Friday, December 4, 2009

A Home Improvement Transformation!

As the master bedroom project winds down, the Johnson sisters are working on valances and pillows while I feel pretty useless, other than helping hold fabric taut for cutting. So time to blog about the end of the project! Here Melinda is finishing off the first valance on her sewing machine. With outdoor temps staying in the 20s today, a perfect indoor activity.






As a quick review, we live part-time in a nearly 80 year old cottage near the Fox River. It is great living out in the woods along a major stream and still be relatively close to an urban area as well. The house has gotten patchwork repairs over the decades, and was in need of some TLC, and we were interested in expanding one of the rooms a little to make a slightly bigger bedroom. You can search for the "home improvement" topic down the right side for detailed posts, but in short, this last July we tore out siding, ceilings, flooring. Since then, in short bursts we performed some wiring, reinforced the broken floor joists, and rebuilt the siding, ceilings and floors. Realize we were only up from Tucson for a week or two at a time, so the bulk of the effort was overseen and done by Melinda's sister Maj. That is her in the "before" picture with Jack the wonder dog, after a day of demolition last summer.


We were back for another work session for a couple weeks in September - that is when we did a lot of the wall, ceiling, trim work and painted. Since then, while we were in Tucson, Maj was inspired to install, stain and polyurethane the plank flooring, and the results are quite spectacular! The immediate reaction upon seeing it is that you would never want to put furniture on it to cover it up, or even walk on the floor - it was just too pretty. But the next step was to move in, so we reluctantly relocated furniture that had been piled elsewhere in the house. A beautiful room, and with the completed window treatments, now declared finished!

1 comment:

Shannon said...

Um, I want that room!!! It is amazingly beautiful!