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Home Improvements

Rose — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 06:17:21 +0000

In the last few weeks we’ve had three new skylights added to the kitchen, and all new carpet put in in the living and dining rooms and hallway.

Kitchen before

Holes in the ceiling

Kitchen after; this is with NO lights on!

Funky light patterns in the deep skylight well

And the carpet… sorry, I didn’t take before photos. But it was a grotty 12 year old concrete-gray Berber that I couldn’t get clean. This is softer, warmer color, and easier to clean.

New carpet. Nice empty room, huh? Too bad we had to put stuff back in…

With all of that and a bit of painting, it’s beginning to feel like a different house.

Christmas Tree

Rose — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:07:44 +0000

Rather belatedly, pictures of our tree this year.

(I’m trying to catch up, and trying not to allow the fact that I have all these outdated but unposted posts stop me from posting at all.)

In the field, it looked big, but not huge. We cut it off a good 4′ from the bottom.

It was still really tall and required a ladder to light the top.

Not the best pictures, but these are the only ones I managed to get. It’s full of old ornaments and homemade ones, by us and by the kids, and some we’ve found at thrift stores.

Picnic Table

Rose — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:15:38 +0000

This is where we eat nearly all of our meals these days.

I love that the weather is finally decent enough that we can suddenly realise we haven’t used the dining room table in 2 weeks.

New swing!

Rose — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 04:56:20 +0000

I finally figured out a way to make a swing using two of our trees and some rope. The hammocks are holding up well that way, so I sort of started looping and tying and with no real plan, wound up with a rope swing. It needed a seat so I stole a log from the firewood pile….

And hey, it seems to be working well enough!

Now if he could just learn to swing himself without needing pushed…

Room Changes

Rose — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:00:49 +0000

I realised last week that we were wasting the sunniest room in the house. What was formerly the guestroom and my sewing room faces south with sliding glass doors. It is a lovely bright room. And it was being used only a few weeks a year by guests who mostly just sleep there, and the rest of the time by me in the evenings when the kids are asleep. And on all of these sunny spring days we’ve been having, it was gated off and inaccessible while the playroom sat there and looked like a dark brown cave. No wonder the kids didn’t want to play in it.

Duh.

We moved the guest bed into the “cave” along with some stuff I want to store out of kids’ reach. We moved the toys into the sunny room and kept my sewing machine in there. We’ve spent at least some part of every day in there since then, boys playing together, or Ben helping me make something. All my supplies are easy to get to, and Ben is fascinated by the sewing machine and loves to help me use it.

I really like this new arrangement, and I think the boys do too.