House On The Hilltop - Part Eleven

Continued from House On The Hilltop - Part Ten

Do you SEE this?   Its my temporary, thrown together sewing spot in our upstairs craft room!!  My husband took pity on me and let me move in our old kitchen table and I  set up my machine so I could feel at least a tiny bit of normalcy.   Eldon is not the type to move anything in until we can just about call it done... so that tells you how close we are to finishing in our upstairs. 

I love the room, it makes me really happy to be in it!  There is a lot of nice light from the dormers and we have two overhead can lights, a fan with a light, and then the lights that will be on the back wall.  It should make for a great crafting area.  I painted all the walls and trim Simply White by Benjamin Moore.  I know it is a lot of white and I am a huge color person so I intend to bring in color in lots of other ways in this room. 

What do you think about the flooring?  We are positively in love with it.  It is Dunes Bay Driftwood by Lumber Liquidators.  It looks a lot like driftwood that was made into planks.  It is just perfect for this room.  Eldon will be building a barn look door for the little trap door on the back wall that leads into the no mans land of space that we didn't want to waste.  We've been calling our upstairs "The Barn Room" and it seems to have stuck.

This is looking up at the Barn Room from the kitchen area downstairs. 

I've had a few people write and ask for an update on the pendant light cords.   The update is this:  one of my readers who is married to an electrician wrote and told me that her husband says they use these heavy plastic sleeves that are split on one side so they can be sort of opened up and placed around the cords.  They hold them stiff and help to straighten them, then you can remove and discard them when the cords straighten.  I had several conversations with Barn Light Electric and they offered to send us new cords; however, we decided to go this route first and see if we can get them to straighten.  We plan to keep them on til we move in! 

We hung another Barn Light Electric pendant over the stairs and it also is a little kinky, but the cord is much shorter so not as noticeable and it does appear to be straightening.  (Positive thinking!)  I love the lights though, kinky cords and all.

The focus has now shifted to the downstairs living room where we are installing bead board on all the walls under the eight foot line.  It is looking beautiful and I love how it breaks up that huge cathedral wall so that you see something besides dry wall. 

For whatever reason, the bead board tongue in groove has been a two person job and rather slow to install.  In between helping Eldon with that I've been filling nail holes, sanding, and caulking trim.  (I've used about five rolls of Frog Tape.  That stuff is awesome.) 

The bead board will also go on that wall next to the stairs (up to the white trim board already in place).  The actual wall below the stairs is unfinished (as is the room under the stairs) as we are designing and building a steel tornado shelter that will be bolted in.  That framed wall that you see is actual only temporarily attached and will slide out so Eldon can build the shelter and slide it in.  Then we will sheet rock and install bead board on that wall also.  That is a big job ahead of us and we will tackle it soon.

This is the flooring we picked up last week from Lumber Liquidators for the entire downstairs (except for bathrooms).  We had a hard time choosing what we wanted but we found one we're really excited about.   My kitchen cabinets are being built right now and should be installed the first part of May so we need to get our flooring installed there first. 

So, what have I been sewing?  My grand-daughter is turning five this weekend and has requested a Pinkalicious party.  I told her I would make her a Pinkalicious skirt.  There are no patterns to be found on internet that were what I had in mind, so I was sort of winging it.  I pulled together all different types of pink ribbon and satin and went at it.  The end result was a perfect Pinkalicious skirt to go over her leotard.  I'll have more on that next week. 

Its beautiful here in Middle Tennessee with the grass growing, the dogwoods in bloom, and our baby calves running and chasing each other down the hills.  I hope you are having a good week.

 Continued in The House On The Hilltop - Part Twelve