From a Cluttered Desk

I am Tammy Cardwell, she of the cluttered desk. (Hey, you think I'm kidding?!) I'm having a blast here in Blogland and invite to you to peruse my ramblings. Like a buffet, they offer variety - essentially whatever makes it to the top of the piles that sometimes clutter my brain. We'll eventually cover it all - homeschooling, God, our church, the Eclectic Homeschool Online, books I'm writing and publishing, conferences I speak at, the joys of grandmotherhood, and hopefully chocolate. Of course, this is only what's near the top now. Who knows what's in those piles?

I’ve said before that I’m a reality TV junkie. The only reason I’m not watching a continual round of reality TV right now is time. Well…time, heat (The living room isn’t air conditioned anymore) and…er…fleas. Yep, we’ve once again entered the season in which we fight those pesky insects that I can’t for the life of me figure out why God created.

Anyway…

So today I’ve been piddling around a UK website that sells designer wallpaper from those decorators I used to love watching on BBC America. I’m talking Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen, Linda Barker, and more. If you’ve watched the shows and loved the lavish patterns these designers prefer, you’ll want to take a look. Depending on the designer and collection, you will find papers that are more conservative and less (much less) conservative, with many offerings with a retro feel. These retro-like patterns, while being completely modern in color, hark back to the sixties and seventies or even a few centuries ago. You’ll find a few that are somewhat restrained, but most are bold and… I’m laughing; you’ll just have to look to see why I’m at a loss for adjectives. The Brittish design differently than we do, so these are not your typical American wallpapers. See?

I’m planning on painting my new house, for obvious reasons, but if I were thinking in terms of wallpaper, I would be drawn mostly to the Graham & Brown Umbra Wallpapers. Well, more than drawn, actually. I really like the Umbra Tolla Storm 60039 Chocolate and would love to use it in my office. Check it out.

Yup, this is very "me" and I would sooooooo do an accent wall in it.

Here’s another unique design from the same collection. I’m not sure how I’d use it, though it could make for a really interesting bathroom, don’t you think?

Well, maybe it’s a bit much even for me (Definitely for my husband), but I love the tongue-in-cheek feel and think it could be great fun (crate fun? <giggle>).

My husband got a tiny bit done on the house while I was on the cruise, and my son says he’s going to make sure the house gets finished, so yes, I’ve been daring to think about decorating again. Yay!

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

I"m whispering because it hasn’t totally happened yet and I’m almost afraid to say anything. Yep, that sounds superstitious, but you know how many times I’ve thought they were going to work on the new house and didn’t, right? (Well, you really don’t, because I stopped posting about it. <sigh>)

They tore off the old roof yesterday, the roof that was on the original warehouse. They found some rotten decking (Surprised us; we’d actually considered just doing a recover - glad our son ruled that out) and replaced it, then felted it. They showed up first thing this morning and got set up, now they’ve gone to get some last minute supplies (Apparently the ridge vent got damaged yesterday, for one thing). By the end of the afternoon, I’m hoping they’ll at least have gotten shingles on most of it. Well, I’m really hoping they’ll have finished the job, but it’s a bit of a job for three guys to get done in one day, so I’m not holding my breath.

Progress again. This brings on a sigh of relief, especially since it was raining down my bedroom wall again in the middle of the night. I really want to be in my new home instead of this one.

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

Now that we are hopefully (HOPE HOPE HOPE HOPE HOPE) going to roof the new house this weekend, I’m daring to think about decorating again. Honestly, things have been going so slowly that I’ve been frustrated. You’re not surprised, are you?

So I’m thinking window treatments. It’s true that we’ll not have a lot of windows in this house, but we will have some and those windows need coverings. At least, in my opinion they do. The ones I’m thinking about right now are in my office; since they’ll be seen from the driveway, they seem the obvious windows to start with. I’ve always really liked the idea of wood shades like these Select Natural Wood Shades from Select Blinds. I’m leaning heavily towards requesting free samples of the Cordoba and the Elisa Mahogany. I love the Cordoba, but since I’m also leaning heavily towards painting that wall in a shade of red I have a feeling I’ll have to go more neutral. Okay, I’ll obviously have to go more neutral if I paint the wall red. LOL! Maybe I should even go to the much lighter Franca Walnut? Hm… I wonder how many free samples they let you have; free samples are definitely of God, yes?

One interesting thing about this Window Coverings provider is that they’ve supplied window treatments for my absolute favorite TV show, Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Yep, I’m a reality TV junkie, but I’ll have to admit that this fact makes me more inclined to buy from them myself. hehe…

Now, if we can just get this house FINISHED.

