Two Weeks Till the Wedding!

It's crazy for me to think that two weeks from today my youngest son will be getting married...in my backyard...when my house is a wreck...but my son's getting married...in two weeks!!!

Life has been crazy around here, like really crazy, and it's going to get worse. The good news? The hall bath I showed last post is done AND so is the master bath!

Here is a view of the master bath from the doorway. Love, love, love the purple!

And this is the view from standing in the shower.

More good news? My BIL figured out a way to keep the twins safer on the stairs. The railing on our stairs is not to today's safety standards, and until now we've kept the twins off the stairs with gates unless we were right with them. With all the remodeling, I've been un-childproofing a few things, and access to the stairs was on of those changes.

The black wrought iron railing was all that was there originally. My BIL added the lattice to cover up the child sized holes in the railing. He also made the lattice taller on the landing, to make it just that much safer for the twins. Someday I'd love to take the wrought iron railing out, and replace it with a nice wooden system, but that is really expensive and we can't do that right now.

OK, there is the good news. The bad news? Well....we need to replace the duct work in the house, as there are holes in it. The house is 50 years old, and we've already done a ton to it, but it sure does seem like it's self destructing right now. If that weren't enough, when I was cleaning the downstairs bathroom a couple days ago (we remodeled it three years ago), I realized the flooring around the toilet was stained, and it is stained from underneath. Yes, the toilet was leaking at some point, though it doesn't seem to be now. So, today my BIL and I went and bought new flooring for THAT bathroom, and he's going to pull the toilet, determine the problem, fix that and replace the flooring and toilet. Thankfully, the rest of that bathroom should be fine, though the vanity and sink may need to be pulled to replace the flooring. It should be able to go back just fine, as everything in that bathroom is only three years old.

Since we're so far into this, I decided to add a few misc. jobs while I have my BIL in town. He'll be adding some lattice on one side of the patio for some afternoon shade, building a screen to hide the air conditioner unit, and building new bigger shelves for my vintage sewing machines! It's like moving without the packing, so much has been done to the house in the last six months.

I doubt it's too surprising I haven't sewn a stitch. I'm not likely to either. I've been going through everything before I reload the new bathrooms, and getting rid of some stuff, while making lists of things I need to purchase. My husband is a nurse, and you could never tell by looking at our first aid supplies. We had three half used expired tubes of antibiotic ointment. Multiple boxes of bandaids, but not a full box between them. I found three cases for thermometers, but only one thermometer between all three bathrooms.

I've been working on cleaning up the house in general. With all the remodeling for the last six weeks, not much is actually where it belongs. DH and I spent quite a bit of time cleaning our bedroom yesterday. Not only did I clean off my dresser, but I cleaned my drawers, and filled a bag with donations. I've been having a horrible time finding any socks in my drawer, and I thought I needed more, since I've thrown out several pairs lately. Well, after organizing my drawers, my socks take up more space than my nightgowns! Where were they all hiding?

For the next week, cleaning is my priority. Cleaning for a week, cooking for a week, then I should be ready for the wedding. Hopefully the remodeling will finish sometime before the wedding. I'm not panicked at this point, as long as I end up with a new daughter out of the deal, the wedding will have been a success, even if the house isn't spotless, and the food isn't perfect.

Closer to the Finish Line

Things are moving right along, in more than one area around here. One of the bathrooms is almost finished. It still needs trim and the closet rebuilt, but it's close.

 This photo has a weird reflection from the mirror on the wall.  The wall color isn't coming out true at all, it's a Behr paint called Indulgent Mocha, and it looks like coffee with lots of cream in it.

The sink, toilet, and shower are all functional. The closet will go just to the right of the shower. Probably one full day and this bathroom will be finished. My bathroom has been demoed and is ready to start on.

