another room from the flood

 

When the flood came through my home this was one of the rooms that was injured the most.  This bedroom had the bed beneath the window and because the flood came through the windows the mattress acted as a sponge and then when that was full it overflowed onto the carpet.  There was a little water damage to the drywall beneath the window and we had to patch that a bit.  Pretty much this room was recreated from head to toe!  I started with a blank slate and this is what I ended up with!

  

We redid the floors with a wood laminate, painted the walls, furniture and bought a new bed.

The bookcase used to be black and so did the small hutch under the mirror.

 

I moved one of the recliners in this room and painted the star a cream color.

 

Here is the bed!  I decided on one that had some shelves in the top because there is not a lot of room for night stands when the bed is facing this way.

 

I made some new pillows. The sleep and dream pillows were actually some old pillows that I had and I took them apart and used this canvas which was the back of the old pillow.  I used a brown sharpie pen and just started writing all I could think about sleeping and dreaming onto the pillow..  I then embroidered sleep and dream over the top.  The small pillow is a Vera Wang knock off and is made by just sewing little circles to one end of the pillow.

 

I saw the book idea at Restoration Hardware and loved it.  Do your remember that I got rid of a bunch of books from my library?  Well, I could have used them for this project!  These are just some paperback novels that I ripped the covers off and tied a piece of twine around them.(WARNING) Don't do this to books that you want to keep because it kind of ruins the book, but it looks cool for unwanted books!

 

Here is a close up of the pillows.

 

See, just round circles sewn onto the pillow.

 

I had some old music that I framed to put above the bed.

 

The mirror is an old dresser mirror painted and distressed. 

 

Here is a better view of the wood floors, I am loving having them in my basement!

 

I'm loving the results!

 

The books on this table were wrapped in craft paper, so if you don't want to ruin your books just wrap them in any paper and tie them up with some twine.

 

We are using the book case for our DVD library.

 

It has been a long process getting my basement back to working order but I am loving the results!

After the flood

 

You may have remembered that I had a flood in my basement in January and after one day of a lot of rain, the window wells filled up and my basement looked like this. If you want to read about it go here!

 

We tried to save the carpet in the family room but the mud was in the padding and I didn't want that smell and it is almost impossible to get the mud out of the pad.

 

We did have some wood flooring that can get wet in my exercise room and after cleaning up the mud it looked as good as the day we installed it. After one day of rain and 4 months of work we pulled up the old carpet, repainted, installed new baseboards and  replaced the carpet with the hard wood flooring, or I should say hard wood flooring look alike. Luckily we didn't have to replace any dry wall so, I was grateful for that. Are you ready for the after picture???

 

Finally, it is put back together.

 

We replaced all of the carpet with the wood flooring and I figured when I got tired of the rugs I could just replace the rugs!  This is a big room and it took awhile to lay all of the flooring, the most difficult part was getting a seamless finish that flows into all of the rooms that connect to this room. Mr. Jones did all of the flooring and I did all of the painting. (and putting it all back together.)

 

I did repaint the fireplace mantel, and I really like it in a lighter color.

 

I had to re stain these as well because there were water marks and splashes on the bottom of them

 

I'm loving the lighter walls as well.

 

I liked these rugs because they bring more light into the basement too.

 

We redid the floor in the cowboy room and I found this fantastic rug on Overstock and knew it would be the perfect match for this room.

 

We've added some pink boots since the last time you saw this room.

 

and there are definitely some more WANTED posters on the wall. (pretty soon there will be 14!)

 

I'm loving having this floor in the play room, don't think those cowboys will be able to damage much here!

 

We put new base boards in this room so we had to make the fence a little higher, (that's okay, now the horses won't be able to jump the fence!)

 

The barbwire fence was just adjusted a little bit. (no, it isn't really barb wire, I found this after Halloween and it is really soft to the touch.)

 

The cloud room is finally put back together as well.  This was the only room that was not flooded so this room was piled to the ceiling with STUFF! ( I should have taken a picture because it pretty much took me a whole day to get everything out of there.)

 

Oh, it feels so good to have it done!

I will have to show you the 2 bedrooms later, because I haven't got the bed yet,(remember the mattress was flooded and was a big sponge for the flood.)

I have been working outside this week though trying to get rid of all of the ruts the water made through my yard. It feels great to be outside!

Have a great week!

Organization and disclaimer

 

They say that creative people are sometimes disorganized and a little messy, well , I am a little embarrassed to show you this picture because, I must be very creative!  This was my craft room before Christmas, ( I am really trying not to look at this pic, because it is quite disturbing!)  I have a craft room in my basement and I am so grateful to have it but because it is out of the way and sometimes out of site, and because of that it becomes a little disorganized, (who am I kidding, A LOT disorganized!)  I decided that I couldn't work like this any longer so I was on a quest to become more organized.

 

Here is my after picture and let me tell you that this transformation did not happen in one day!  I decided to move my machines to the other side of the room, ( before they were behind the door) and with 3 machines it was a little crowded.(Yes, I use all three machines.) One is my embroidery machine and although it does everything I kept my trusty Bernina, (which I have had for more than 30 years)  I mainly use it for sewing on leather and heavier materials.  Then of course I have my serger.  With this arrangement I am easily able to move from one machine to the other.

 

In my organization I went through all of my baskets and got rid of what I don't use, (and found things I didn't remember having.)  I put all alike things in the baskets and labeled them with tags.  I thought I knew where everything was but when my daughter came down to make something, she couldn't find any thing!

 

All alike things in one basket!

 

I organized my thread and ribbon and it makes it so easy to find what  color I am looking for.

 

Went through all of my fabrics and got rid of more, then put similar fabrics in their rightful stack.

 

Flannel

 

This is the other corner and now looking at this picture I can see that I probably still held onto too much fabric, I think I will be the winner when I die!

 

Love the convenience of this, there is a disclaimer coming about the thread in the window though.

 

All of my other thread, (some I have had since time began) in a drawer next to the sewing machines!

 

Elastic and bias trim in another drawer.

 

Bobbin thread.

 

Zippers!

 

Buttons on cards!

 

Doesn't this just make you want to sit down and sew!

 

More ribbon, tulle and tape.

 

More buttons in an organizer, (I love buttons can you tell?)  Now to tell yo about the disclaimer of this story, It's kind of sad.  Yesterday I went down to go exercise and when I got to the bottom of the stairs, I started screaming because there was water at the bottom of the stairs!  It has been raining here for 3 days and a lot of water has come down!  This is quite unbelievable though because at this time of year we usually have 6 feet of snow!  Because the ground is frozen the water has no where to go but down to the lowest point and because there is a ditch above our house, it got clogged and the water came pouring into our back yard.  The lowest point of the house is the window wells, they filled up and because the water had no where to go down it came through my house.

 

So, yesterday this is what my craft room looked like. (Can you see the water running down the wall and over the counter?) Yikes! it was bad!   See those bolts of fabric on the floor, they were a little wet and muddy, because with the water came the mud!  I have been washing fabric for 2 days now.

 

It was not a happy day.  But with the help of neighbors, family and friends we got rid of the river coming through our house.

 

This morning it looks like this, (I don't want to repeat yesterday ever again.)  So the disclaimer is this, if you are more organized and a river comes through your house, it is definitely better that you had the room looking like this.

 

Instead of 

 

This!!!

Can you imagine what the cleanup  would have been like if my room looked like this!

I do have a goal to be more organized this year, this was a little set back but maybe just what I needed  to get the rest of the basement organized, (even if it was forced!)