Chamber of Chaos, Week One

I’ve dubbed our former and (soon to be again) kitchen the “Chamber of Chaos”. Want to see why? (Are you sitting down? It’s not pretty, I warn you…)

Looking east; stove wall

I guess it never looks good when you tear out cabinets and appliances and layers of flooring in a 40-year-old kitchen. At lunchtime on the first day, they had all the cabinets out. That’s when I took these three pictures of the demolition progress. By the end of the day, all the flooring was gone too. 

Looking southwest into the family room and hall

It’s all just subfloor now. And whew! It gets so dirty and dusty in here. I’m sure we’re tracking stuff all over the house, although we use special old shoes in this area and change to clean sandals or slippers when we move into other areas. 

Looking NW at dining room/family room corner

In the days following these pictures, all the new ceiling can lights and the new electrical panel were installed. The pendant light fixtures are among the last things to be hung once we near the end of the process. We also had the plumbing roughed in this week. Next week they will frame and drywall the ceiling where those recessed fluorescents were and patch all the other holes and gaps caused by running new electrical wires and plumbing… you know, making it all nice in prep for flooring and painting down the road. 

We’re managing just fine meal-wise. For dinner we’ve had barbecued chicken sandwiches, ham sandwiches, meatloaf with vegetables and rolls, and we went out once. Tonight we’re going out again with family, and it will be a nice change. But can I just say again, what a filthy mess!!

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I had finished my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks for Aqua July, but I realized that I’d never shown my Aqua/turquoise string blocks. So I do have something to share - 18 blocks that will finish at 6”. No plans yet for these string blocks. 

I also finished the binding on the Anne of Green Gables quilt this week. Let me show you the “glamour” shots - such as they are - of the finished quilt. I believe the finished measurements were 65x78”.  

The quilting, done on my Bernina 570QE (a domestic machine), was a series of loops and swirly hooks.

The story behind the quilt is in THIS blog post. 

The backing fabric was a lovely medium purple (I’m sure there’s a more precise name for it) floral. Plummy. Yeah, that sounds about right. 

The best part was giving it to my friend Ann on Tuesday after our Weight Watchers meeting. She loved it, and several of our friends gathered around and oooh’ed and aaah’ed. (Non-quilters are easily impressed, aren’t they?) hehehe. I got a couple great hugs out of it! 

The rest of my sewing week consisted of sewing letters on some identifying safety vests for my team of community landscape captains. Here is what *that* hot mess looks like.

There are twelve vests, each with the letters VSE. That stands for Vine Street East, the name of our condominium community. We felt it would be wise to have identifying garments of some kind as we go walking through front yards, which are common areas (not individual, private courtyards). 

Anyway, each black cotton letter was interfaced (stabilized) before sewing them on. I hope to get them done this weekend so that I can baste up some more quilts next week. 

I’ll leave you with a cute meme. I shared it a couple years ago, but I love it and always think of it when we have a miserably hot spell in the summer….

Have a lovely week, friends.