Unplanned Renovation

    My husband and I are in the middle of an unplanned renovation. There was no disaster that needed repaired.  We did this to ourselves.  Once the ball started rolling, there was no stopping it.  We are not strangers to do-it-yourself projects.  We also knew when we bought this place that it would take plenty of work to make it the house we wanted to live in.  The latest project is one that fell squarely into the category of "wouldn't it be nice... someday"?  Not something that had to be done.  To be honest, although I thought of it as something that should be done, I didn't think we would be the ones to do it. "Someday" arrived last month when the contractor we were working with to replace our roof said he could do the structural part of the job at a reasonable price.  Starting in 4 days!  I normally ponder a new paint color for at least a month.  This meant I had to decide on type of flooring, closet size, choose stone and purchase a fireplace, mantel and lighting almost overnight!

    Building, much like quilting, should follow a specific order.  Obviously, you can't sew your blocks together until you have made the individual units that make up the blocks.  Those blocks become rows and the rows become your quilt top.  You just follow the plan.  Building from scratch is very similar.  Renovation is more like mending or repair.  There are certain limits to the changes you can make, depending on the existing conditions.  

    This building project was to correct what we saw as a major design flaw in our homes floorplan.  Our living room had a soaring cathedral ceiling.  Both the first and second floor have extra high ceilings.  That gave the living room a THIRTY TWO foot high cathedral ceiling.  I am sure it looked good on the original plan, but in reality, that wall that reached three stories high, was impossible to paint.  Those second story windows were impossible to clean.  The batteries in the smoke detector at the ceiling peak were impossible to change as were the lightbulbs in the wall fixtures.  The room practically begged for a second floor to be installed.  It is just my husband and I living here, so we don't really need the space.  That put the project on the "wouldn't it be nice" list until last month when Edwin the contractor and his team offered to do the structural work.

     First came the plastic.  It was everywhere.  The purpose of the plastic was to control the dirt.  It doesn't.  It certainly makes it much better than if there were no plastic, but nothing stays clean.  Nothing.  My commute to work, which is as simple as walking from the kitchen, to an upstairs bedroom, involved making my way through four zippered doorways.  We draped all of the furniture that we squeezed into other rooms with sheets.  It was like living in a haunted house.

    I am thankful that Edwin and his team made short work of cutting our house apart and putting it back together.  Considering that he fit our small job in between others he was working on at the same time, it could have taken much longer.  Then again, he was only contracted to do the structural and drywall work.  Cary and I are on the hook for the finishing this project.

    Finishing means everything from painting to adding the wood ceiling and installing the stone on the fireplace.  I married a do-it-yourself guy, so I was well aware that I would be holding the other end of a board, or handing tools up to him on a ladder until the project is officially finished.  What I didn't consider is that neither of us are as young as we use to be!

    Meanwhile, my dining room looks like this, because we also had to reprint several of my patterns and books.  The storage area where we keep those items is behind some of that plastic drape.

    My guest bedroom looks like this.  Those quilts are normally on shelves in what was previously a loft area.  They are sealed into the guestroom for now to keep them free of drywall dust!

    You might be thinking that amount of chaos is enough for any one person to deal with.  You would be wrong.  About the same time that the contractor finished his part of the job, the landscaper we have been waiting on for months showed up to scrape and re-sod our front lawn!  Between the new paint job, the new roof, the new lawn and the dozen changes inside the house, I am sure the neighbors are wondering why we didn't buy a house that we liked!

    One thing I learned about myself in this process is that I can have total chaos in my sewing room OR in my house, but not both of them at the same time.  With the house in total disarray, I had trouble concentrating on projects.  My only choice was to use the little time I had in my sewing room to clean up and organize.  

    

    Pat Sloan is crazy efficient when it comes to being an organized quilter.  In one of her videos she talks about being neat and keeping her fabrics folded because they take up less room.  I love Pat, but I work messy.  I have the room to work messy.  With the desire to put some order in my life, I decided to sort and press one small laundry size basket of scraps and test Pat's theory.  I have proved Pat's point.  Here are the before and after photos of the same basket!

    That basket is lovely.  I didn't remove any fabrics unless the fabric was in the wrong basket (I have one for each color).  I have been convinced that neat definitely saves space.  I also know for a fact that when I have the chance to use those fabrics, the aftermath will look a lot more like the before photo when I am finished.  The process did give me the opportunity to look through those pieces and make plans for future projects. 

      Those optional sewing projects will have to wait a little while longer.  I'm busy adding "stone mason" to my resume.  The new flick-a-switch fireplace is installed, and I am in charge of arranging the stone face.  After the fireplace is complete my husband gets to finish the trim and touch up all the painting.  Carpet will be installed in the new room sometime in the next 2 weeks.  Then we get to shift furniture.  We will move my husband's things out of the old loft and move my Handi Quilter into its new home.  That will create more room in my sewing room and more space for the equipment I need to film video lessons.  

    There is hope on the horizon that I will get back to sewing sometime soon!