Two Finishes! New Roof!! New Quilt!

This truck showed up on Tuesday to deliver the roofing shingles and materials for the house! YAY! 

And two days later the crew showed up to replace our roof. We used a contractor called B.C. Roofing out of Muscatine/Davenport. They worked almost all day just to get the old stuff off.

There were two or three folks working all day long! They worked a good 12hr day! 

They got it all off on the 1st day and also go a little start on putting the new shingles on. 

And on Thursday they were all done by noon-ish.

The new shingles look really good. Insurance is going to be paying for this roof, thank goodness for insurance!

Now we just have a few more things to get done before winter. We have some gutter and downspout damage, but once again, it's a waiting game because the contractors are all so busy in our area with storm damage. 

And I got this quilt spray basted on the garage door after the roof was done!

It has been a UFO (unfinished Object) and you know how much I hate an unfinished object. I love this orange ombre' fabric I got quite some time ago, but I'm not sure it was used to its best advantage with this quilt. I had the black/gray ombre but ran out, so that's when it became a UFO. I located some more of the black/gray when we were on vacation back in January in FLA. 

I really winged it with this bargello style quilt. I'd never done one like this before, I read a bunch of helpful tutorials and watched a few videos and felt like it was do-able. Not so much.....I'm not crazy about it. And it's huge! About 90'X100". And here it is fresh out of the dryer.

It is so big, I just did meandering quilting on my Babylock Lyric. This quilt has Hobbs 80-20 batting so it's a little bit heavy. I've been using this batting for a lot of quilts lately-it's relatively inexpensive and always available, when I use a coupon at Hobby Lobby.

It feels nice, the fabric really is nice-so beautiful, I kind of wish I hadn't cut it up....

but it's done now! Here's the back side, I pieced the backing because it's so big and I didn't want to buy any more fabric.

I clothes pinned it to the trees this morning for pictures. It's kind of growing on me, but I don't think I'll try a bargello again. My execution is less than stellar.

But like they say, finished is better than perfect and it is finished, that's for sure. There are a few serious imperfections, but it will still be cozy this winter!

Who knows-It might end up as someone's Christmas present...we'll see.

 

Houses...it's always something

So my old mailbox has been bumped a few too many times, it was wobbly and barely hanging on to the post, despite my hammering it back in place every few weeks. So I ordered a new one....a CUTE new one.

It was pretty easy to install, I had to shorten the post a few inches-sawsall to the rescue! And as I was laying on the ground to tighten the lag bolts, I thought for sure someone would stop and make sure the old lady wasn't in trouble. But it's all good-took about 30 minutes to get it all done.

Cutest mailbox on the block!

So Bean is now homeless...they are staying with us for a week or so, 2 of the kids are at Gramma K's house and one is at Dannie's house until they close on their new house in North Liberty. SO this beauty is living in my yard for a little while.

It needs some new wood and maybe a new part here and there, but isn't it gorgeous!  It says Des Moines Park Swing on the arm sides. Jean was gifted the swing from her grandparents who live in Des Moines.

I just love the way it looks. They don't make em like this any more! I'll be sad to see it go to it's new home in a week or so.

So after the Derecho we had some shingle damage, so the insurance adjuster came out and took a look and said, yup, you need a new roof. 

See those chalk marks on the roof of the garage? Our guy was up there quite awhile and it sure made it look bad! From the ground it didn't look bad at all, but once he marked the bad spots, WOW! So we have that to get taken care of next. It really is always something!

Maintenance Time

 So a couple of weeks ago, I loaded up the kids to lend a hand at the grandparents house. The work had been needing to be done for awhile, but it wasn't easy to get a day together to get it done!

 Dad's storage shed, we call it warehouse number 2, needed a sheet of the metal roofing replaced. A branch had fallen on it and bent it up pretty bad. His insurance lady was nagging him about it, so we better get to it!

 So following Grampa's advice Ben went up the ladder to get the old sheet off.

 Then DD helped to trim the new sheet to the correct length.

 And Ben slid it in to place. He did a real good job!

 I think he kind of enjoyed using the hand tools that Grampa had on hand.

 Nothing like using some serious hand tools to appreciate power tools!

 And the job is done and looking good! I think this shed will last for another 50 years or so!

It's A Tough Job

Our Church is getting new shingles!

 I'm sure glad these guys are doing the steeple-What a lot of high work!