 

DS the Younger's wedding quilt is a quilt top now! I added borders today. You can't see the borders in this pic, but there is a narrow inner border of the background Kona Khaki. Outside of that is a dark brown 5" border. I had enough of one green blender fabric to do the backing for this quilt, so that's what I'll do. I have some piecing to do for the backing, and I'm hoping to get it done during the twins naptime tomorrow. That may be wishful thinking on my part, but a girl can dream. 

I find all of the renovations terribly distracting, so I'm not even planning on starting the quilting of this quilt until after the renovations are finished. I would, however, like to have it pin-basted and ready to go before the remodeling is done. I'm getting closer to that goal!

I've been working on Aussie quilt blocks as leaders/enders while assembling this quilt. I have a nice pile of them done and ready to use. I'm not going to try to figure a layout until I have all the Aussie blocks done, and I still have a good sized pile to sew. I'm still not sure how many Aussie quilts I'll end up with, just more than I thought, for sure. I'm pretty sure I've passed the halfway point on the Aussie blocks, it seems like my finished pile is bigger than the to-be-sewn pile now.

Hopefully good things are happening in your lives too!

Renovations

No pics on this post, I just haven't taken any. Renovations continue. Sunday morning I went into the kitchen and my socks got all wet AGAIN! Turns out the dishwasher had a crack in the tub, and it was leaking too! We had three leaks all at the same time! What are the odds of that? Icemaker leak, drain pipe leak, and dishwasher leak! Well, after doing a bunch of online research, we purchased a new dishwasher, and it is now installed. Since we were redoing so much in the kitchen, I went ahead and replaced the cabinet knobs, because we have had several break in the last couple years, and the cabinets were sporting mismatched knobs. I screwed the last of the new knobs on today. I am hoping we are really done in the kitchen this time.

The hallway bathroom remodel is coming along well, and it's possible that it may be done on Saturday. It depends on the flooring mostly, since when we went to get it, it was out of stock citywide, and Lowe's is supposed to get a big shipment in tomorrow, but they weren't sure what time. I chose a high quality sheet vinyl, and to get something in stock I would have had to go down in quality, and I didn't want to do that. I had several people suggest ceramic tile, but I am not a fan of ceramic tile. To each their own.

My bathroom is next on the remodel list. I am already out a sink, and complete demolition will commence within the next couple of days. I know it will be great when all the remodeling is done and over with, but it's sure not much fun during the process.

DS the Younger's wedding is getting closer and closer. All the remodeling should be done three weeks before the wedding, so I will have a little time to get the house back to normal and cleaned before we are wedding central. I've purchased the last of the stuff I needed to get for the wedding with the exception of the food. DS the Younger and future DDIL have done most of the work themselves, as well as paid for most of the things. They went with a rental place that will deliver and set up the tables and chairs for the wedding, as well as pick them up! I think that's a great plus! Right now the backyard has stuff for the renovations all over it, but it should be lovely for the wedding.

I'm hoping for good weather. If it gets cool we can rent or buy some outdoor heaters. So far our winter has been incredibly mild, so while the rest of the country has been freezing, we've had lovely weather. I wish we'd get our winter rains though, otherwise the fire danger will be very high spring and summer.

Besides screwing on new cabinet knobs, and choosing all the fixtures, I'm not doing any work on the renovations. I don't know why, but I'm still just having a horrible time getting anything done, so sewing is pretty much a wash these days. I did manage to get DS the Younger's wedding quilt into rows, and even sewed some of those into pairs, but it's SLOW going. I noticed I had two of the same fabric next to each other, and it's staying there. I just don't have it in me to do all the ripping required to fix it. I'll probably find a couple more spots with the same problem. When you are making a scrappy quilt 108" square, it's hard to spot everyplace two of the same fabric meets, and rearrange it so none do. I'm not going to tell them about it, and I'll just wait and see if they ever notice or mention it ;-)

We are still working on potty training the twins, and that is a big time investment too. Miss S is doing OK, and Mr. L has at least had a couple successes now. I'm hoping for a big breakthrough soon with that. Hmmm, renovations, potty training, a wedding...maybe I have a decent excuse for not getting much sewing done after all.