Updating Old cabinets

 Months ago we installed new uppers in our kitchen.  We installed a set of custom lower cabinets in one area but there was a run of base cabinets that would have been too complicated to replace.  Made many years by vocational school students, the doors are thinner than normal.  They are essentially plywood.  But to remove them and put in a new base is more money and time than we wanted to devote to it.  So we mutually agreed to paint the lowers and put on new hardware to give them another lease on life.  

There used to be two very ugly faux drawer fronts underneath the sink.  They didn't fit properly and wobbled all around--in fairness all of my 5 kids pulled on them at one point or another when they were growing up.  But you can see the lovely orangey color and the dated hardware.  I had obviously removed the two faux drawers at this point--an embarrassingly easy thing to do that took about 3 minutes of time.  We also removed a piece of quarter round that was under the counter and discovered that there was a bit of a mess there.  Moisture had gotten behind the trim and mold was growing. There was a gap, caused in part by levelling the counter but also partly because there used to be a different counter and sink there in my childhood.  I did not want to put trim back there.  So I went to my source--Youtu*e  and sure enough someone had solved a similar problem with an old door.  

The solution was to put painters tape behind the gap and seal it thoroughly.  Then we used wood resin fill to fill the gap. The procedure was pretty easy.

Here it was after filling the gaps so that that top is flat.  We sanded it down with a mouse sander. My wife then took off all the old hardware and painted the drawers and lower cabinets.  Amazingly, for the first time ever, our new hardware lined up with the holes for the old hardware.  Truly a renovation miracle!  

Our plan was to replace the two faux drawers with one longer piece of wood.  I am a bit of  a wood hoarder.  Lumber is expensive and old wood is just so special.  One of the pieces i had saved from the bathroom gut job was a lovely pine board.  It was too thick for our purpose so a friend planed it to the correct thickness for us.  Today we painted and installed it.  The lowers look amazing!

The Youtu*er I watched called this process "puttin lipsick on a pig."  Well this pig looks pretty fine!  We used Heirloom Traditions paint for this.  I have used their paint in other applications in our home and find it to be exceptionally durable and very easy to apply.  This color is called London should anyone be interested in the color in their own home.

First project of 2023 finished!

A jolly bathroom!

 We are pretty much dancing toward the finish line for the bathroom project.  There are still things to do, but mostly they are of the fun cosmetic nature.  Like, building a barn door for the bathroom closet.  I have ALWAYS wanted to build a barn door. (OK I am willing to own the weirdness of that, but it is true!)  Also that project uses more reclaimed wood from another part of the house and I love that too. There is something special to me about using wood in new ways that has a history where you are. So let's look back at this delightful photo:

This wasn't even the very beginning.  This was after I got the old tub out, moved the plumbing and insulated the walls.  But it was at the very least 'rustic.'  Now I am focussing on things like this instead:

Saturday we installed subway tile and a jolly stick trim (side note: can someone tell me why the stick is jolly?) We wanted to cover the base which was formerly visible under the shower pan.  This ties nicely with the floor we put in and just makes for a clean, finished look.  

We won't have much time for reno in the next few weeks as vacation is getting veeeery close!  But really, this has been such a fun project and I have learned so much.

Oh wait! It's ME?

 Since lockdown I've followed a bunch of You T*bers that teach home renovation skills.  I have about 4 favorites that are my go to sources when I am learning new skills.  And if you've meandered through this blog you will know that I have learned a lot.  Truthfully not JUST from the vids. I also have a talented friend who has shared his time showing me plumbing and electrical wiring.  But from the computer I learned how to demo, how to build and put up a new wall, how to modify cabinets, how to hang cabinets, how to do a back splash how to hang and repair drywall and more.

The other day when I tuned into one of my fave tubers he was doing a piece on using new found skills as a side hustle.  The premise is that by devoting the occasional Saturday one could now charge for doing these things for others and make some much needed cash.  He pointed out important things, like keeping the jobs you take on to ones that do not require a permit, registering your business etc.  And although I have little  no free time, I was still intrigued.  After all, I COULD have time in the future?  Maybe??  And i do love to do these kind of things.  Then the dude continues on, talking about not underpricing your skills. . . because there is a huge labor shortage and a lot of boomers are now in their 60's.  They don't want to be on ladders and doing these kind of things anymore.  They will pay good money he said.  Wait!  Stop the presses! Um,  I fall into that age demographic.

