It's amazing what can be done with a few skills! We really gifted ourselves this Christmas. We were having trouble with leaking, mold growing, wood rotting, and mushrooms forming around our shower in the master bath, so we knew that we would be tearing it out to find the extent of the mold growth. We were very alarmed due to the fact that our home is only four years old. Ever notice the rim on the vinyl shower bottoms? It is very flat around the outside edge which is a poor design to prevent water from leaking eventually toward the wall. Anyway, as this is our forever home, we decided that if we had to tear it out anyway, we might as well put in what we wanted, and I have always loved white marble. As we are improving around the farm, we keep asking ourselves how we can get things done in a way that it will last the rest of our lives. Marble
seems to satisfy that as well. So I shopped around to get the best price on
marble tile, bought a few basket weave marble tiles for the bottom and niche, and got a professional to put it in for us, due to the building of the shower pan. We love our new shower! I knew I did not want to put the glass shower door back up, as I was trying to eliminate cleaning issues for the next fifty years and not only was the glass a pain to keep clean, but the bottom track always seemed to look dirty no matter how often I cleaned. However, I did want to make sure I used a sheer fabric so the light would come through. I bought a set of white sheer curtains with gray embroidery on it. It is so sad how when you order curtains, none of them seem to come in at the length they said they were. These curtains were supposed to be 84" and they were 82"! So, I let out the top and bottom hems, added some fabric to the back of the top and added buttonholes to the top for the shower clips to go through. For the liner, it was short as well. I cut off the top with the grommets and added a band of fabric sewn to the top and to the shower curtain. To allow me to sew it without getting stuck on the plastic curtain, I had to use strips of paper between the sewing machine foot and the shower curtain. Once done, you wet the paper to take it off without pulling the stitches. I love the way it turned out. My handy husband installed a chandelier over the bathtub where we had a flush mount light. As he had to add a box in the ceiling to hold the new light, we found that a ceiling medallion covered the extra spaces and edges. It looks great, too!
Winter weather has finally hit, and I am trying to finish projects mostly indoors. One of the projects I have been working on is making some hats and mittens from a wool sweater I found at the thrift shop. I cut two hats from the hem of the sweater, cut one set of mittens from the sleeves, and one set from the neckline. The set from the neckline I had to cut one side at a time to get the pretty neckline trim on them. Then I started thinking about the dogs being warm enough, so I took out an old bed comforter, cut it and fit it together so it was 4' x 4', which is the size of the floor of the doghouse they both stay in together. Then I took a bolt of microfiber that I bought a few years ago at a yard sale, and cut out and sewed a pillow sham that was 4 ' x 4' to cover it. That way when it gets dirty, we can just take the cover off and wash it. We put the cover on the comforter and took them out to put in the dog house. Hopefully, the dogs will be cozy tonight. The other thing I liked about the microfiber, is that it seems to have a water resistant quality. When we got our house, we redesigned it to have the long way go East and West, so the long side with all the windows would be on the south of the building to make maximum use of the sun. This meant that the front door was then located in a place that was different that it was intended to be.
We love our house, but I have been looking for an opportunity to balance out the front of the house. The front door is to one side, so I was thinking about bringing the olive color of the door to the other side of the porch. I recently found a metal wall hanging on craigslist that was nearly 4' x 3' that I thought would do the job nicely. So I brought it home, took it apart, and painted it olive green. I put it back together, and we hope to get it up on the house this weekend. This is how it turned out:
