I have been teasing you about my big, fat project for several months now.  Okay, I have to admit to you there isn’t a big, fat project…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gotcha!  there really is and today is the day I will show it to you.

When we moved into this house 36 years ago we didn’t have a garage.  We decided we needed one if only to store things.  Some of my family came down and helped lay the concrete floor and David built the garage all by himself.  I went away for a weekend to visit my parents with the children and when I came back the garage was done.

It is a two and a half car garage.  Who in the world has half a car to park?  We parked our cars in it occasionally, but it really became a place to change the oil, store stuff and for David to have a place to work on projects.

Fast forward a few years and we  enclosed the garage because we just weren’t using it as such.  When we closed our quilt shop several years ago, we thought we might sell fabric out of our little shop so David put in new lighting.  The shop never happened and the building became my quilt studio.  David’s section kept getting smaller and smaller until he now has just a little space in the corner where he stores his tools.

I was working at the time and I wanted a heated place to work so I had a small furnace put in my studio.  Then we put in an air conditioner, a refrigerator and a microwave.  Suddenly, I was almost living out there sewing and quilting and listening to my talk radio shows.   I refused to have a telephone there to disturb me.  Still don’t have one although I do have my cellphone with me sometimes.

The shop is completely insulated, but for years we just had insulation batts exposed in the ceiling.  I didn’t like it, but I lived with it.  Then we decided to put in a bead board ceiling. Well, since we do everything ourselves almost, we tried to put the ceiling in together.  It didn’t work.  I have no upper body strength and had to hold the boards up while David took forever to nail them.  We finally gave up when we knew we couldn’t work together on that project.  So, for years, I have had a partial bead board ceiling which wasn’t attractive.

See, it really is ugly.  It’s been like that for years because we had other things to do.

Last October we took a trip through Tennessee to look at barn quilts  A lightbulb went off in my head.  There was something we could do to make the ceiling look better.

We bought David this new toy.  His big yellow compression machine.

I happened on this wonderful book on Amazon and bought it. I will have to tell you about Carrie Hall sometime. She was an amazing woman.  I also poured through this great pattern book for inspiration

We began haunting Lowes for two by two boards.  Every Lowes we visited we cleaned them out of these boards, but we still had to order one hundred and forty more of them and we still are seven short.

Then I got out my acrylic paints and went to work.

I began to paint quilt blocks.

And more quilt blocks.

Quilt blocks began to take over my shop.

I really loved some of them. This is my favorite.

Every nook and cranny of my shop had quilt blocks stacked up.  My sewing and quilting suffered tremendously.

Meanwhile, Bonnie and Belle began snout painting our back door.  Isn’t it lovely?

Then the real work began.  This wonderful man had a big job ahead of him, but he now had his new compression nail gun and he went to work.

He began nailing row after row of the boards onto the ceiling.  He said if he hadn’t had his compression nail gun he would have quit after the first few boards.  Man, I’m glad we bought it for him!

Each board made the ceiling prettier and brighter.  I was so happy.

Some of the corners didn’t quite match, just like on some of my quilts, but with the warped ceiling David had to work with, I think he did a great job.

Now I love looking up at my ceiling.  It will be fun working in my shop and coming in each day and seeing our handiwork.

Like I said, we aren’t quite finished.  Waiting for our last seven board to arrive to paint.  We need to paint and install molding around the ceiling. Then I am going to paint walls and the concrete floor. That won’t get done until Spring and I just could not wait a moment longer to show you what we have been doing.  Hope you like it.

 

Well, now you have heard about my big, fat project.  Hope you weren’t disappointed.  Now it’s on to the next project.  Bye.