Hardwood Floors

We have continued to be busy with projects for the house.  The most recent BIG project that we tackled was putting in our first hardwood floor.  We started with the Master suite for the same reason we painted their first because we wanted to have the room usable as much as possible.  We will also be putting in hardwood floors in the upstairs hallway, my studio, the great room, the kitchen/breakfast room and the dining room.  That's a lot of wood and a lot of work but once we are all done it will be really nice.

We learned a lot this time around and hopefully it will go slightly more quickly and smoothly.  There is a lot of prep work needed to get the floor ready.  The photo above shows the floor with the underlayment laid down.

This photo shows the room with some of the wood laid on the floor.  We chose Brazilian Cherry for our master bedroom and had lots of very heavy boxes of wood to use.  Laying a hard wood floor is sort of like putting a puzzle together.  You don't want all of the short pieces together,  all the light pieces in one area or any thing like that and you need to make sure that your joints from one row aren't too close to the next row or that your joints from the previous row are the same as your upcoming row.

The photo above show the next rows ready to be laid down.  My job was to lay down the up coming rows and to cut the end pieces.  Wayne put it all together and used the big pneumatic nail gun that we had rented.  Between Saturday and Sunday we got most of the flooring down and everything that required the big nail gun.  The last few rows of the bedroom and the closets got done later.  It is funny that the last few rows took longer than the whole rest of the floor.

Besides the beginning and ending rows the closets had some challenges as well.  I guess the good news is that we learned a lot with this floor.  This last weekend Wayne put in the shoe moulding so that we have the floor finished except for adding some quarter round in the closets, possibly getting new air vent covers  and putting in some threshold pieces which Wayne needs the rest of his tools for.

We have the bed and some of the furniture back in the bedroom and I have ordered curtain rods.  There will still be project to do in here the biggest being turning the walk in closets to much more efficient spaces.  I also need to sew the roman shades for the room and we will have some furniture decisions to make once we get the rest of our stuff out of storage but we shouldn't have to take everything out again.

Since we have been so busy with the house and decorating and I am behind with my posts so if you wish to see more photos of what we are up to or what I am doing on my 2010 BJP you can go to my Web Gallery.   If you want to read about my BJP project  you can visit my bjp blog.

Master Suite Painted

I am way behind on posting to my blogs which seems to be more of the norm than I would like lately. It seems to be way more challenging to paint a new house, move into said house and do all of the  normal Christmas stuff  than just do the regular holiday stuff (go figure).  It doesn't help that we have been without internet since the line to our house was no good and they need to put in a new line before we can get internet to the house.  Hard to write blogs without a home internet service.  These photos are a bit behind where we currently are in decorating but since I know that some people don't go to the web gallery to see the newest photos, I thought I might include some here.  All of these photos are of the master suite.  There are 2 colors of purple, 2 of blue, 2 of gold and the whites that we left.  I really love how it has turned out and the colors make me feel very happy.  I lucked out and had curtains that would work from our house in Rhode Island that work perfectly for our bathroom, one less space that I will need new curtains for.

The 2 pictures below show the master bedroom.  The first one is before we painted the crown moulding the darker gold.  Makes a huge difference.  The colors in the second photo are more accurate.  I like the first one cause it has my "painting stud" in it, doesn't he look proud?  We are trying to get some photos here and there that include us in them.  Not our forte I am afraid.

The last photo is of me in front of my Concord grape wall.  It is a beautiful dark purple and I was acting silly.  My favorite pain outfit is slowly getting more paint on it especially the pants which I wipe my fingers on.   I will try to get more posts up about the house but it will depend on how much time I can get  to the internet.  I want to thank all of of our Family and Friends for all of the good wishes and Christmas notes.  Wayne and I would also like to wish all of you a wondrous New Year.

The Painting Has Started

This first photo shows the cooktop side of the kitchen with the backsplash that was missing. It will be interesting to see how the kitchen looks once we add the hardwood floors and paint the walls and eventually when we get around to adding the tile back splashes. I am looking forward to lots of cooking in this wonderful kitchen.

We have started in on the painting for the house. Starting with our master suite since we will want to be able to use the new bathroom once we move in. We probably won't move our stuff into the master bedroom until we add the hardwood floors which will probably happen in January. My color scheme is not going to be subtle anywhere in the house with lots of mid to dark value colors, no pastels for us. The master-suite is the only place that I am planning on painting the ceiling. The color palette is blues, purples and golds with white left at the doors and windows.
The bathroom is mostly finished being painted (one more coat on the trim needed) and is just waiting to be put back together, have the grout sealed and towel bars etc hung. To see more photos of the house as it progresses please check out our web gallery where you can see photos from the beginning of construction to where we are currently at with projects to make it uniquely ours.

