Friday, January 20, 2012

Working Man

It's time to brag and show off for my awesome husband!!

Remember this from when we first moved in?

It stayed pretty much like that for the first long while.  Then, when it started to get cold, we realized that the furnace does next-to-nothing for the basement and we might want the fireplace.  We quickly learned that to repair the fireplace would be insanely expensive.  Insanely.  So we looked at our options and decided to gut the whole thing, rebuild it out, tile the area near that wall, and put in a wood-burning stove that would more effectively heat the house.  So the gutting began.



Finally, the rebuilding began.  It was so satisfying to see that wall go up, so pretty!  And we realized that we also gained about 8 inches of space that we wouldn't have had if we'd just walled over the existing fireplace instead of tearing it out.
 

The tile took a little more work, and some frustration when Aaron couldn't get the tiles to cut like he wanted.  After a purchase of his very own tile cutter, it went much smoother.  He really loved having this as his own project to learn from.
 

And I love the finished product!  We're still narrowing down options for the wood burning stove itself, but are really excited about how it's come from it's starting point!

 Next project up for my hard-working man:  turning this bathroom into something like
this.
Definitely going to be a learning process here too!  Don't expect to hear much about it until March. :)

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Brag Post

These are a couple of the things that I made - and I'm SO proud of myself and it's been so hard to wait the last little bit before Christmas to display them here!

This is the fourth tree skirt I've made.  I took pictures all through the process deciding whether or not to make a tutorial with it - anyone interested?  Anyway, this one was made for Aaron's brother, David, and his wife Linnea.  I didn't take a final, complete pictures, but I backed it with green adn red flannel and trimmed it with red lace.  (The others were for me and Aaron's two sisters, Katie and Carmen.)


This is the one I'm most very proud of.  It's a duel-sided table runner for my little sister.  One side has a Christmas theme...

The other side a spring theme.

This one took lots of planning and cutting and sewing, but it was completely worth it!  It made me want to do another for myself...maybe in two years or so when I get over the anxiety. :)