HighFiber: renovation

Showing posts with label renovation. Show all posts

Monday, October 24, 2022

Front and Back

We saw a lot of progress on the front porch this week, in spite of the rain and cold. The grey color is primer. The rails will all be black, as well as the lattice that was supposed to protect the space underneath from animal habitation. We found several different kinds of balls under there. There was a space by the steps that had been open at one point and then was filled with large rocks. Now it will actually be sealed off, so it shouldn't collect any more balls. Spiders, maybe, or our local scorpions (not dangerous), but no squirrels or skunks will be able to set up housekeeping there.

By Sunday, the deck was sanded and the new finials were installed.

Joshua and Vinnie removed the last of the old pergola on Saturday. They hauled off the old posts and other bits of wood.

It's still pretty messy in the backyard, but progress is being made!

We now have a bird bath! This one has a little solar-powered fountain, which keeps the water moving when the sun is out. Obviously, it needs the sun to work. There's no water source for it, so we will need to keep it filled, and maybe thawed in the winter.

I'm not sure if it was the bird bath that brought the robins, but we had a big flock of them come through late Saturday afternoon. I tried to get pictures of them by zooming in, but this was the best I could do.

They kept flitting around, so most of them showed up as blurs. These robins didn't look like the usual ones we have most of the time. These have more black on their heads and backs and the red breast is lighter. I looked them up and found out that their visitation is a common occurrence here. They come through Bend twice a year when they migrate. They spend the summer in Alaska or parts of Canada and are on their way south for the winter. They're attracted to the juniper trees, nesting in them at night, and they feed on the berries but need water to digest them. We probably had 50 of them in our yard. As many as four at a time would be at the bird bath, drinking. We noticed that they weren't interested in the puddle of water on the top of the old hot tub. We didn't see any of them on Sunday, so maybe they had moved on.

Honorary granddaughter Elsie says she enjoys reading my new book, proof that it really is for all ages. (You may remember last week's photo of our 12-year-old granddaughter Daphne reading the same book.) I suspect the pictures are of more interest to Elsie than the text, because some of the words might be difficult to read at her age.

If you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon and B&N and search for "Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook by Peggy Stuart" in Children's. Every click on the page for the book makes it more likely they will keep a good supply in their warehouse and stores. If you are outside the US, you may have a separate website for these retailers. If you have a copy of our other books, Emil and Mariah, please leave an honest review on the websites, especially if you bought from them.

Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Still the Hinterland Pullover (some more progress made...maybe two rounds on the sleeve) and the EmPower People Kerchief (hibernating). Still Pauly's Wonderland pullover, no progress.

What's on my loom: Dust, but I still plan to make some placemats.

What's on my sewing machine: Still ready for back of T-shirt quilt.

What's in my hoop: Whole Cloth quilt, still no progress..

What's in The Doll's Storybook: September 9, 2022, "The Problem With Dogs and Cats." Mariah and Charlotte see a dog chasing a cat and wonder why dogs and cats don't get along.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Now listening to Plan for the Worst by Jodi Taylor, the next volume in The Chronicles of St. Mary's.

What's in my wine glass: Red Blend Portugal from Casa Santos Lima 2020. A favorite, and not just because of the pretty label.

What's my tip of the week: Peeling an onion is easier if you're going to chop it up anyway. Just make a few cuts through the onion with the skin still on first. Cut off the root and the top. Then cut through the middle from top to bottom and pull the outer layer off. It will be flexible, but the skin is stiff. It will pop off or break up and be easy to remove.

Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with a few changes.

Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook is available from BookBabyBookshop and other booksellers worldwide. The stories are Little Green Greatcoat, The Boy Doll Who Cried Wolf and Lost in the Woods.

Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook and Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are also still available from booksellers world wide. The link for Book Baby is here. The three stories in Emil are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.

The three stories in Mariah are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

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Sunday, October 2, 2022

Tearing Down, Unloading and Building New

Just when I thought I was done with the book, the printer complained about the resolution on the back cover and wanted me to replace the artwork. The back cover looked fine by itself. (Note: This is just a screen shot of the PDF, so not a good representation, but just to give you an idea.)

I put in a couple of hours trying to replace the back, but every time I saved the full cover to a PDF, the back cover looked pixilated (all while the front looked nice and sharp). I had noticed a few days before that they have a new service called "templating," which just takes your artwork and puts it onto the template they have to use. It was going to cost me another $21 to get InDesign for another month, so the $99 for templating sounded pretty good. They said to allow three days for the service, but they were able to get to it right away. I will use it for all future books!

I decided to use slightly smaller type for this book. It already went over the length of the previous two books by ten pages. Using smaller type shortened it enough to get it into 70 pages.

Our vet nabbed me when I was in the office to pick up some medication for Rocky. He remembered seeing my iPhone tote/pouch and wanted to see if he could pay me to make one for his mother. I work for love but not for pay, so I said I would make one for her as a gift. She went to the University of Nebraska and wanted their colors. I finished the knitting in a couple of days.

