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I can’t stop making little hats!!  I’m officially obsessed, but as an Aquarius, I’m sure a new obsession will take over by Monday 🙂

Welcome.

Here are the photos of the finished apartment!   It took about two months to complete, with a few projects to go.  We still want to insulate and recover the space between the ceiling beams, paint the outside door, insulate the garage door and make a garden on our roof, but until then, our apartment is officially done.

As I was getting this ready to post, we found out that our main drain pipe is broken and they will have to break apart a section of our floor to fix it, so I’ll keep you posted on the damage and repair and any other home improvement projects that we take on.

I took a lot of photos because I don’t have a wide angle lens so this was the best way to do the tour.  It might take awhile to get through them, but I hope you enjoy the transformation!

Click here to see some tiny hats.

Here is what I worked on yesterday.   I failed in my promise to update daily, but in my defense, I got some bad news about our plumbing yesterday.

Check it out here!

What we woke up in...

I’ve mentioned floods several times in these posts, but haven’t gone into specifics about any them, so let me quickly explain before I talk about the big one.   We have a drain on our roof that sends rain water from up there, down through a large pipe that is inside the apartment on one wall.  That water goes into our main drain along with all the sink or shower or toilet water.   There are also two holes in the floor, one is an old pipe opening and one is a drain in the bedroom area.   Most of the floods in the beginning involved one of the toilets overflowing in the back of the apartment, and draining all the way into that area in the bedroom because there is a slight slant to the floor.  This was a lot of water because it went really far, but at least it went somewhere (into that drain).    We had Roto-Rooter come a few separate times to snake the drain in the floor and everything seemed fine for a few days or weeks.

The hole in the floor and the source of the water.

Then one fateful day, there was a huge snow storm and the roof was covered.   We woke up the next morning and Jeff put his hand to the floor to get his phone to check the time and it was floating in water.   My brain started to function in that sluggish morning way, and I began to realize that our bed was surrounded by 3 inches of water.   The water was coming from the pipe hole in the floor and it was no longer draining into that drain in our bedroom.  It wasn’t going anywhere.  As the snow melted on the roof, more water flowed into the apartment because of a blockage in the pipe.   Jeff spent the whole day away from work, waiting for the plumber to come, sucking water out in a shop vac as it steadily came up from the pipe.   They finally came, they fixed it, and everything has been dandy until today.

Jeff filled this up at least 20 times!

We were tracking water everywhere throughout the apartment!

Now, we know the signs of a major flood on its way, and when we think something might happen, we check to see if water is in the pipe in the floor.  If it is, then things aren’t draining properly.   I noticed there was some in there, so we called Roto-Rooter again and the guy that came basically told me we no longer have our 6 month guarantee because something much worse must be wrong.  He has suggested that we have them send a camera through the drain to see if it is cracked, broken or separated and allowing dirt to pile up in the pipe.   If it is, my landlord would have to tear up the cement floor about 3 feet down to fix it and then pour concrete again over it.   In other words, we would have to move.   No decision has been made, but I will say that a huge rain storm is coming at the end of the week and I’m not feeling great about all of this right now.

Check out “MAKE” for my five projects of the day!

See what I worked on today!

Why do you care?… Read here.

This was the last time I was in a funk and had a rule to work on 5 things a day, no matter what. I ended up sketching freely from animal photography and coming up with some great images for linocut prints of animals. Hoping for inspiration again!

Sometimes when I can’t come up with anything to make (or am uninspired to do so) for my online store,  I make funny little rules for myself to help get out of the funk.  Rules like, make 5 things a day no matter how small or, I have to make small things for 4 hours, do yoga, eat lunch and then work on longer term projects for 5.   It’s worked for me in the past,  and eventually I get out of the funk because it forces me to loosen up a bit, so I’m going to try it again.   You can follow the progress in the MAKE section of the blog.  I will update at the end of each day.   Hopefully, by writing this, I will feel even more responsible to complete the mission.

The rule for this round of creative funk:  I have to make 2 things to sell a day and work on 3 others.

Wish me luck!

When you have no money, you have to keep your sense of humor!

Eventually, less horrible things happened daily with the loft.   We started calling it an “apartment” rather than “the garage” and the list had less big projects and more little tedious things that were welcomed by me as a much-needed change.   I was ready to figure out where to put that giant toothbrush from a 1950’s dentist’s office and too beat to do anything else.   It was great.   But in case you were sort of enjoying the drama of it all, don’t worry, we still have two pretty huge disasters coming your way soon… and a gleaming recommendation for Roto-Rooter.   🙂