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Sunday, April 08, 2018

Hot Tubs and Hot Projects!

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if you are on Facebook or Instagram you may have seen this photo come through your news feed yesterday.

Or maybe not.  Because these days I can’t tell what Facebook chooses to send through your news feed, and if you have a business page like mine, Facebook is decreasing the presentation of business pages, showing less and less of our posts – unless we pay to have them seen by you.

One thing you can do to make SURE you see my posts is to make sure you have not only LIKED my page, but clicked FOLLOW, and gone even a bit further – click SHOW FIRST so that I am not buried so far down in your news feed that you never make it to where they choose to put me as a business page. 

Of course, it also helps to click like, and comment on my post, or comment to other people’s comments so that Facebook algorithms can determine that “Oh, she really wants to see this stuff.” And send you more.

And IF you have clicked FOLLOW and clicked SHOW FIRST you may have seen my post about these fun Diamond Tile blocks, featured in the May/June 2018 issue of Quiltmaker Magazine – on news stands now!

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Do you recognize any of these?

I brought home a good sized bag of wonderful Gerald Roy scraps Cathy gifted to me during last month's 3 guild tour in Illinois. 1998 on the selvage! I was over the moon in love with these fabrics when they first came out, and there are still several yardage pieces in my stash just waiting for the right project. Classic never goes out of style.

Some of the pieces are small, some larger – but I thought it would be a fun way to use them if I combined them with other fabrics in my Diamond Tile blocks.


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And then there were 7!

The far left block uses 2 of these pieces – the gold and the fun purple print as the cornerstones.  And in keeping with the decade, I threw in a gifted piece of Y2K fabric as background.

The center top block used one of the Gerald Roy fabrics as the large center square.  These are going to be fun – the center square is large enough to even fussy cut something if you want.

I’ll be posting my progress on these fun little blocks, and if you would like to join in for yourself, pick up a copy of the issue and dig right in.

I’ll be using the hash tags
#addictedtoscraps and #diamondtilequilt. Tag your posts so I'll see what you are sharing.

This is an “unofficial” sew along – you can decide how many blocks to make and how you are going to set them.  I’ll be kitting a bunch of blocks up to take with me on the road – I leave for Napa, California on Friday.  

I’m not sure how *I* will set them yet, but it is likely there will be sashing involved – who wants to match all of those corners and points?

There is no deadline on these – just a sew at your own pace, and they would make a great Leader & Ender project if you, too are done with this year’s Checkerboard Rails challenge and are just looking for something to fill in the blanks until our new challenge is issued in July.


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Hot Tub Acrobatics!

Friends Rick & Mona came up yesterday afternoon for THIS cabin addition – Remember they adopted our old hot tub last October because we needed one a bit bigger that sat deeper?

This is a long saga – it started back while I was in Illinois, the details coming by phone and by text while on the road.

We had ordered a hot tub via Amazon.  Simple.  Basic.  Deep, Not so many jets, all seats – no lounge chairs.

Delivery was delayed and delayed and delayed and upon a phone call, Amazon agreed to give us a shipping refund.

And then during the delay – the hot tub goes on SALE on their website.  A call to Amazon went round and round and round to honor the sale price since it hadn’t been delivered yet.  What would they rather have?  Us refuse delivery and simply re-order it at the new price?  So….the sale price was granted.

Then with delivery, one minute it is in New Jersey, and a few hours later – just a few…suddenly it is at the depot in North Carolina ready for pick up.  Is it here?  Is it there?  More calls to find where it really was.

Luckily the Hubster was in town and could go with the trailer to pick it up.  Yes, this is the right one, the label on the outside matches our order number.  Right serial number –—NO LOUNGE it says right there on the big orange sticker that can't be missed on the side of the tub.

Upon getting it home, and wanting to check under the shrink wrapping for any damage issues, the wrapping was peeled back in the corner to reveal ---Oh NO!  A LOUNGE! (And way way many more jets than the one we had purchased.)

Another call to Amazon.  Someone at the facility put the wrong outer sticker on this tub after shrink wrapping.

“This is not the tub we ordered.  We specifically ordered NO LOUNGE SEAT”

I can just imagine that Amazon was at a loss for what to do next – unhappy customer, wrong item, huge semi truck shipping bill, and more to pick it up and take it back and deliver the right one.

Another discount off of our sale price was offered, and with a sigh – we accepted.  We were tired of this runaround as well.  At this point any hot tub (at a discount) is better than no hot tub.

The hot tub has sat off to the side of my driveway at home – still on the trailer, waiting for the weather to improve enough that we could pull it up the steep 11% grade of the lane way up to the cabin.

As I am being driven to Ottawa, IL after my Chicago area gigs were done I get a phone call and the Hubster is laughing hysterically. (And I can imagine much fist-pumping going on as well.)

He found the hot tub listing of this model so he could read the specifics – offered by Costco.  This thing has Bluetooth speakers, a bazillion stainless steel jets – and was several thousand dollars MORE than the tub we originally ordered (That had been knocked down to free shipping for the delay, and sale price refund given, plus another refund for the hassle of sending the wrong thing so we would keep it and not send it back.)

