Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Rain, rain--go away

Tap. Tap. Tap. SPLAT!

That's the sound of simple rain drops hitting our ginormous 32"x72" windows.

So often the rain sounds more like hail and the hail sounds more like...well...destruction.

Even though the moisture is good for our drought stricken part of the world, the rain and possibility of a lot of it along with frozen ice chunks being hurled from the sky is rarely a welcome sound at our house. Maybe it is because what turned out to be a 3+ month project to re-shingle our entire roof, started with one torrential downpour that could only inflame our continual battle against our arch nemesis: Mother Nature.

Temporary flashing and underlayment is a less than satisfying solution when mother nature makes a bold move working to undo our best efforts.

Once the rain began to pour and as we sat under our partially exposed, half-finished south side of the roof where we had started, we could only look up at our ceiling and wonder what would happen next. A tornado? A hurricane? A freak monsoon coupled with a new ice age storm? We were so worked up that we had to bring in a ladder to get ourselves up into our attic space area just to see if any sign of a leak could be seen so we could know the full extent of needed damage repair.

However, either luck or mother nature (I'm sure my husband would never agree) was on our side and thankfully there were no leaks. Our temporary coverage held its own like the miracle it was and the storm that made us swear 3 days into our project came and went leaving us a good long stretch of dry weather to continue work.

And work we did. With plenty of patience, labor and supplies, we toiled away in evenings and on weekends to get the job completed in time for winter and to save our sanity.


Stay tuned for more about this epic project involving asphalt shingles.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

This Old House Reader Remodel Contest II

Old Addition + Reno = Stylish Storage.

TOH finally got our other contest submission posted online. We hope to keep our finished "mudroom" mud-free but either way it is stylish and highly functional and certainly crumbly-no-more.




Sunday, April 7, 2013

Just before April showers.

Since it is beginning to become what we hope is the rainy season, I took a moment to reminisce about this year's ski trip from a few months ago. Working on our house non-stop the first 2 1/2 years after we bought it has led us to treasure our "play" time and really enjoy every vacation we take now.

One of the last runs of the day on Lower Hughes, Winter Park, CO.

We generally stay at our family's duplex near the resort in which we have themed the entire interior as a cozy cabin for winter wonderland getaways. I helped add to this theme by creating modern, yet simple and inexpensive wall art in both bedrooms.


I used 2 inch styrofoam as canvases--cutting them into 4 equal rectangles and then wrapping them with fabric. I made a pattern for the mountains on my computer and translated that to newspaper and then drew it on the actual fabric before cutting. I simply secured the main fabric pieces on the reverse side with straight pins and then used fabric glue to attach the snow pieces.



The great part is other than being cheap and easy, since each piece is so light, you can hang them with just straight pins to avoid putting large holes in your walls. Here are few others that I have done after I realized how simple this project was--except for the lower-right hand design. That was tedious!