Neither Wayne or I have painted walls for years and years so we are learning a lot and getting better at it as we get more practice.
The most used "option" or feature for that matter in out new home at this point is our washtub. You can see Wayne cleaning up his painting supplies at our now not quite so new looking washtub.

We have be looking at and buying/ordering bathroom hardware and started looking for ceiling fans to put in the main rooms we will be using. Thanks so much Renee for schlepping us around Philly to look at stuff and for all of your expertise.

Since we will be moving into the house to live just prior to Christmas and our Christmas decorations are in storage with the Navy, we bought a small Christmas tree that we can enjoy. I think it will be quite happy in our sunny breakfast nook although it may need a string of lights to be more festive.

New House

Well it is official the bank owns a new house. Ok really it is ours but the bank owns a lot more of it than we do.

As you can see from the photo we still don't have a yard. Although we have had a warmer than normal fall it has also been really rainy. We have not had more than one sunny day in a row and plenty of rain during the last few weeks or more. They haven't even been able to finish grading it since it is basically one big mud trap.

This photo is of our breakfast nook, of course it is a really big nook and really close to being a sun room with southern exposure. I think we will really enjoy this room especially on nice days in the winter when the sun will be most welcome. Right now the sliding glass doors lead out to a 15+ foot drop but we will eventually put a deck out there. The whole house is currently this boring combination of bone and white which I am looking forward to changing to lots of color.

This photo is the foyer and the stairs that lead up to my studio (the most important room in the house). Currently this is the only hardwood in the house but we will be putting in plenty more in the next months. We will end up with only the 3 upstairs bedrooms with carpet, tile in the full baths and vinyl in the laundry/mud room, the rest will be hardwoods.

The last photo is of the sink side of the kitchen. This photo doesn't have the four inch granite backsplash that it will have. We will be adding a backsplash later but it may take a bit since we have a pretty long list of projects and that can be done at any time. The more painting and flooring we can do before we have the Navy take our stuff out of storage and deliver it the better. The kitchen is nice and big which will be nice since we like to cook together. It will also be good for entertaining since several people could work in there and not get in each others way.

Crystal Jewelry

As I promised here are the projects that I made with the new crystals I got from Artbeads.com. The earrings above used the Topaz Leaf Crystal Pendant that I chose. I added 4 mm crystals and pearls from my collection using head pins to make the dangles and joined them all together with a few different sizes of jump rings and now they are fun pair of fall earrings.
The 3 and 4 mm bi-cones in Crystal Heliotrope and the rivoli button went into this matching set of bracelet and necklace. I combined them with some seed beads and black oxide beads and used them while teaching my Flat Double Spiral and Single Spiral Rope Classes at Bead Boutique. Combining the Crystal Heliotrope with silver and Black Oxide makes for a very elegant set.

The Amethyst and Crystal Vitrail Light rivolis both went into these oh so subtle earrings above. They are loosely based on my new rivoli earring class that I will be teaching at Bead Boutique. With the addition on 6 mm facetted imitation alexandrite stones, a snap fittings and some sterling silver wire these earrings go well with the many purples in my wardrobe and jewelry. This is my first attempt at multi-tier wire wrapping and I really like how it turned out. I think I may have to try doing some wire wrapping that joins multiple cabochons or rivolis of different sizes to make unusual pendants or centers for a necklace.
These earrings are more closely related to the Wire Wrapped Rivoli Earring class although once again they have the addition of 6 mm snap fittings; this time with imitation emeralds. Here I have combined gold-filled wire with the sterling silver wire for a pair of earrings that work with either gold or silver jewelry. the emerald and crystal copper go really well together and give these earrings a very earthy feel.
Once again last but not least are my fishy earrings. Adding 4 mm bi-cones and 6 mm top drilled bi-cones in shades of blues to the fish pendants and I have glistening water for the fish to swim in.

Remember that if you would like to check out Artbeads.com for yourself you can use the code SCF10P-ARTBEADS-0424 and get 10% off your order through the end of the year with no minimum purchase.

Disclosure...As a reviewer of products at Artbeads.com, I received the Swarovski crystal elements above free of charge. I have been asked to review these products and give my honest opinion of the products...positive or negative. I am not being compensated by Artbeads.com for my endorsement as it pertains to the products received and reviewed.