And that brings us to YESTERDAY!  Click to play:



2 winches (Mona manning the one on the RZR) a man-made skid and roller log contraption, and a whole lot of ingenuity and man power! This was an amazing process to watch.
It was a long ordeal getting the hot tub to where it needs to be, and this is a LONG 8 minute video with photos and video clips included, but it is now on the deck – beautiful sight!

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The moment of peril!

Rick is on the deck, Dave on the deck behind the hot tub, Mona bravely running the winch on the RZR.  I got off lucky with camera duty.

And did you see that it went from drizzle to rain to freezing rain --- and not long after – snow flurries!  This is a weird spring.

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I am not complaining about that lounge chair!

Yes, the deck is reinforced.  There was a hot tub here before, and we are adding more to account for extra size and weight of this monster.

It will be a few weeks before we are up here again and can have Lee of “Handy Dan the Fan Man” fame (Remember, he got rid of the ghosts in our ceiling fans last year?) come and hook us all up.

At some point the plan is to build a gazebo type roof over the tub for all weather use – who knows when.

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Evening hand stitching after all was said and done.

Miles of scrappy red binding yet to sew...

It’s a going home day.  I think we’ll be able to work in a Quilt-Cam before I leave on Friday. How does Wednesday evening 8pm Eastern sound?

I’ll let you know for sure as the day gets closer.

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Quiltville Quote of the Day!

Here’s to good friends and all they add to our lives!

Have a wonderful Sunday!


21 comments:

  1. Love the Amazon story and oh what a hot tub you got for so much less than its normal price. I watched the winching yesterday on Instagram and want to say that your husband is a braver man than most, the pushim at the end was scary.

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  2. Quilt cam Wednesday...yes!!! Last quilt cam I finished a ufo. Hoping to mark another one off my list. Thanks.

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  3. Oh, boy. I was biting my nails watching the video even though (because I read to the end of your post first) that it turned out okay. Good job, everybody. Mona is quite the mechanical engineer, too.

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  4. Bonnie well that scary looking to see if it was going to fall over, but all went as planed now the fun begins enjoy Bonnie

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  5. Wow! That was a nail biter to watch. Glad it is in place and by summer you can be lounging in it and let the stress whirl away with all those jets.

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  6. Hi Bonnie
    Watched your hot tub move very interesting and a bit nerve racking
    Enjoy it when you can.

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  7. Wednesday would be perfect for Quilt Cam! I will be traveling north on Thursday. I will be attending your presentation and both workshops in Napa! I am beyond excited!! The hot tub video was a real nail biter!

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  8. I yelped 3 times when the logs went rolling ! Oh what the men can get themselves into !! Thankfully you got the sucker up there and hopefully the deck is triple reinforced to hold the weight of all that water plus friends and family. If not, someone's gonna be ridin' the wave a long way down the mountain !!
    Love the diamond tile blocks !

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  9. Bonnie, my husband enjoyed watching the video. I enjoyed his comments as he did not know the end result :-) Amazing feat! And quilt-cam - YEAH!!!

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  10. That was a little scary to watch, but so happy everything is in place now!

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  11. My heart was in my mouth during the whole video. Well done, I’m sure all the logistics would have been worked out before you started but I still felt nervous for you all. X

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  12. I held my breath for the entire 8 minutes! So glad it didn't take any longer--I might have passed out...

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  13. hi bonnie! i was watching a fons and porter show and liz porter was the guest. she was showing a bunch of quilts her mini group did and one of them was your pattern. she gave you credit for it! cool beans!

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  14. Those new blocks lol amazing! Another one on my list 😊 I think I will take your advise and make it my leader / ender.

    Wow! What a crazy adventure with the hot tub. I watched your video yesterday putting it in place, 'nerve racking'!!! Glad it is ready for hook up. Who could turn down an upgrade like that???! 😀

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  15. I bought the wavy, stripe gold/red fabric in the bottom left-hand corner back in the day. I'm pretty sure that I still have it.

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  16. The video was priceless! For your hot tub, our local store has a roof/gazebo thingy that incorporates the hot tub cover, the cover gets lifted up into the roof of the gazebo (electric drive) when you want to use the tub!

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  17. So happy for you and so happy no one got hurt. No hot tub is worth that!

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  18. Good grief that video of moving the hot tub was a nailbiter!!! WOW!! Great hot tub and I bet you will love it when its all up and running!

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  19. Watched the hot tub video yesterday and I must say it shortened my life by at least a year so I don't know what it did to yours !😜

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  20. Watched the winching and placing of the hot tub while sitting in my hot tub. It was nerve racking. My hot tub is a small one, came home on a flat bed car trailer. My husband,a friend and my skinny son weighing in at 160 lbs soaking wet. They backed the trailer into the back yard and got as close to the landing as possible. Then they rolled the hot tub on end it's round. They literally rolled it to position. My son was in the edge of the pool keeping it up right. I could see it talking over knocking him in the pool and going on on top of him. I actually screamed a couple of times. My friend told me more then once go in the house. I couldn't, it was very stressful. I was glad when it was set and everyone was safe. Enjoy,I sure do love mine.

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  21. I could just imagine the tub falling to one side or the other and there goes one of the husbands! OR once on the deck, one of the 2x4's accidentally getting it to topple right off the deck! YIKES! SO GLAD I WAS NOT THERE! And glad for you all that it got safely into place! Whew!

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