One Monthly Goal :: October 2019 Update

Autumn is my favorite season. I love changing leaves. Our new lake house is surrounded by trees so I've been looking forward to seeing their fall foliage. They have not disappointed me.

With the weather cooling down, I set my goal to unpack my craft room. I am ridiculously lucky to have found a house in which I have such a lovely, large space. But it will take a little more than a month to get it in a more completed state. That said, I did make progress!

View from the door before and after. 

The big obvious change is that I sorted through the 15 or so totes of donated fabric. I passed on about half of it to two local quilting ministries. There's a lot of non-quilting fabric that I will pass on to other organizations, and I'll incorporate the last bit into my stash. The hardest part of organizing my craft room has been figuring out how to work around those three support posts. I have a plan in the works. Stay tuned. 

This is my stash wall. My new studio is a huge room without any closets. I'm storing my fabric in the same Sterilite bins I've been using since I started sewing--just many more of them! I chose the wall farthest from the window to avoid sun damage. Niels and I went on an IKEA date to pick up a few things, the main one being a 4th Kallax unit. Originally I had 3 units placed side by side. I decided to stack two sets of two instead to make more use of the high ceilings. 

My shelving corner was mostly neglected this month as my priority was getting everything moved to the right place. I had these shelves put up this summer. I'm a little scared to go through those white flexible bins because they were some of the very last things packed on the last day when all the boxes, bins, totes, and grocery bags were filled. I'm sure I will find some treasures.

Here you can see where I've moved a few things around. The desk I have by the posts now is made up of the top of the tall "desk" in the before picture attached to some IKEA legs we had in storage. The brown CD rack has been moved to our theater room temporarily while we wait for a buyer on Amazon Marketplace. The white Trofast towers were moved back toward the posts. You can also see that I moved my long arm. The new white cutting board was a nice garage sale find!

I decided to move my long arm to the opposite side of the room because the posts are not in the center of the room. Moving it means I have more room to walk around it. Plus, having it in the back of the room makes it less likely to be bumped by young visitors. I sold the big brown bookcases because they took too much visual and physical room. I've re-organized the Trofast scrap bins so I have more space for each color, plus bins for squares that are 1.5", 2", and 2.5" squares.

Other than the long arm, the view from this corner hasn't changed too much. My sewing machines are along the wall to the right and they were the first things set up, along with my main table. 

With the long arm moved to this side, and my desk and printer moved in its place, I now have a row of machines along the far wall.

The room looks the most different from this angle. It feels so much bigger without the big bookcases and after clearing out those tubs. I'm hoping to have some friends over for a quilting retreat next summer so I'm happy I can have so many spaces to cut and sew.

I'm still noodling through how I want to set up behind the machine. I have a leaning shelf, Kallax, and Trones. Only one will stay.

The Trones hold my gift wrap and Cricut vinyl. I think I will move them by the other cutting table so I don't have to walk around the long arm to wrap gifts. (Christmas is coming!)

Here's my thinking corner. I love this chair but I'm stalking Amazon Marketplace for a leather recliner, or maybe even a small chaise sleeper sofa in case we need an extra guest space. No hurry on that. I do like to have my legs up when I work on my computer to plan quilts or write blog posts like this one!

To see more pictures of the state of my craft room, check out #VesperViewStudio. To see what I'm currently working on, follow me at deJongDreamHouse.

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Elm Street Quilts

Previous OMGs

One Monthly Goal :: October 2019

The time has come. I have unpacked every box and have mostly organized everything on the main level of the house. It is time for MY ROOM!

We moved into the de Jong Lake House in June, and immediately tore out the kitchen and area by the garage. It had taken us until last month to finish that up and get everything where it needs to be. Ah, so nice to be done with construction dust and able to have everything in its place. 

Downstairs, my craft room has been waiting very patiently for my attention and in October, that's my OMG. 

How's that for a scary start to October. No wonder my sew-jo has been off! Fingers crossed that by the end of the month, it's all spic and span and I am back to sewing every day!

I'm not sure if I'll get much sewing done this month, but I sure hope I have a place for it by the end of the month!

To see more pictures of the state of my craft room, check out #VesperViewStudio. To see what I'm currently working on, follow me at deJongDreamHouse.

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Elm Street Quilts

Previous OMGs

One Monthly Goal :: July 2019

Summer is officially upon us and we are officially moved into the de Jong Lake House. There is chaos everywhere because it is impossible to unpack when the kitchen, mudroom, pantry, and laundry room are all being renovated! We are making do with a crockpot, secondhand microwave, and far too much eating out, but we are a few weeks away from being able to enjoy our upgrades. 

Speaking of upgrades, I no longer have a craft room, I have a sewing studio! The previous owners used the 29' x 28' space as a play room, but I claimed it as my play room, which I am naming Vesper View Studio. 

This is how it looked on closing day.

The big change we made was to replace the carpet with cork.

Then we changed the yellow stripes to Vesper Violet. 

Finally, we changed the yellow can lights to bright daylight tiles.

Then, I moved all my stuff in. My room suddenly doesn't seem so big!

I've been focused on the renovations upstairs, as well as dealing with brain injury crashes, so I haven't been able to spend a lot of time getting things sorted downstairs. I'm not ambitious enough to make an organized sewing studio my One Monthly Goal!

Instead, my goal is to catch up on my TBI Temperature Quilt. This is the quilt I'm making this year to document my 15th year of living with a brain injury.

I haven't sewn any blocks for nearly a month! I do have a pretty good idea of when my crashes are because of my Fit Bit, and I can also use my summaries to tell when I napped. We are headed to the Netherlands to see my in-laws at the end of the month, so I have a bit of a fire under my backside to catch up before then!

