Vintage Washboard Collection

I have a thing with collections.  I like the thrill of the hunt. 

I have a globe collection.  I can no longer cram any more globes in the office so I needed something new to collect.  I turned my ever short attention to vintage washboards.

I’d pick them up here and there from antique stores. I had 3 or 4 just hanging out in my laundry room closet.  For like the past year.  Or two.  I picked up a few more this past weekend to finish out the ol’ collection.

I’m using these boards as a reminder of how far the human race has come in terms of laundry.  I need to appreciate my lovely washer and dryer. 

Wait, who am I kidding?  Laundry is still horrible.  At least I now have a pretty collection to look at.

Ike just wants to know if his blanket is clean yet.  He gets cold at night after his recent hair cut. (He also wasn’t into modeling. He had just woken up from a nap.  A nap in my blankets.)

Now I need something new to collect.  Suggestions?  Are you a collector?

New Arrival

There’s something I’d like to share with you all.

There’s a new baby quilt available over at Sew Midwestern!  Super exciting right???

I love messing with people about babies.  Everyone keeps expecting me to be pregnant.  Last week I really wanted a kid.  This week, not so much.  Anyone want to co-parent with Nate and I? One week we have the kid, the next week you have it.  Genius, right?  I’m sure the kid wouldn’t be maladjusted at all.  (Don’t send me hate mail. I’m totally joking.  Or am I?)

All joking aside, the above quilt is lovely.  I kind of wanted to keep it for Ike. I will totally have about four when the time comes for me to give up sleep.  I mean, cuddle a bundle of joy.

Kim and I worked on this lovely quilt together.  These quilts are a labor of love. The quilt  features carefully-chosen 100% cotton fabric.  It is machine pieced and straight-line quilted. (Not easy tasks.)  It is then pre-washed for a soft, broken-in feel. Many woman hours went into creating this handmade keepsake.

We hope you all love it as much as we do!

See more quilt options at Sew Midwestern!

Have a fabulous weekend!  My family is in town which means junk shopping galore!  Woo hoo!

Who loves chevron quilts?  Anyone interested in co-parenting? (I kid. I kid.)

Bathroom Progress

Do you remember when I told you about us partnering with The Tile Shop to spruce up our master bathroom?  Yeah, I barely remember since we last discussed the tile at  end of May.  Time sure does fly, doesn’t it?

Zero Summer weekend plans quickly turned into weekends full of fun and celebration.  We figured the tile would wait.  And it did.  Good tile.

Here’s a refresher on what we were starting with.  Not bad but there was some room for improvement.

We decided to tackle one of the vanities this past weekend.  I’m not sure why it takes us 100 times longer to do a DIY project than it used.  Must be old age.  Young Nate and Michelle would have that entire bathroom tiled and crown molding hung.  (Okay, maybe not but that’s how I would like to remember our youth. Go with it.)

Nate removed the old mirror with a pry bar. The tape was on the mirror to help prevent the mirror from shattering.  We safely removed the mirror with no breakage.  We carried it to the garage and then I accidently set it down too hard and it cracked.  Go team Michelle.

Our next step was to determine if we wanted to place the tile horizontally or vertically. 

Nate was big on the vertical.  I was impartial. My brain had trouble visualizing the vertical.  I decided to trust Nate.  He has pretty decent taste.  I mean, he’s married to me.  We understand that the vertical is a personal preference.  We have all intentions of this being our forever (or at least a very, very long time) home so we went for it.

We first applied the Pro Mastic to the wall. I was most concerned about this step beings we used The Tile Mat in our kitchen.  I'll write a post comparing the two in the future.  The mastic was easy to work with.  My only complaint was the smell.  But I also had that complaint about Nate that day as well and I keep him around.

We didn’t do so well with math on the first row.  There was just a sliver of a tile on the end.  I didn’t photograph it because we were pretty stressed out at that point.  We were able to remove all of the tile safely and fix our error.  It was pretty smooth sailing after that.  Until we realized that the right side of the wall is not straight.  There were some foundation issues during our build.  Our builder did an overall great job of correcting the foundation errors.  We are just finding more of the errors as we do further projects to the house. I guess we are getting that old home “character” that we were wanting. 

Side note.  I do not recommend doing a new arm workout before installing tile on a wall.  You will want to crawl up in a ball and cry.  Not that I would know.

28,000 hours later, we had a lovely tiled wall.  Okay, it wasn’t quite 28,000 hours.  We’re just impatient.  It was probably more like 3-4.  Nate and I have decided to start a tile installation business.  We’ll charge by the hour.  We’re going to billionaires.

We still need to grout.  And complete the entire other vanity. Look for that update in October.

Are you a fan of vertical tile?  Is it hard for you to complete DIY projects with a smelly spouse?  Is old age slowing your DIY projects?

Ike picked the winners of the Frosty Paws Travel packs.  Was your pup a lucky winner? Find out here!