Adding Crystals to my life.

Recently I ordered some Swarovski crystals from Artbeads.com so that I could play with some new stuff and to try out some of the crystal that my LBS doesn't happen to carry. I made a small order and wanted to choose things that I could relatively quickly turn into finished pieces with the crystal and supplies I already have.

Artbeads.com has a pretty impressive collection of Swarovski Elements and keeping the order reasonable was pretty challenging since I wanted some of everything. One of the nice things is that they have free shipping on all orders in the USA or $1 to Canada. (More money to spend on crystals.)

The photo above is my order all wrapped up in purple tissue paper which I think I will have to use in a collage once my studio is up and running. The photo below is all of my goodies laid out. What did I order? 100 each of the 3 mm and 4 mm Crystal Heliotrope bi-cones, 12 mm rivolis in Crystal Copper and Crystal Vitrail Light, 14 mm rivolis in Amethyst, 10 mm rivoli buttons in Crystal Meridian Blue, 2 of the brand new Fish Pendants in Crystal Golden Shadow and 2 of the smaller 16 x 26 mm leaf pendants in Topaz.
So what do I think of all of my new pretties and what are they getting made into? The bi-cones were a no brainer for me since I had previously purchased that color. Crystal Heliotrope is a hard color to find so I was thrilled when I saw they had it. It looks sort of grey with flashes of purple and blue so it is perfect when you want something refined with a bit of fun. These and the buttons are going into some spiral rope jewelry. The buttons are a a neat blue with flashes of pink and orange and other colors depending on the light and make great clasps.

The rivolis are all going into wire wrapped rivoli earrings which is one of my newer classes that I am offering at Bead Boutique. All of the colors are gorgeous. I've worked with both Amethyst and Crystal Vitrail Light before, the crystal copper is a new color for me and I really impressed with how rich it looked. I have loved the leaf shaped pendant since they came out with it but only recently had purchased some in the clear crystal for some winter leaf earrings so I was really looking forward to the topaz ones since I knew they would make wonderful fall earrings. Last but far from least is the brand new fish pendant which is one of the new Fall/Winter shapes from Swarovski. They looked cool online but in person they are so much better. They have such depth and facets to really catch the light. I may have to try more of these in some of their other colors. Fish earrings here we come.
With my order I got a Share the Savings Card that I would like to share with anyone who would be interested in checking out Artbeads.com for themselves. Although I just purchased crystal this time they have lots of other goodies. With the code I am including you can get 10% off your order through the end of the year. The code is SCF10P-ARTBEADS-0424. Now to figure out what I want to get next? Maybe some seed beads for next years Bead Journal Project which starts in January? MMMM.........

Come back in a few days to see what I have done with all of these yummy crystals.

Disclosure...As a reviewer of products at Artbeads.com, I received the Swarovski crystal elements above free of charge. I have been asked to review these products and give my honest opinion of the products...positive or negative. I am not being compensated by Artbeads.com for my endorsement as it pertains to the products received and reviewed.

I Dream in Color

Actually the truth is I seldom dream in color or even in images but the title is meant to suggest the fact that the last couple of months I have been a bit obsessed with color as I contemplate all of the colors I want to use in the new home we are building. I am probably going completely overboard but since after years of living in houses where all of the walls were white or off white I want to be surrounded by color. The photos for this post are of the paint strips and some of the curtain fabric that we have chosen.
We have pretty much chosen the colors we are planning on using and have a mere 11 colors. I know I am sure people are going to wonder if I am insane. (3 of those are blues, 4 purples, a grey and the rest are gold to copper.) We have decided to go with Harmony paints by Sherwin Williams. It is a no VOC so hopefully it won't be hard on my head. Most of the walls will eventually be painted. Most of the trim and ceilings will be left white as a crisp contrast. We will be putting in our own hardwood floors in lots of the rooms. Doing it ourselves will allow us to use hardwood on more floors and use a couple of woods that the builder did not carry like Purple-heart and Bloodwood.
I have ordered most of the fabrics I want for the curtains for the main rooms in the house and our Master suite. In my first wave of curtain making I am doing 18 curtain panels (all lined, 2 interlined) and 6 Roman shades. It will take a while but I have a really good start on the 8 curtain panels for our bedroom. It is a gorgeous navy blue silk dupioni fabric. It is a lot nicer to work with than I thought it would be. I am including photos of the house from the lot until it is painted and decorated in my web gallery. It has been a lot of fun watching it come together and I think that our builders (Quality Built Homes) has been doing a good job so far.