I don't mind being on a ladder.  I can carry drywall and subflooring.  I can do these things.  So if I can do them, can't a lot of other "boomers?"  I posited the question to my co workers who said that probably others didn't and it was just that I am an anomaly who does not feel or act my age.  I'm still trying to decide the veracity of that and whether or not it is a compliment.

Meanwhile I am going to go continue repairing and refinishing a table destined for my workplace!

Strikes and Subway!

 As our world opens up again (this would be the second go round at trying that!) gatherings have begun to occur.  We went to our second birthday party yesterday for a family friend.  The party was held at a bowling alley and was a lot of fun.  Partly because of the good friends, partly because I still enjoy bowling (and to my credit did get scores of 80 and 70 respectively)  I said I bowled older than my age so I was very happy.  LOL Elisabeth finally bowled for the first time ever and got a strike. She has never bowled because she deems bowling shoes ugly and that they should not be worn. So when I would take the boys when she was younger she always ate snacks and cheered but never bowled.  She still isn't a fan but had a good time because of who we were with.

While we were gone, K began tiling the wall in the bathroom that our sink is on.  When I got home I helped cut tile and it went much more quickly.  Then we decided on how we would finish the vanity that the sink sits on.  When I bought the vanity on line, it had a little bottom drawer and an open space above it with a door. (of course it was a vanity you had to build so it has been sitting with just the exterior built so that the sink could be on it for months. )  The challenge is that in this bathroom the plumbing to the sink comes up from the cellar not through the wall as it does in our upstairs bath.  Which meant we had to drill a hole in the bottom of the cabinet rendering a drawer impossible.

There were a number of options.  We could put a false front on where the drawer should go.  We though of attaching the drawer front with strong magnetic tape.  Then my wife thought of marrying the two together with small flat pieces of metal on the backs and treating it as one door.  It worked. . . except that our screws when we did this dimpled the front of the door in a few places.  This is not fine cabinetry folks. We are talking MDF here.  I'll give you that  you can't see the dimples unless you look for them.  But we know we WILL look at them, because we did this and we know they are there.

So here it is as it looks now.  We have ordered a waterproof peel and stick wallpaper piece that will go into the panel and a grey cabinet door knob.  The piece of baseboard on the left is not attached, but it is what will eventually go around the room.  It is as close as I could get to the baseboard in the rest of our home which is a very wide baseboard and has lots of curves and ridges.  This is smaller but has a very similar pattern and is made of plastic which is what I want for a bathroom. 

We have some drywall to work on on the other side of the bathroom so that is next up.  But we are done with all tile work except for a line of bull nose that will go on the front of the shower area after the floor is installed.  The areas we tiled used 2 full boxes of subway and 8 tiles (yes 8!) from the last box.  Since I can't return the box for credit we are giving this partial to our friends who have helped us on this renovation journey.  They are using the same tile in their bathroom project (though not the accent tiles)

Tile Date

 Last Saturday my wife and I had an unexpected night where only she and I and Chet were home at night.  The two  youngers were at a sleep over event and I had proposed a date night to K.  She was on board and the plan was to see a movie we are both interested in.  However the sleep over event was over an hour away from our house so 2 plus hours were spent getting the kids there and chatting with friends and then driving home.  Truthfully it killed about 3 hours because I chat! By the time we got home, neither of us felt like sitting in a movie theater for another 2 hours.  Too.much.sitting!  So we decided to tile above the shower in our bathroom.

The rest of the bathroom will have crown molding at the top but in the shower enclosure I wanted tile over the green board all the way to the ceiling.  We also planned for an accent with blue and gray glass tiles.  They don't photograph particularly well but they are shades of blue and silvery gray.