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

This post sponsored by Select Blinds

My husband and I realized, yesterday, that we have something we’ve not even thought about using, because it’s out of sight and so has been out of mind.

I was given an antique stained-glass window a few years ago. We hid it behind the couch, because it is already damaged and we were concerned about more damage. Now we’re wondering if it would be feasible to pull it out and find a place that can restore it. Then maybe we would put it in the bath, perhaps over the tub? That would be awesome, I think, but is this even remotely worth considering, I wonder, or would restoration cost so much that I should just leave it where it sits?

Man…

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

It’s a shame they’re not installed already, but at least we have them. Actually, we’ve had some of this for a while, but this is the first time Jack’s taken pictures.

Nothing fancy here, but unlike most of the windows in our current house, these are all in one piece! LOL! Huh… Okay, there is a tiny bit of fancy, but you can’t see it in this picture. There’s an octagon window set behind the windows on the left and Jack didn’t realize it wasn’t in the pic. It will be on the front of the house, lighting the sleeping loft.  Too, if you look behind the windows, you’ll see the dishwasher we were given. It’s a nice one. YAY!

Not that you can tell much, with just the framing there, but the dishwasher is sitting where the…uh… Well, it’ll either be the washer or the dryer. I can’t remember which. The saw horses with the lumber on them are sitting in my kitchen.

This is our front door. Now you can see why I was particularly uncomfortable with the idea of anyone at our front door being able to see all the way into our house. I mentioned earlier that the owner of a house that was being remodeled gave it to my husband, but as I said, he’s only just now taking pictures.

Hmmmmm…. Okay, I’m a little confused here. I could have sworn we had canceled the order for exterior doors because we decided to reuse the ones we already had. Ah well.. Jack took the picture, so you get to see anyway.

And that’s it. Now to get to the magazine work that’s been begging for my attention all day.

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

Oh goodness…

I just read one of the first entries a friend made in her new blog, My House, Decorating Tolkien Style. She plans to share decorating ideas for those who love Lord of the Rings and I have it on good authority (From some who have visited) that her home is fabulously Lord of the Ringsish. (Yeah, so it’s not a word. Sue me. [wink])

In today’s description of what she calls Elrond’s Chamber Room (Her son’s bedroom), she shared about Tatouage Designs a resource for tatouage - high resolution dry rub transfers. I am seriously drooling here, and hope hope hoping that some money can eventually be found for a few purchases. Their pieces are fabulous!

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

I’ve had some emailed questions about our floor plan, so I’ve finally gotten off my backside (Well, technically, I was on it while I worked on this.) and scanned a copy of the most current floor plan. We’ve actually made quite a few changes since I uploaded the last one.

Obviously, this graphic is a lot smaller than the one I uploaded earlier. I do have a large graphic on site, but my webmaster is the one who set the other up to link to the large graphic’s page. I, unfortunately, am too software illiterate to figure out how to do that and simply have to make it small enough to fit here. Sorry about that.

Anyway…

If you studied the previous floor plan (Yep, believe it or not, some of you did), you can see that I’ve given up 2 feet of my office in favor of the living area. It just made more sense, especially when we decided to take the office ceiling all the way to the roof and put in a sleeping loft. No, the loft doesn’t show in the plan, but the edge goes to just about under the dimensions and it stretches out over much of the porch (labeled "deck" on the plan).

Adding two feet to the living allowed us to extend the kitchen wall a bit so that people coming in the front door won’t be able to see all the way into the house (I was never comfy with that). It also gives us a living area that’s large enough that we might consider a small sofa or loveseat instead of two small chairs.

We’ve settled on putting the washer and dryer across the hall from each other instead of stacking them. This means we can use our existing washer and only have to buy a new dryer (The old one is gas and we’re going all electric. Anyone wanna buy a slightly used gas dryer? [grin]). It will also allow a hanging bar over the dryer and a supply cabinet over the washer, both of which are needed.

We’ve decided to use our clawfoot tub instead of buying something new; that explains the rather interesting wall in the bath - the tub was too long for the room as it was originally laid out, so we swiped a few inches from the bedroom closet.

Hm… I thought we’d done away with the pocket door plans, but I do know one pocket door came with our last order, so either my office or the bath will still have a pocket door. The other room will not. I can’t remember which is which right now.

The area that was going to be a makeup table for me, flanked by drawers, has turned into a second closet. Our contractor, assuming we’re able to come up with the money for the lumber, wants to build us a new water bed frame (Right. The dh is NOT letting go of our water bed.) so that we can put drawers under it.

