Work Moving Along

I have the Amish style king sized top put together and have marked all of it but the outside border which will be a fancy feathered wreath sort of thing with undulations. I have never made a king sized quilt before. I began piecing it on the machine but by the time I got to the last border it became very unwieldy, slipping around like an eel and making me feel like I was arm wrestling an octopus. So I made and applied the last border by hand, much more relaxing.

Work at our new/old house is moving quickly as well. Today the kitchen cabinetry started being installed. The kitchen is a large rectangle with a natural split in the middle where the back door is. On one side will be cherry cabinets stained in hazelnut and the range, electric oven, sink, dishwasher, refrigerator. On the other side will be pine cabinets painted in a lovely blue color with an eating area, another full sized sink, one upper cabinet, and then a large antique English fiddle front dresser. I have had islands or peninsulas in the last two houses and ended up not liking them so much as they impede flow. As I have room and additionally a very large pantry with many shelves, we chose a real table instead of any island.

My husband and I are doing some of the painting ourselves. We spent the morning priming the master bath for painting tomorrow. We had already painted the dressing room side but in doing so I found so many flaws in the mudding that I told the guy in charge of all the crews that work needed to be done. Two houses ago when we lived in the large white elephant that had once been a pretty grand mansion, I learned how to tape and mud, how to fix old plaster from the sanded layer outward, and just what a good job looked like. My husband says that I am magic but all you need is some patience, good light, and determination. It definitely didn't look as though the mudders had any of those because there were dings and gouges and places where the paper tape applied to the corners wasn't even adhered to the wall. So the crew did all kinds of repairs. Oddly enough it was all on one wall but that one wall looked as though a three year old had played with the spackle. Anyway, the wall needed to be repainted completely but the new plaster had to be primed so it's been an all day sort of project even though each individual component didn't take that long. The one bit of luck is that we picked matte finish so that one wall can be repainted without looking different from the adjacent walls.

My husband is proudest of the new window in the dressing room. The old building was quite lovely with very interesting architectural features but when it was originally converted from a stable to a house, some of those features were bastardized. The window on the front of the house that has its own gable and light was a beautiful arched window. I am not entirely sure what the glass looked like but if it was similar to the other windows it was multi-paned. So that's what we put back. We ripped out the aluminum window that was surrounded by stucco and brought the space back to its original shape though a little shorter to accommodate a heating element. We had to have the window custom built because the arch at the top was not a true half circle so a template had to be made so the window could be fit into the space with no gaps. It's a deceptive window because from the inside it looks enormous, easily towering over me, but from the outside, because of the scale of the building, it doesn't look that big. This is the space prior to the window installation.

This is the window as it is now without trim which has to be custom fit because the original arch was off so the window to fit is off as well. The scale is hard to judge until you understand that the room has an 11 foot ceiling. I have no doubt the neighbors will be glad when we are done, but I hope they appreciate the "restoration" of unusual features.