So we broke out the ladder, our tile cutter and our wet saw and went to town.  By 11:30 we had finished two of the three walls. So we called our "date" and went to bed.  Sunday we got up at 6:30 and finished tiling the third wall and then my wife grouted it all.  It looks fabulous.   

We have another half wall to tile at some point but that should really be easier.  For one thing we won't be on a ladder!  It is the wall right next to the shower that the sink is on.  It will have the same pattern except that the bullnose will be at a half way point on the wall. The top part of the wall is painted a soft gray. Now to find the time to get it done.  We are so close to finishing this but schedules are so crazy.

My wife's business is very busy.  My work is busy (I typically work at the site one weekend evening weekly to keep abreast of things) The kids schedules are ramping up with a plethora of recital practices, work and school commitments. . . 

And while we are planning these things and shuttling kids, there are families in the Ukraine just trying to stay alive.  Sometimes I feel so hypocritical moaning about how I will fit in all I need to do.  I am not trying to just stay alive.  

It's a back splash baby!

 Figuring out the kitchen back splash was a very challenging part of our renovations.  Actually AGREEING on a back splash was a challenging part of the renovation.  We tried so many different styles out (buying just one 12 inch square) and could not agree.  Finally we did agree and bought the requisite squares needed.  

But things kept happening to delay the install.  My wife picked up a bunch of weekend shifts.  We needed to use a wet saw and had to learn how to use it and have it not be too crazy cold for using something with water.

I was set to order tile adhesive and found a new product called Musselbound that I researched and then decided to buy.  The order was slightly delayed.

We had to agree on grout.  Same challenge as agreeing on tile.

My wife got sick.

Just stuff.  However this past weekend was installation!  Actually my wife had a very rare Friday off and she put up the musselbound and the tiles that day.  Musselbound for those who may wonder is fabulous.  It holds tiles securely but lets you reposition until you push them down hard.  It is far less messy than traditional methods for those of us with less than superior troweling skills.  Saturday she grouted it--til we ran out of grout.  We were using a premixed grout from the big box store.  We went to the app and discovered there was none of left within 100 miles of us.  Amazon to the rescue.  Our order came in on Sunday, so while we waited . . .

We installed the FRP around our toilet.  Our toilet is fairly close to the closet wall in our bathroom.  I plan to install a small barn door on the closet and did not want to eat clearance space with tile.  So FRP to the rescue.  Basically this is waterproof, clean and neat looking and will also be used on the side wall by the washer. (in case someone spills bleach or detergent, I don't want damage to drywall.)  FRP is really inexpensive.  It has inside corner pieces and outside corner pieces and a top cap so the look is finished neatly.  You put it on with adhesive and use a heavy roller to make sure it is well adhesed to the wall.  It really looks great.  

Sunday the rest of the grout order came in and the grouting was completed on the kitchen back splash.

Doesn't it look finished and neat?

And here's the back splash.  Looking at it you would never know that we had to fill a niche and hang new drywall.  It also ties in with the Corian counter really well.  There are hints of copper in some of the tiles and I love that. My grandmother used to adore copper and had a lot of copper bottomed pans and copper accent pieces in the kitchen when I was a child.  This is a bit of a nod to that with our own spin on it.

There is tiling to do in the bathroom next. That will be subway tile so we will be using spacers for the first time.  I have a laser level which should also help.  We also have an accent tile and I want a bull nose tile on the very top. But it is not a lot of area to tile. Basically it is the sink wall and above the shower. However this weekend my wife has a shift to work so it probably won't happen til a week or so from now.  But there is definately progress being made.

Catching up!

 Gosh did life get busy!  In the past few weeks, we have managed to finish enough of the bathroom renovation to have a fully functional three piece bathroom.  We hosted Thanksgiving.  I got sick after that and lost 2 days of my life to sleeping! LOL We decorated the house for Christmas inside (outside was all ready decked) and more. . . 