I'm hoping, too, that by working on a little project, it will give me the push I need to find my rulers and figure out a good arrangement for everything. Maybe my August OMG will be to have my sewing studio ready for (virtual) tours and (real life) visitors!

To see more pictures of my progress, check out #VesperViewStudio on Instagram. If you want to see our upstairs renovations, look for #deJongLakeHouse. To see what I'm currently working on, follow me at deJongDreamHouse.

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Elm Street Quilts

Previous OMGs

Introducing...The de Jong Lake House

If you've been following this blog since the beginning back in May of 2011, you might remember that this blog started as a way to record the building of our new home, which we called the de Jong Dream House. Over the years, the blog has turned into more of a quilting blog as Jen has taken over and we were done building the house and were thoroughly enjoying living in the house.

But as the great theologian John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens when you make other plans." For as much as we thought we considered everything when building our home, we could not have known that our son would be so passionate about NASA and have some social-emotional challenges to go along with his giftedness. So, as much as we love our dream house, we love our son more. Time for a new dream.

It took 16 months of looking at a lot of houses, but as of June 15, 2019, we are officially moved into the new de Jong Lake House. It is utter chaos here at the moment, but we are all under one roof. And by "all," we are now including my Mom and her Havanese, Mury, who have left sunny Arizona for Ohio with all its willy nilly seasons.

We quickly learned that it is much easier to design and build a new house than it is to re-imagine a current house, but we are up for the challenge. There is a long list of items on our to-do list, but it will take a few years to get them done. Our immediate focus is to replace the kitchen, create a family foyer, replace the floor in the new sewing studio, create a circular driveway, and address the landscaping neglect.

But first, let me give you a tour of the house as we first saw it.

The Kitchen:

We like the size and symmetry of it. We like that the kitchen, dining area, and great room are one big open space, very similar to a plan we had sketched up when we were considering building again. 

What we didn't like is that the kitchen cabinetry was very basic. There were very few drawers and the ones that were there were shaky. 

We were so spoiled by our custom kitchen in the dream house, it was disappointing to see this quality in a more expensive house. We knew we could live with it, but we also knew that making a more functional kitchen would increase the house's value and help us feel more like it was "our" home.

Mom's Suite:

One of our priorities in moving, in addition to being closer to D's new school and Niels' work, was to give Mom more space. In the Dream House, she had a bedroom, en suite, walk in closet, and a slider to the back porch. We wanted to find her a living space as well. In the Lake House, we say that she has the prettiest view in the house. 

Her living room has large windows on two sides, and a French door leading to the back porch. It has a beautiful few of the lake and all the creatures and critters that hop or fly around the yard.

Her bedroom is almost the exact same color as her room in the Dream House which made it really easy for her to move in.

Unfortunately, Mom's new bathroom isn't designed to be accessible like her old bathroom, but it's on the list for our second wave of renovations. In the meantime, she'll live with it for awhile and think about how to design the layout better. 

Guest Room:

It was also a priority to us to have a guest room to continue hosting friends, family, and anyone else that needs a place to stay. The guest room is on the same side of the house as mom's suite and has a full bathroom just outside the door. We haven't even fully moved in and we've already hosted five soccer coaches from England and Ireland! We look forward to hosting more new friends in the future. 

Master Bedroom:

The master bedroom is on the other side of the house from mom's suite, off of the kitchen. Our bedroom also has a door to the back deck. The master bedroom is quite large. As you can see in the picture above, you could put a couple of king size beds in the master bedroom. We haven't figure out what we are going to with the leftover space once all the kitchen, pantry, and mudroom boxes are emptied!

There is a funky little corner between the bedroom and bathroom. The house wasn't furnished when we saw it, so we have no idea what they used it for. Any suggestions?

From what we can tell, the theme for the couple that built this house was "big." All of the rooms in the house are bigger than we would have chosen, but the we couldn't resist the overall layout.

The master bath continues the oversized theme with a massive shower and tub and twin vanities surround the tub. 

There are two huge closets off either side of the bathroom. Since we don't have nearly enough clothes to fill two closets, we are turning one of them into an office for Niels.

The other closet is off the laundry room--brilliant! It only has wire shelving, but that too will be part of our phase two renovation. 

Utility Rooms:

Entering the house from the garage led to claustrophobic cluster of rooms and niches. To the left is the laundry room.

To the right of the laundry room was a little niche for hanging up coats and a wire shelf pantry. 

On the other side of the pantry closet was a pocket office.

As part of the renovation, we took out all the walls from the office, pantry, and laundry room to make one big family foyer. We're still in the middle of the renos so finished photos will have to wait.

Back Porch:

One of our favorite parts of the new house is the back porch. We have already spent more time on this back porch then we ever did on the old back porch. We love looking out at our little lake. We have had some spectacular sunsets.

Boy's room:

Originally, we thought D would want the bedroom by Mom's suite, but he surprised us by asking to be downstairs. 

He didn't get the en-suite he was hoping for, but he does have his own little living area outside his room. We can already imagine him hanging out with his friends down there when he's a teenager.

Home Theater: 

I think real reason he chose downstairs is because his room is close to the home theater. What a great unexpected surprise that room turned out to be!

We were really happy to learn that the screen, sofas, and audio equipment were included in the sale. I can finally see the subtitles when we watch TV!

Sewing Studio:

The biggest surprise of the house which is not--as some have teased me--the reason we bought it, is my new sewing studio. It is a ridiculous 28' by 29'. I was hoping for enough room for a long arm. I have it in spades! Welcome to the new Vesper View Studio!

Our renovations are well under way. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll get some sneak peaks of our progress. I look forward to having everything done, getting settled, and getting back to quilting!

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