Sewing Pillow Covers

This is my second time making pillow covers. These are for my sister...she found the fabric online at www.fabric.com and had it sent to me. I made these the same way I did here: http://melissarproject.blogspot.com/2012/04/sewing-machine-love.html

This picture is showing the inside of the pocket that the pillow will slide into. I left about a 5 inch overlap which worked great.

 On this pillow I almost made the same mistake as last time. I was just about to start sewing but decided to check things...and sure enough I did it again. Both sides of the material should always be facing in...so when you flip it right-side out you have a nice pretty pillow, not an inside-out looking one. Luckily I only had to unpin this one...the last one took me hours of seam ripping.

Front and back of the covers

All done...I put one of my pilows in the case and it turned out quite nice. I shipped them off to New Mexico to their new home on my sisters couch.

This will be a much happier looking pillow now.

Little changes

   

This lamp went through many changes. Wish I had pictures of all of them but I am not too good at remembering to take pics yet (am trying to get better). So to recap all of the colors:
Original - Stained wood with brass base
black with satin silver base, then black with black base
green with hammered silver base, then green with white base
Final - white with white base
It did cost me 5 cans of spray paint...still less than the cost of buying a new one. I got the lampshade from a lamp I already had...worked out great

This is our fireplace with the brass doors

I bought some high heat flat spray paint from Home Depot and sprayed it black. This made it look much better. Next is the tile.

And this is just embarrassing. This is Chris's office...needless to say it has a leak. The roof over this room is flat so water just finds its way in. We plan to redo the roof which is why we haven't bothered to repair it. So, Chris had a moment of brillance...he stapled some thick plastic to the exposed wood (because we removed the ceiling) and cut a hole in the middle and it drains right into the bucket. We have since swapped the bucket for a trash can since it was filling up too fast. Works perfectly!

Replacing steel windows

First things first...move the ghetto dryer vent to an actual wall. This was a piece of cake. Drill through 12 inches of block and put the dryer vent right through. Maybe it wasn't quite that easy. One bloody finger later...right through.

 Our very first window...America's Best Choice slider

 This is Chris cutting the steel window out and he will be leaving the steel frame all the way around. This will leave something to attach the new window to...along with framing the inside with wood. He took the day off from work and since I was unavailable for the assistant job he had a very generous helper (with lots of window instillation experience) for the day.

The new window looks great. Now the frame around the outside is the eye sore...don't even pay attention to the dead ivy on the right side of the picture. Yes, the outside of the house has been neglected but one day we will get to around to that.

He added a wood frame around the outer edges of the window.

 Last, Chris used his table saw to cut the wood molding to go around the outside of the window. I just set it up there for the picture...it's not actually attached, but soon it will be! He ordered 4 more windows for the rest of the downstairs...then we will tackle the BIG windows upstairs.

Build mirror from old pallet

I saw a mirror while out shopping for a mothers day gift that I thought my mother would love, but I didn't love the price. They had it priced at $100! So, I thought I could just build her one. Since I had a handy man at home I was sure we could do it. I already had some old wood from pallets we had broken down to build a potting bench. We had a long piece of wood on each side that we glued and screwed each piece of wood to. Since I was in charge of this project, there was very little measuring going on. This drove Chris crazy.

 By the time we made it to this point we had built the frame for a mirror that I didnt have. I ended up using a door mirror which didn't fit but it was really close. We trimmed a little off the two inner edges of the frame and it fit perfectly.  I bought a glass cutter and cut the length of the glass to fit.

Chris got his handy dandy table saw out and cut 2 pieces of wood to hold the mirror in place. It looks near professional...better than the one I saw in the store.

side view

I added the hanger on the back and we were done

Total cost was $9.00! That was for the glass cutter and the hanger...everything else we already had. The one on the left is mine and the one on the right was my inspiration. 

New Interior Doors

Our door project consisted of 10 new blank doors. We had to measure and cut all doors to fit in our not so straight openings.

After cutting the door to size we took it to the opening to make sure it fit. Holding it there we marked the hinge position and the notching began. We used a chisel and mallet and very slowly we started whittling the side of the door. This was a very slow and tedious process! 30 notches later...we were done!

We had a drill attachment for the 2 holes in the door.

Sanding indoors is not recommended! After cleaning the mess, we decided this was the only one we would be doing this way. For the other doors we actually removed the door molding, took it outside, sanded, primed, and painted it. A lot of work but it made a big difference.

                                                                                                                                                                     this is where we removed the molding and took it outside to be sanded. 

left side is not sanded...right side is sanded...you have to enlarge the pic to see the difference

This was our assembly line for door painting. Each door had to be painted twice on each side...then they were finally ready to install. Since we removed the old doors and got rid of them before we were actually finished with the new ones, we had sheets hanging as our doors...even the bathroom...the kids didn't appreciate that too much :)

                                    

                                    

                                                  

We are finally finished! This seemed like such a long process...probably because it was, but it was all worth it

Crown Molding

This was our setup for painting all the molding. We painted, measured, cut, installed, caulked all cracks and nail holes, then painted again. All of this we did to 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. I am not really sure how long the whole process took, but I do know it was too long. 

                                          This is Peytons room before we moved in...NASTY

                                          After:

                                          Carters room before:

                          After:

               For some reason I don't have a before of Justins room but it wasn't any better than the others.