finished those Roman Shades

The re-covering was a dumb idea . . .

I thought it would make the room darker at night and in the mornings when we had the chance to sleep in. BUT they just didn't hang right. That's ok. They are finished now and are all beautiful and yellow. These go much nicer with the spread and pillows.

New Pillows

Well that's not exciting I know. I've had the material for ages, so I recovered a Roman Shade too. I think I'll do to more Shades tomorrow.

I did get the hole patched. Tomorrow . . . Wall Paper!

Fixing holes in the wall

you wouldn't think this would be hard!

Last week we had one in the bathroom. Joe has moved home during the week. Blythe is finishing up school and he's opening up a new store. So he's staying with us. I noticed that the towel rack was loose in the bathroom he's using. By the time I finished getting it off the wall, there was a hole - Metal anchors primarily to blame. So, some patch, sanding, small pieces of wall paper and it's nearly as good as new.

Which makes me think it's time to tackle the much larger hole at the bottom of the stairs that I've ignored for several years. Ron had tried to carry a mattress up the stairs by himself and it slipped. oops . . . I just hung a quilt over it. Since it was at such a prime location, I thought I should pull the entire panels of wall paper down for this hole - it spanned two. Joy! They didn't want to come off without the wall. What I thought would take 15 minutes took two hours. That was just pulling off the paper.

Tomorrow, I'll have to start patching the wall - not just the hole. Drat!

The Kitchen

The main living area seemed the place to start and the kitchen for some reason grabbed my attention first. So, I stripped the wallpaper, scraped off the popcorn ceiling (not for the feint of heart), primed, painted, and hung new blinds.

Here's what I started with. It didn't look bad, I'd just been looking at it for about eight years and it was starting to show some wear and tear. The trim was starting to discolor, the paper was peeling just a bit at the edges, and my tastes have changed!

The Before Pictures

The Inbetween Pictures

Middle of the road. Ceiling wasn't hard, but boy did it make a mess. It was a constant clean up so it wouldn't become such a big job (and I didn't want to track it into the rest of the house).

The After Pictures

I was very happy with the end results! I had a few moments when I wasn't sure how the color would really turn out, but I was really happy with overall look.

Another Kitchen Project

When we first moved into the townhouse, all the appliances were original. The stove was one of the first things that had to be replaced. The original was a single unit microwave/stove, and try as we might, we could not find a replacement for it. We had to buy a microwave and a stove. When the house was finished, they didn't connect the ceramic tile behind the stove. ACK! We had a space of drywall and no tile.

I went to the craft store and got supplies for a mosaic. It wasn't a difficult project. The supplies were

• thick glue
• broken pieces of tile
• grout

Then you just start arranging the pieces so they look good to you.