While Mike and Tony were installing the windows, the lumberyard delivered the drywall for the ceiling, so as soon as they were finished, Tony started wiring in some new lights for me, and Mike got his super nifty drywall hoist ready.

Tony Jakacky cuts a hole in the ceiling above the sink for a new light.

I’ve never seen such precariously long sheets of drywall, and it was almost comical to watch Mike and Tony wrangle them into my little house. They did it, somehow. And more impressively, the did it without breaking any drywall.

The first sheet of drywall goes up in the living room.

That drywall hoist was terrifying. It make a falling-apart sort of clanking noise as Mike cranked it up, and I was sure it would fall and the drywall would kill us all. Well, not me, because I wasn’t stupid enough to get under it. I was terrified it would fall and kill Mike and Tony, and then who the heck would finish my ceiling?

Tony muds the screw heads and seams.

But, thankfully, they both lived to finish the ceiling themselves. That pretty much wrapped up the first week of renovations. There was some other stuff going on outside, but I’ll tell you about that later.

If you’ve ever lived with small children, then you know they can make large messes. The same goes for pets. But let me tell you nothing, but nothing makes as big a mess as a builder. So when you take two children, two dogs, two cats, and two builders, and cram them all into 1200 square feet… well, you better just throw in the towel and learn to live with it while it lasts.

And so the story of our renovation begins…

We knew when we bought this house in May that we’d replace the windows right away since they were were single-paned, small, and didn’t lock. And why make a bunch of small messes when you can just make one big one, so we decided that while we replace the windows, we’ll also replace the acoustic tile ceiling with sheetrock and lay a new floor, with the goal that we’ll be all finished by September.

I did as much work as I could myself, and my brothers helped me take down the old ceiling. I pried off all the old window casing, baseboard, and cove molding to be reused later. Deadline came and went, and finally construction started on July 20 when Mike Neil and Tony Jakacky came to install the new windows.

Tony Jakacky cuts through the old window frame.

Both of these guys have worked on my dad’s house, and we’ve featured them in the magazine. Tony writes a building column for us now, and his next article will be on how to install windows, so you might see some of these pictures again in BHM. I really love these guys because they’re very skilled, they’re very fast, and they do things the way I want them done (and I have very high standards).

Tony (left) and Mike remove part of the wall to make room for the larger windows.

Enlarging window openings is complicated enough, but I also have powder-coated aluminum siding on my house, so that added to the challenge. In order to not damage it, the guys had to be a bit creative. We replaced seven windows in all, and it took only a couple days to get them all nailed in. Next they moved onto sheetrock and wiring, but that’s for another post…

The new bedroom windows are installed.

Oh, I have so much to tell you about, but first things first. My sweater won a blue ribbon at the Fair!

For the past month, anticipating our renovation, we haven’t had much furniture in the house. In fact, the only thing you could see from the street was my spinning wheel. One day while walking with the kids, one of the neighbors flung open her window and called, “Are you a spinner?”

Why yes. Yes I am. And so I met Betsy, my two-doors-down neighbor, who is also a spinner, weaver, seamstress, etc. Of course one fiber artist can not meet another without also meeting their stash of fiber. Or their tools. As it was, Betsy was cleaning house, and somehow (I’m still not sure how it happened) she offered me a floor loom. And I, dumbfounded, but not being one to let such an opportunity pass, called my brother, and together we carried it home. (And yes, if you must ask, it was awkward and heavy as hell, but it wouldn’t fit into my truck with the camper shell on.)

Please meet my new-to-me handmade 8-shaft floor loom, soon to be my Mama’s new loom. For years my mom had wanted to learn to weave, and so when she and her partner, Don, went to New Zealand for a semester this year, she finally was able to take a weaving class. She is very excited about her new loom, as she should be, and she is going to come visit me soon so she can take it home with her. (So a note to all of you who can’t get your mother to visit–go right out and find her a floor loom, and hand knit her a sweater to seal the deal.)

But back to Betsy–she is also the superintedant of the fiber arts division at our local Fair, and she asked me to demonstrate spinning for a few hours in the display hall, so I brought my new wheel (the wheel that my mom and her partner bought in New Zealand and shipped to me!) down to the fairground and had a lovely time sitting and spinning and chatting with all the folks who stopped to watch. Of course that gave me plenty of time to gloat over admire the blue ribbon on my sweater, which I am still holding for ransom. I think the loom ups the ante on that.

Happily, my mom has decided to pay up with a visit in a couple weeks, and she is also bringing me two light fixtures for my fireplace wall, which I was unable to procure locally, so I think it will be a good trade.

If you have been reading my blog for a very long time, then you might remember when I started this sweater a really long time ago.

Yes, over three years ago I started knitting this sweater for my mother. (I had the yarn for two years before that, but you know stash must be aged prior to use… right?) It required so much concentration and counting, that I only worked on it for fits and spurts and insanely long car rides when the kids were asleep.

There was a time when I thought child-rearing and knitting intricate patterns might be mutually exclusive, but I kept at it, and did most of my knitting at night, when nobody would bother me. And I’ll admit, there were times when I just put it away for months at a time, when it was just too much work to try to figure out where I had left off.

But as the kids got bigger I found more time to knit, and I even got them trained to not try to rip my needles out of my hands or out of my knitting when my back was turned.

Last week I met one of my neighbors who is a spinner, seamstress, knitter, and weaver (and probably more than that) and also happens to be the superintendent of the fiber arts division at our County Fair. She encouraged me to enter something in the Fair, but I didn’t think I had anything ready. Then I remembered the sweater.

I had finished the actually knitting of the sweater a couple months ago, but the daunting task of blocking, weaving in yarn ends, and seaming still lay ahead. (For you non-knitters, weaving in yarn ends is like fingernails on a chalkboard). It took three days to dry the sweater after wet blocking, and I finally resorted to turning on the baseboard heater near the knitting to speed things up.

And then there were yarn ends. O M G. It took me five hours just to weave in yarn ends, and I am not kidding. Seaming everything up was the real test, and thank goodness my knitting gauge stayed consistent over the years, because everything fit together the way it was supposed to. I did have to run to our local fabric store (thank goodness we have one!) to find buttons for the sweater. I found lovely pewter buttons for all of $4. Score!

I finished everything today by noon and walked it over to the fairgrounds. So here it is, Mama. The Swedish Thora that was five years in the making is finished, and it has turned out every bit as lovely as I had hoped.

P.S. I’m holding it for ransom until you come visit me.