Friday, September 18, 2009

Still not much sewing going on

Actually, none. Again.

I'm still slowly working on the renovation. I got the painting mostly done, and now I'm puzzling over how to fix the ceiling. The room has a drop ceiling, but I'm not going to remove it because of the amount of work involved - I pushed up a tile and looked at the original plaster and saw how much repair it would take, and said no. I just won't look up very often.

The room has a drop ceiling, but the closet that was in the alcove did not. The alcove goes up to the original ceiling height, but is separated from the rest of the room by a (damaged) header wall over the closet. I could leave it that way, but that would leave the grungy old ceiling over half my work space, and also there's a section of the wall missing at the top and I'd rather not have an open wall there. So I have to rig up some kind of drywall patch, and drywall is not one of my better home improvement skills.

Last night I took off from home repair completely and made chicken stock from scratch. Which I've never done before, but which turned out really well and made me happy that there's one more thing I can make myself and not have to buy at the store. Mine is healthier, cheaper, and gives me a way to use up the bones of all those lovely roasted half-chickens we keep buying from the Amish boys at the Thursday farmer's market. I've had a bag of bones in the freezer for a couple of months now, and this past weekend I decided there were enough of them to experiment with.

It took hours to cook down and it perfumed the house (or stunk up the house, depending on your view; my vegetarian housemate spent much time spraying air freshener in the upstairs hall, which was no match for the chicken), and when I went downstairs at around 11 p.m. to strain it and put it into containers, I was thrilled at the transformation of a pile of bones and some cheap vegetables into a huge pot of golden yellow stock that will go into our dinners for months to come. I froze some and put the rest in jars in the fridge.

At some point I need to think about dealing with the tomatoes that are still ripening at warp speed in the back yard, and at some point I really need to sew. I still haven't made those buttonholes, which is ridiculous. I should at least do that.

4 comments:

Carolyn (Diary of a Sewing Fanatic) said...

I am always in awe of people who do home repair work...the alcove is looking good!

meredithp said...

Not a good home improver at all, but could you put a bit of dropped ceiling in the alcove too?

Nancy K said...

As one of three daughters, my dad, a very handy man, taught us all how to use tools. However, I am married to the king of diy and I tend to let him do most of the home repairs.
Cooking I do know and people are always surprised at how easy it is to make soup.
Old houses almost always offer up a surprise when you take anything down, so I wish you luck in your home reno. It will be worth it in the end.

Dawn said...

Yum, I love making chicken stock. It does make the whole house smell delicious. We love meat, meat, meat. We are hoping to get about 12 deer or 1 moose this fall to stock up on meat for winter. You can't beat it.

My husband is the house repair dude. I help but he directs.