The House

Well, I've talked about the "dream house" so why not talk about this one. This house, including a huge finished basement is about 3000 square feet. Whatever in the world possessed me to agree to buying this house is beyond me. It is a bear to keep clean. I have a system where I do one room a day, seven days a week. It doesn't keep the place spotless, but it keeps it relatively picked up and clean. Over the last few years, we've made a "to-do" list for the house...most of it involving new flooring and new bathrooms. We, so far, have gotten the hallway from the mud room to the kitchen done with tile. The kitchen floor is done. The island (my design I'll have you know) is finished and its countertop is quartz. But in the last year or more, we've not gotten very far on anything else.

That changed over this weekend. I decided I would repaint the rooms upstairs (this job was already on the to do list and I'd kept putting it off). And we both agreed that we will switch the guest room with the office, giving us a lot more space for the home office we share, and the guest room while it will be smaller, will be plenty large enough for guests.

The first picture is the view into the downstairs bathroom from the hall. The second picture is the Great Room at Christmas. This is a huge room and with the fireplace in the center, almost impossible to set the furniture correctly. The third picture is the back deck, covered in Clematis and surrounded by Dahlias in summer. The fourth picture is the view out our front window in the Great room on Christmas two years ago...no snow fell until that night, making it not feel like Christmas at all. And the last picture is the front porch with the big rock that is our "step". It is a volcanic rock that we've been told is about six feet deep into the soil. So I planted phlox around it. :-)

By now, you know that there will be long absences and even longer breaks between posts. It isn't deliberate. It is because I try not to spend the day sitting at the computer. I also don't always have things to say. :-)

I haven't been sewing much over the last couple of weeks. The plan to do a wooden valance for our bathroom was put on hold when I decided I might want to change the color of the walls first. This particular bath is on our ground floor, and is a full bath (instead of the half bath one would usually find off the kitchen). I have no idea why they made this a full bath, complete with tub, but I know that I would rather have it be a half bath and turn the area where the tub is into a laundry room (our current laundry is a large room upstairs next to the master bath.

But while I was getting the wood for the valances and searching for just the right fabric to cover the valance, I realized that I'd painted it in an almost-white color and stenciled it about 8 years ago, and it might be time for a change. Below you will see a couple pictures of the bathroom. I'd picked a very nice pale mauve out for the Great Room in our house, and I may just put it in the bathroom too, as it is a pleasing color, and if I wanted to stencil, finding a deep mauve and contrasting colors shouldn't be too bad.

The first picture is of the sink area with my favorite painting of all time - the white kitty. The second pic shows the stenciling over the window. In the first picture, the area on the right is the tub with a navy blue shower curtain. This would be the area I would tear out and re-do as a laundry room. John agrees, so we've got it on our "project" list. :-)