Wednesday 11 April 2012

Happenings

You never know what may happen at our house when we wake up on Matt's day off, and have no plans for the day! Yesterday was one such day! Since we didn't have to go anywhere,my man wanted to do something to work on the house in some way, but he didn't know what he wanted to tackle. After doing some measuring and planning on how he would build our new back deck when we replace it, he announced that he was going to tear our old deck off the back of the house. "I could sit here saying that I'm going to tear the deck off and replace it sometime this summer, or I could go out there and get started on it," I recall were his exact words. Thus started his project for the day. He headed outside with a wrecking bar and some work gloves and pretty soon I heard the back deck getting dismantled. After a little while my man popped his head in the door and asked if I would come out and be another set of eyes for him. When I got around back, the deck was propped up by two posts,and my man was slowly pounding on the bottom of each post to take them out from under the deck so it would come off the house and land on the ground. He wanted me to watch and make sure that the deck didn't come down on his head as he pounded out each post. He got the posts pounded out at and angle, but they wouldn't come all the way out with just him pounding on them. So the next step was to wrap a chain around the base of each post and pull until it came out. On the count of three we both would give a mighty heave on the chain, and the post would move a little more each time. After 3-5 tugs on the first post it came flying out, landing that side of the deck on the ground, and me on my backside! :-) The other post gave us a little more trouble, but we got it out in short order, and had the deck completely on the ground. Matt then took a saw and cut the deck in pieces small enough to handle. But now how were we going to get rid of the wood? Most of the boards were rotten, and we certainly didn't want to just leave a bunch of wood laying on the ground all summer. This is when my man announced his next plan for the day! We had a huge brush pile out front that needed to be burned...a perfect place to get rid of the wood from the deck! So we headed to town to get a burning permit. About half an hour later, the brush pile was touched off and my man was in business. With the help of his brother, who just happened to show up at the right time, Matt got the pieces of the deck thrown on the brush pile. We also cleaned out all of the boxes and cardboard from the basement and added them to the pile. We had a good blaze most of the afternoon, but in the end we were rid of a rotten deck, all of the garbage in the basement, and our brush pile! :-) Next Tuesday my man plans to replace a sill under the house!!
On the domestic front, I had started a sewing project on Monday, and things were going fine, until I got halfway through my first seam(for the third time) and the pedal on my sewing machine wouldn't work anymore. No matter how hard I pushed, I could not make it work!! I spent most of the afternoon just trying to get it to work enough for me to finish up my first seam. I texted Matt about it, and he said he would take a look at it when he got home from work. When he got home, he sat down at the machine, and the pedal took right off, working perfectly! "What did you do?" I asked in unbelief, "I worked all afternoon to try to make that work!" " I just sat down and pushed it," he said. Quickly I started in trying to finish my seam up, while he watched. Not five minutes after I began sewing, the same thing happened again! The pedal would not work!!!! After trying different things, my man decided that the motor was probably burning out of my machine. My machine was an older model, and we had already put $50 into getting the tension repaired (more than what had been payed for the machine), so my man was not too keen on putting more money into getting the motor fixed. Instead, he took me straight to town and bought me A BRAND NEW sewing machine!!!!!!!


It has about 20 different stitches you can do with it as well as button holes and an automatic needle threader. I used it quite a bit yesterday and it works BEAUTIFULLY! The instruction manual was very clear on how to get it set up to start sewing, and it hums along SO smoothly! No more problems with getting my sewing machine to cooperate! Most of my problem now is trying to learn how to sew neatly, and without mistakes!;-) That will come with time and practice I guess, and you can be sure with this new machine, I definitely WILL practice! :-)

2 comments:

Carol Baker said...

Like your sewing machine very much.Ma

Laura H. said...

Sounds like my sewing projects. I remember once when I was working on the bridesmaids dresses for your wedding everything was going so smoothly.....and then I realized I had sewn a back to a back instead of a back to a front. Welcome to the world of sewing!
Love ya