The logo would be very difficult, because of the thin lines.

I was able to find an embroidered patch that will fit the pouch. It's on the way to me.

The felting was fairly quick and easy. I put it into a zippered pillowcase and washed it in hot water with detergent. I threw in a towel, so it wouldn't be lonely and set the washer for a small load. Then I ran it through the dryer until the towel was dry.

The Hinterland Pullover might actually get finished before winter. I picked up the stitches for the second sleeve.

Remember the shower that was ripped out to be replaced by a closet? (Photo from July, when we put in the new shower where the old soaking tub was.)

We found a good construction worker to build the closet for us. He was working on a neighbor's front deck. Charlie had a look at what he was doing and recognized good work. Monday he started on the closet. Let me introduce you to Joshua:

I have photos of the whole process, but this is a quick summary. The walls were up about midweek.

Then by Saturday, it looked like this:

We have boxes of cedar paneling we've been moving around with us since we lined the master closet in our home in Dana Point about 1987. I don't know if we have enough of it to do the whole closet, but we can buy more if we need to.

The front and back decks also need some work, and while we're at it, we decided to have our workers take down the cover over the hot tub (which leaks, so we can't use it). This is what it looked like three years before we ever saw the place.

The structure wasn't very well designed and was starting to lean. We were afraid it was going to fall over. Joshua's buddy, Vinnie, got most of it down on Saturday.

Charlie is taking the old greenhouse apart. It had collapsed in the middle (probably during some snowstorm) long before we took over the place, and we've never used it.

While we're tidying up the outside of the house, I decided it was time to get rid of the old chicken/rabbit hutch that had been left behind by some previous inhabitant. I listed it on Facebook Marketplace for free and gave it to the first person who responded. We had a total of 15 inquiries before I could mark it sold. It needed work, but she was just going to use it for her indoor bunny so he could spend some time outdoors when the weather is nice. Perfect! "Panda" has a new outdoor porch.

We've also had this tetherball pole in our front yard ever since we moved in. The ball had split open, so we threw it away. I listed the pole on Marketplace, too, and another young woman came to get it. The person who took the pole had a ball, but the base of her pole had broken; we matched up a good pole with a good ball for two little girls who love to play tetherball.

It was a bear to get the thing into the back of her pickup truck, but Joshua helped.

Sunday Joshua and Vinnie worked on putting up the doors on the old closets. (We had taken them off because they opened INTO the closet, making it impossible to put anything in that space. Who does that?)

In news of the Beaverton boys, they got spruced up for photo day at school.

Then on Saturday they participated in the Special Olympics. I love this photo of Soren. He has great form!

Olympian Gail Devers was helping with the Special Olympics. Here's Soren finishing his relay race and getting high-fives from Devers.

I'm sure this was Rocky's last "Blessing of the Animals." He continues to go downhill, but we have him on an anti-inflammatory every day and a mild sedative at night, which is helping him sleep. He still enjoys his food, so I don't think he's ready to move on yet. It took both of us to manage the dogs during the service. Rocky stayed in the stroller except for during the blessing. I took this screen shot from the video of the service. This is Dusty getting blessed, and Charlie is holding Rocky. If anyone got any good photos, I'll post those.

Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Finished knitting and felting (fulling) the iPhone pouch for our vet. Still working on the Hinterland Pullover (some progress made) and the EmPower People Kerchief is still hibernating.

What's on my loom: Dust, but I plan to make some placemats.

What's on my sewing machine: Still ready for back of T-shirt quilt.

What's in my hoop: Whole Cloth quilt, still no progress.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: In We've Got Email! the dolls have a meeting to discuss their new email address. Pauly is uncertain at first whether he should be included or not, but he's definitely needed. He may not live with The Writer and the rest of the gang, but he's in the stories...an important addition!

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to The Big Dark Sky by Dean Koontz.

What's in my wine glass: Cala de Poeti Sangiovese 2017. Really good with pizza.

What's my tip of the week: Hummingbirds don't need red food coloring in their feed, and it probably isn't good for them, since it isn't good for us. I mix one part sugar to four parts water to fill my feeders. If you need it in a hurry, you can divide your water and mix part of it with the sugar and microwave it for a few seconds, then add the cold water to it after the sugar has dissolved.

Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with a few changes.

The three stories in Mariah are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers take a bigger cut. If you want to order an autographed copy, email me at thedollsstorybook@icloud.com.

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Monday, July 25, 2022

Not a Quiet Week

It may have been a quiet week at Lake Wobegon, but it was a very busy week here.

One big thing that happened this week was the long-awaited shower conversion. You may remember that when we moved into this house more than 3 1/2 years ago, the master bath had this soaking tub, which we knew we would never use, other than for storage. I've been keeping my woolens in it in plastic bags.

We had this tiny shower.

You can't see it, but the end of the shower that's obscured by the towel is taken up with a bench. I'll show you later, when the demo is underway.