I’ve been asked about a water heater. That little item is going in the attic, which is really large. The attic access will be in my sleeping loft. Right now it’s smack dab in the middle of what will be the living area. Yeah, not a good location at all, especially with 10′ ceilings; that makes for a looooooooooooooong ladder!

I’ve been asked about heating and cooling. The budget demands reusing our existing window units and floor heaters, so they’ve framed an area in the side wall of my office for one window unit and we’ll have units in both the master bedroom and living room windows. They tell me that this building will be well enough insulated that these three units should keep the house sufficiently cool in summer and still not give us too high of a light bill.

And to answer the flooring question: The entry and the two closets will be ceramic tile. The bath will be ceramic tile. The rest of the floor will be wood laminate. I actually, in an earlier post, gave a link to the laminate we bought. At this point, we’re running the numbers, trying to decide if we still need to buy one more box or if we have enough to squeak by. This is because we’d originally planned on using the sticky tile I bought for my office. Since we moved the office door into the living room, however, I want the same flooring in both rooms. The sticky floor tiles will go in the sleeping loft, for which we’d never purchased anything.

There. I think that covers all of the questions I’ve been asked lately.

Oh, except for the square footage question. I really need to change this category heading to "750 Square Feet," since that’s a more accurate square footage estimate now.

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

I actually did…last night! I stood on my new porch in the rain!

This really is a big deal to me. I actually cried. One of my favorite things to do when I was younger was sit on the porch in the rain. I didn’t do it all the time, but I liked having the option, so not having had the option for all but 6 months of the nearly 27 years I’ve been married has been…disappointing.

But yesterday they decked the roof, and after they finished, it started raining. It didn’t rain long and it didn’t rain hard, but it was as if God was saying, "See? I’m doing it. It’s going to happen."

I was so overjoyed to see them back at work that I went a little camera happy.

They’d actually been at it a while before I took this picture, because they got things set up while I was at my BBW job. Here you can see that they’ve just laid the first sheet of plywood on the roof. Thomas’ feet are on my loft, which you’ll remember is over my office. There’s no decking on that loft yet, but at least this way you see where it is.

They’ve made definite progress here. You can see that they’re over my front porch, Jack and Fred (the contractor) are standing on the loft beams. Note the Confederate flag inside the building. That’s the flag Thomas hung the day we cleaned out the warehouse and we’ve decided to leave it there in respect to him (Who has busted it for us where this project is concerned) just as long as we can.

Here’s a new angle for you! Now you can really see my wonderful porch. (Picture me sighing blissfully) You can also see that wonderful foundation beam that cost us so blasted much time and money. (Talk about a budget blower!) The extra bit of stuff hanging off the side of the building is… Well, I call it a type of scaffolding and Jack referred to them as outriggers (There’s a matching one on the other side). They helped a lot when it came to getting materials up there and working that first level of decking. After that, Fred walked the roof laying the decking while Jack and Thomas handed the plywood sheets up through the roof. Jack, again, is standing on my loft…though you really have to look to see him. You can barely see his head.

And this is the end of last night’s work. Jack had to really work with the contrast to make this picture come out at all, because it was getting so dark. The funny part is that Fred, after setting the last nail, realized he’d stuck himself on the roof. Because of the pitch and the slickness of the plywood, he couldn’t really come down the side, so they had to pull out his hugenormous ladder and let him come off the front. I stood in my new office watching while Jack and Thomas tried to figure out how to unsecure it from the truck with Fred calling down instructions. It was very funny.

Of course, it wouldn’t have been funny if it had already been raining, but that didn’t start until about half an hour later, while we were standing in the building discussing details. At that point, there was a narrow strip at the ridge that hadn’t been decked and I was standing right under it. While we were talking, I felt the slap of water and jumped back. The guys thought I was being funny, but then they realized it was raining and we all took off running, Fred to secure tools and me and Jack to cover the hardiplank back up. (Good news there. I’d been a little concerned about it because it had been sitting so long, but it’s been safely protected even from moisture coming up from the ground and it’s still good.)

They finished those last strips of decking and felted the roof today (They finished too late for pix. Even I’ve not seen it, since I was at work.), so at least as far as the roof is concerned we’re now water tight, which means I’m breathing easier. I did not like all of that wood being exposed like it had been for so long. They have to check on some details with the city this week, and finish up a segment on another job, and hopefully by Thursday or Friday they can start shingling and I’ll be able to come back and say "I have a roof!" Once the roof is on and we’ve got windows in and the hardiplank up, I think…hope…things will progress a lot faster. These parts, only Jack and Fred can do because Fred has the tools, but once we’re ready to hang sheetrock and do all that fun stuff others can come in and help too. Thank God!

