Long story short, we've had a new oven sitting on a pallet in the middle of our kitchen for about two and a half years. The oven it was meant to replace was dying and then it died fully and completely about 2 years ago. So we've been living without an oven for 2 years because I couldn't find anyone to install it, and we kept hitting road blocks every time we attempted to move forward with DIYing it. (The huddle that we ran into a year ago was the need to move a gas line for the cooktop above - something I was not going to DIY!)
Anyway, we unexpectedly were able to get the oven installed by someone about a week before Christmas! I finally have the ability to bake things again - this time without a computer brain and with a convection option (which turns out is just the old-fashioned term for "air-fry" ).
Now that the oven on a pallet is out of the way, I've been going through the cabinets and trying to reorganize and "lazy-proof" everything. If I can just find a home for everything, we might actually keep the kitchen from becoming a nightmare.
I don't have an actual pantry, so we bought a metal shelf unit for storing all the big things like water, paper towels, etc that don't fit inside the tiny cabinet openings with fixed shelves and put it in front of the pointless door we never use (see photos 3 & 4). Someday, I might wall off the door and put in an actual pantry in the corner, but that is a long term dream for later.
Lazy-proofing involved setting up an organized coffee station for my husband (the coffee drinker) and pulling all the tea options out of the cabinet for easier access since he now enjoys hot tea with me as well. (It used to be an avalanche of boxes and too many things got buried and forgotten in the mess.) Now we can easily see what we have with the tea caddie shelves on the counter (pic 5).
So my kitchen is still a mess because I have to make a bigger mess before things actually get better, but it's almost there. I got a breadbox and a coffee maker slider with a drawer for pods that I haven't taken photos of yet. I refuse to tackle the spice cabinet until after I get everything off the island. Fingers crossed I can get it all put away nicely this week and be basically finished with it - I'm sick of spending time in the kitchen!
I spent the day priming things for paint and then I remembered to shoot a quick video. #SewingStudioBuild
I started cutting all the edges while Janet was away yesterday morning. When she got back after lunch, she pulled out a roller and started filling in. I'll put a pic below in the comments. #SewingStudioBuild
We broke for lunch and then came back with a portal ac unit plugged in to an extention cord from the house. Can't wait until they finished hooking up all the electrical and we have the mini split cooling the room for us - it was stupid humid today! #SewingStudioBuild
I finally finished the quilt for my daughter. I couldn’t take pictures of the entire thing (her room is a disaster zone), but here’s some of the patchwork and the embroidered square I made because I ended up being one short. I did learn that I’m going to need to find a better way to lay out any future quilts that are twin sized or larger, because I had to keep shifting it around the slightly too small area of our basement carpet and the backing ended up getting doubled up in multiple places. By the time I discovered it, I couldn’t bring myself to unpick that much of the quilting, so it’ll have to stay. But I think it’s going to be awhile before I do any more quilts. Between this and the patchwork jeans (which I did end up having to shorten some), I’m feeling burned out on big projects for now. I did cut out a basic knit tee, so hopefully that’ll be enough of a palate cleanser to get me over the lack of motivation to sew that I was feeling by the end of this.
I thought you all might be interested to know what happened to the original treadle base on my antique Singer. This was all my husband’s doing, as he’s wanted to try this project for years. He’s gotten into woodworking this past year, so he’s got more of the skills now. The table portion is from a fold-down IKEA table that used to be my cutting table, back in the pre-kid days when I had a whole room for sewing. (It’s been living in the basement folded up for years, mostly used for garden seed storage and a few small tools.) He added the sink basin and faucet. We’re debating about me making a small curtain underneath that would hide the pipe work, while still showing the treadle base.
This project sparked another room makeover, though this one is our half-bath so it isn’t nearly as involved as our kitchen and kids’ rooms have been. Several of the other items in the picture came from a couple of local antique shops, though the old milk crate belonged to my husband’s ...