Monday, late morning, the workers arrived to begin putting in our new shower. They had to drive down from Portland and spent Monday night in a motel in Bend. They set up shop in front of our driveway, so all the sawing, etc., could take place outside.

They ripped out the soaking tub, the tile and the sheetrock. The window and the two closet doors got masked off with plastic. (The closets don't really show in this photo. They're on each side of the space for the former tub.) Already having the plumbing to the tub made this a logical choice.

Part of the deal was that they would take out our old shower. We will put a cedar closet there. Here you can see the bench I mentioned earlier. They used it to hold their tool box. It took up nearly a third of the shower space and made it difficult to get in and out without having water go everywhere. We figured if we need to sit down to take a shower when we get old 😂, we can put a small plastic yard chair or stool in the shower.

Here's how the future cedar closet looked after the demo and our workers had gone back to Portland. In the photo, it looks ike a pipe sticking up from the floor, but that's just the odd shape of the hole. We will put down a new subfloor, flooring on top of that, cedar panels, shelves and maybe a pole to hang clothes on.

We're busy now selecting doors and deciding exactly where to put the wall between the closet and the rest of the bathroom. We're thinking of a 24" wide bifold door centered on the wall. We are also thinking of bifold doors for the two existing closets. We had taken the doors off them, because they were regular room doors and opened INTO the closet, eliminating a lot of storage space. The other closets in the house all have bifold doors, and we will try to get something like those, but narrower, of course, because the space is smaller.

Back to the new shower: By Monday night, the new shower space looked like this. The shower pan was in, the pipes for the water had been lengthened and now reached higher up the wall. The drain had to be moved from one end of the tub to the middle of the shower. They would shorten the drain pipe later.

I got this photo on Tuesday after the back wall was in. That black thing is a grabbing device they used to help them carry the walls of the shower into the house from outside, where they did the messy work.

On the left wall, they installed the shelves. They are adjustable, to accommodate tall shampoo bottles as well as shorter items. There's an open space behind each shelf for drainage, and the bottom of the unit is slanted to drain water and provide a good place to put a foot, so you can wash or shave a leg. The grab bar you see goes the length of the shower,

We selected a European-style dual shower arrangement. It will come in handy if we need to wash one of the dogs. It also gives you the option to remove the lower shower head and use it to rinse your hair or to wash soap off the shower walls.

Here's the finished shower. There's a smaller grab bar just inside the shower to the far left in the photo.

The fixtures and the enclosure are all by Kohler. The shower sort of happened around us. We were hardly inconvenienced at all.

That was far from all that was going on here this week. What do you guess is coming up?

Yes, a new book will be coming out. I have a title and the template for the cover, but I'm keeping that secret for now. I needed a new template for the cover, because the first two books were 60 pages each, but this one will be 70. I still need to take a photo for the cover, because a portrait won't do. However, the inside pages were finished yesterday (Sunday) and went off to my two proofreaders. This book will have smaller type, and many of the photos are smaller to make room for extra text. I had to learn to use MSWord all over again, but it went faster this time. Now I hope I can remember how to use InDesign, which is needed for the cover. I think I'm a little ahead of where I was last year, at least by about four days.

For some cuteness, here are Peter and Soren./

I did get some knitting in, and Rocky visited the Groomer. One of my hearing aids quit functioning on Thursday. I borrowed one of Charlie's because he doesn't use them anyway. I had to turn it up a bit, and could only pair one with my phone, so it's an inconvenience. I need to have my ears checked again, though, so I'll try to get that taken care of this week.

As always, if you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon and B&N and search for "Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook by Peggy Stuart" in Children's. Every click on the page for the book makes it more likely they will keep a good supply in their warehouse and stores. If you are outside the US, you may have a separate website for these retailers. If you have a copy of our first book, Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook, it would help if you left an honest review on the websites, especially if you bought from them.

Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: A few more rounds done on the Hinterland Pullover. Progress on the Seattle cardigan for Pippa. Almost to the sleeve divide. No progress on the emPower People Kerchief.

What's on my loom: Still the trailer rugs.

What's on my sewing machine: It's cover.

What's in my hoop: Still the whole cloth quilt, no progress.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: This week's story is Time on the Beach. Pippa and Pauly participate in a photo shoot on location in Florence, OR. They find a lot of sand and learn a few new things.

Someone from a Canadian dentist's office left a nice comment on The Doll's Storybook blog regarding the story, A Field Trip to the Dentist's office.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone on the Audible app. Just a couple of hours left. It's fascinating. Wish I had time to just listen.

What's in my wine glass: Hook or Crook Cellars Reserve Field Blend, Lodi, CA, 2018 Delightful.

What's my tip of the week: It may be time to mask up again. I called the vet to get a prescription refilled and found out that they had closed early on Friday because several staff members had COVID19. Fortunately, Paxlovid is now available for high-risk patients. I don't know about you, but I'd just as soon not get sick to begin with.

Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with few changes. Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook is now available for preorder from booksellers world wide. The link for Book Baby is here. The three stories are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.

Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook is also available. The three stories in the first book are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less.

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