If you’re in the Houston area and are in need of a contractor or carpenter, I highly recommend Fred Halbach (Our contractor, obviously). He can handle any aspect of construction and he is a master carpenter who has done some truly fantastic work in exclusive neighborhoods. I am very much honored that he is working on my new home.

Here’s his contact info…
Carpentry by Fred
cell: 832.368.7797
office: 281.839.1277
email: freehall@earthlink.net

Celebrating Jesus (And progress)!
Tammy C

Here’s the proof of Saturday’s progress. The picture was taken yesterday evening and you can see evidence of the winds that blew through here during the day; the deck is positively littered with leaves. It’s amazing how much bigger the building  looks now that the roof is framed. This is funny, really, because I’m familiar enough with construction that it shouldn’t strike me this way, but it does.

Now that I’ve got more substantial "walls" around me, I can step into my office and get a much better feel for what it’s going to be like. Seeing it framed has changed the way I plan to decorate and even given me some interesting new options. For instance, I realized that if I wanted to I could hang a windchime in my office, from the underside of the loft, and that would put it right in front of one of the windows. If I were one to sit with open windows, that would mean I’d have music any time a breeze came through. I doubt I’ll do it, though, since most of our year is so insufferably hot that sitting with open windows is very uncomfortable. (It’s winter, right? And we’ve been in the 70s in the past few days.) Fortunately, I have a lovely porch from which I can hang the chimes I’ve not been able to listen to in years.

If you look waaaaay in the back, you can barely see the edge of a confederate flag hanging against the wall and partially into the open back "door." My oldest son found it when we were cleaning out the warehouse and promptly hung it, saying, "This is all the building permit we need." He seemed to have fun with that part of cleaning out the warehouse - finding relics of his childhood. My youngest tells me that they made the absolute best clubs in the attic in the winter and early spring (Summer was impossible) and he really feels for kids today that don’t have such options. Truly, I do too.

And so we enter a new week. Well, we did yesterday, but as I warned when I posted Sunday evening, yesterday was so long that I never managed to get here. Anyway, Jack is working on another construction project again this week. He’s been working on it for the past few weeks and that has been a huge blessing. If all goes according to plan (And how many times have you seen me say that?), they will soon be in a position where they can work here three days a week and only go check on the sub-contractors’ work on that project two days a week. That would be a huge blessing too.

Have a great one!

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

PS: Remember that those who comment will be entered in a drawing this weekend!

If you’ve been keeping up with our house plans, you know about the really cool bathroom vanity (old writing desk) and vessel sink (old copper bowl) we’ve got planned. Interestingly enough, the faucet for that vanity has been an issue. Our project manager (read: oldest son) and most of the other people who have been looking at our budget have been insisting that I needed to be realistic and just settle for an inexpensive chrome faucet. But doggoneit… When you have a cool vanity and you have a cool sink you want a faucet that is in keeping, and high polished chrome would NOT have been in keeping with the brass bowl we’re using to make the vessel sink.

Of course, I didn’t want to use high polished brass either; it just wouldn’t have worked. Too, we’re planning on putting a shower kit on our antique clawfoot tub and unfortunately the only affordable ones we’ve found are in chrome. So skip forward through time and you end up at my birthday. Two friends, independently of each other, gave me amazon.com gift certificates for my birthday and guess what? Amazon.com sells bathroom faucets! Not only that, but when I did a search this evening the very first page that popped up revealed a faucet that, though it’s nothing like what I (or most people, probably) would have thought I’d have chosen, should work perfectly. The finish is "rustic pewter," which should be the perfect compromise between the brass of the bowl and the chrome of the shower kit, and the style is… Well, I guess I could show you, huh?

There it is! It’s the Price Pfister 49-YPOE Ashfield Rustic Pewter Widespread Bathroom Faucet and on top of being perfect, or as close to perfect as I figure I can get, it’s also a $310 faucet (or so amazon says) that was priced at $59.99. Yeppers, I call that the deal of the day! Not only that, but another friend had sent me a check and told me to spend it on something for the house that would make me think of her, and her check will cover the bit of the faucet price that the gift certs didn’t cover as well as most of the shipping costs. So every time I use my bathroom faucet, I’ll not only be washing my hands, but  will have very good reason to be reminded of three of my dearest friends.

Yeah, it’s been a good birthday week!

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C