside each block of color.



Through this practice, my stitching (at least as it appears on the top) has become much straighter and more uniform. I'm pretty impressed with myself and my progress.

My back is a modification of the modern squares on the front.



What I did was start with the same center and make a much larger square for the back (approximate) center of the quilt. I used my zig-zag to attach it to the back, realizing that much of the stitching that I was going to be doing would also help to adhere it to the back.

As I have to occasionally climb under the frame to look for threads/untie knots, etc., I love how it looks like stained glass where I've already quilted when the sun shines through.



Although I've learned so much already working on the two quilts that I've hand-quilted on, I obviously still have a lot to learn -- just look at this stitching on the back!



At least I'm learning, right? I think it's time for a hand-quilting class, don't you?

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Thanks for tuning in, come back in 2 days for Food Friday & stop by next Wednesday for another installment of WIP Wednesday!

New Feature - WIP Wednesday!

Okay, so I'm barely making the Wednesday deadline, but today is WIP (Work in Progress) Wednesday. This is where I show you what I've been working on craft-wise. What decides which project I feature here? How much progress I've made since the last time sillies!

So, today's project is a cross-stitch piece I started forever ago.



This is the first picture I have of this project, taken in 2009. I started it way before then though. I don't exactly remember when, if it was before college or after. I definitely remember working on it somewhere in the 2001-2003 realm.





This is where I am today. Even in just under a month, I've added a lot.





Most notably these adorable little polar bear cubs. See how the back-stitching makes them pop?


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So, remember to tune in on Friday for Food Friday where I reveal this week's CSA share!