2016 Grafton Beautification Project...

This past April, our little town of Grafton, WV, was pelted with lemons...I mean hail balls.  Grafton was instantly inundated with insurance adjusters from every company imaginable!  Next came the contractors...and finding someone to so body work on your car was impossible because of all the damage!  

Our house damage consisted of holes in the house siding on the north side (the direction the hail came from), broken shutters, dented gutters and downspouts, and dings in the roofing shingles.  As for our cars, both of Andy's cars look like someone took a ball-ping hammer to them...the Baja got totaled by the insurance company, but we didn't have full-coverage on his old Forester.  
The insurance company covered a lot of the damage...roof, gutters, downspouts, etc...but would only pay to replace the siding and shutters on the north side of the house that got damaged.   Unfortunately, both the siding and shutters were 16 years old and faded...and couldn't be "matched"...so we decided to throw in the extra money to have the entire house re-sided completely and all new shutters.  We also decided to go ahead and have the last 4 original-to-the-house windows and the front cement steps replaced while we were at it.

Last week the contractors finished up their part.  Now there are a couple of things we need to do to truly finish it off, but we can do those things over the next couple of weeks as the weather cools down a little and becomes a little more bearable!  

The new siding color is slightly darker and less "yellow" than the previous color.  The previous shutters were Wedgewood Blue and slatted...the new ones are black and solid.

The white area between the porch floor and the ground is where Andy & I are going to put up Airstone in the Autumn Mountain color.  That is the same color of Airstone that we put in our kitchen...

Continuing to the north side of the house...this is the side that got the majority of the damage...about 40 holes in the siding and all 4 sets of shutters were damaged as well as the metal wrap around the windows.  We also replace the stove pipe since it was grungy-looking!

This is the south and west sides of the house...the three windows across the upper back are 3 of the 4 new windows.  (I don't have a picture of the 4th window, but it is a crank-out "awning" window in the bathroom.)

Because of the extensive damage throughout Grafton, almost all of the houses are getting new roofs and many, many, many of them are also getting new siding...thus why I have been referring to it as the "2016 Grafton Beautification Project"!  LOL

I LOVE the way our house turned out!  I will post more pictures when we get the Airstone done in the front!


Loretta

Where Have You Been All My Quilting Life???....

Quote for the Day:

“Be decisive. Right or wrong, make a decision. The roads of life 

are paved with flat squirrels who couldn’t make a decision.”

~ Unknown

My dad used to say "the roof only needs fixed when it's raining."  The meaning was that sometimes we only learn that we need things WHEN we need them.  That's how it has been with my difficulty with cutting out quilt pieces.  I average about 5-6 quilts a year...and the actual "cutting" part is only a portion of the quilting process...so there are only a few times a year that I remember that I need help...and that is with the cutting part.  

With my neck and back issues (arthritis, stenosis, and herniated discs), I have difficulty cutting using a rotary cutter.  I even bought the Martelli rotary cutter that was supposed to be easier to use.  (I found that I don't care for it that much...out of all of my rotary cutters that I have tried, I actually prefer my "Splash" Olfa rotary cutter.)

Every time I have to cut pieces for a quilt I wish that I had a fabric cutter.  In fact, I *almost* purchased an Accuquilt GO last December when they went on sale for Christmas.  But, alas, I wasn't cutting out a quilt so I didn't *need* one.  Are you seeing the thinking here?  I only realize I *need* one when I'm cutting out a quilt...and each time, when I am done cutting, I think "see...I really don't need one...I can do it just fine."  But really I can't.  :(  

At my last massage session my massage therapist was appalled at the issues I had from my right neck down to my right thumb...all from having cut out the Christmas Stars quilt.  :(

So that was it...it was TIME to splurge and purchase something that I needed to make it possible to continue quilting.  And to my very pleasant surpise...the price had dropped $100 from the previous price!!!  (The usual price was $349, but would go on sale in December for $300.  The new low price is $249!!!)

I set it up yesterday and tried it out using some scrap fabric like they suggest.  Within MINUTES I had cut 36 HST's (half-square triangle pieces) and sewed them together!!!

I did some "test" sewing on the first 3 sets to find my exact needle position for the new pieces...since they are cut perfectly each time, they are all the exact same size...so I had to find out where the perfect needle position was for them...

I even took some of the "corners" that I had saved when cutting off of previous quilt blocks and ran them through the Accuquilt.  I was able to resize them to exactly the size I needed!  How easy was that???  No more measuring, flipping/rotating rulers, etc., that is involved in cutting out pieces!!!

Like I said, within mere minutes I had turned a pile of scraps into 2.5" HST's!!!    :)  

Of course, now I wish that I had invested in this sooooooooooo much sooner!!!  


And now...onto other news...

The roof got replaced about a month ago from the hail damage we had in April.  The 4 windows we were getting replaced got done about 10 days ago.  And today they started replacing the siding...

Loretta