First, the bathroom renovation that never ends   the progress on modernizing our bathroom!  At long last we have a functioning LARGE shower and a functioning SMALL sink.  The sink was intended to be as space saving as possible and it is.  The shower is epic and for us seems gigantic though I know there are others much larger.  It is 48 inches wide and when you used to shower in an old tub shower combo, truly this is the very lap of luxury.  The showerhead is high and cascades wonderfully. The hand shower option works as planned. And we did a good job levelling the floor as we have no water pools in the shower pan after a shower. It drains as it should which was of considerable concern as nothing in our house is level and plumb and this includes floors!  There is still a lot of finish work to do.  We need to tape and mud the walls, paint them, get up tile, finish the closet, trim out the window and get a floor in.  But everything is at least workable and with the possible exception of finishing the interior of the closet, further work is on hold til after the holidays.

This is probably  not the best picture, but there are 6 niches so every family member has their own spot to put their beauty products.  

Next up was Thanksgiving.  We were hosting this year and I was super excited. Last year with lockdown it was just us. Ilove to host gatherings!  This year we were able to have my father in law, sister in law, the kids godparents and a friend of theirs at the table with us.  This meant that in order to have enough room we had to empty our living room of furniture and rent tables.  Much of the week before the holiday was devoted to such things.I had Wednesday off from work and finished up prep that day.  There is lovely brass flatware that my FIL and MIL got when he was stationed in Thailand and I use that every Thanksgiving.  My MIL died far too soon and it is kind of a way of having her with us at the table as those meant so much to her.  We made 4 pies, I made 2 batches of parker house rolls, we brined our turkey for the first time ever.  I did not have to cook myself a veg option because a friend brought me eggplant parm which I adore.  It was a day filled with laughter and fun.  By the end of the day I had a slight cough which I thought nothing about.  I had been up and down from our attic getting supplies. It is dusty up there and I was of course talking like crazy.  

I woke up Friday tired and with the same little cough.  We spent the day putting away harvest decor and putting the living room back together. I felt fine, just a bit tired but the pace of life could easily explain that.  Saturday I woke up and it was decorating day.  As the day went on I had a bit more cough but again I was up in the attic as we had 12 boxes of decorations to bring down. We decorated the inside of the house to a fair-thee-well.  It really looks great.  By afternoon though I was realizing this cough was not dust or allergies or talking too much.  I was also starting to get congested. I decided I should stay in my room till we knew what was up.  

To further add to the drama, KC had invited friends over for a game night that night.  I was able to get a covid test and it was negative, so we decided if I just stayed in my room the kids could have their friends over.  I did, and spent the rest of the day reading and sleeping.  That was my life for Sunday and Monday too as the cough got worse.  That and lethargy were my only real symptoms.  A second covid test was also negative and by Tuesday I was highly improved so I went back to work.

This weekend was also busy.  Yesterday was our church's craft fair.  Elisabeth and I visited there, looking for unusual gifts for people on our list.  In the afternoon KC and I went downtown to our city's Festival of Trees.  We have done this together every year except last year and it felt good to admire the trees together again.  In the evening we decorated chocolate houses and then watched Jingle Jangle which is one of our favorite Christmas movies.

Things are busy all through December but I am grateful that we have opportunities to BE busy, especially since last year had very little ways to celebrate with others.  I feel we did a good job making it special and we all were grateful for our health but this year feels like some of our beloved traditions have returned and I so love that!

We Light up My Life!

 So Saturday was not tile day.  It wound up being electrical day.  Here's the scene.  Our bathroom was ALWAYS under-lit.  We had an old dropped ceiling in there and the sole light came from a four foot flourescent light bulb.  ONE such bulb as it was an old fixture and the other light bulb would not work.  It was not the bulb, we had tried that.  Anyway, it was dim in there.  Dim enough that all my life I have had a clear shower curtain.  Not being I am an exhibitionist. Because I can't see well enough if the curtain is not clear.  So while my wife wanted a window and other things in this room, I wanted good lighting.  I researched and found that can-less recessed LED lights were a great option. I ordered a set of 4 that could be linked together.  I read up on lights like you wouldn't believe.  

I discovered that LED lights will use less energy.  They will be instant on.  And , dang, I can see in there!  I was able to set up the lights so that there is one right over the shower area.  I was able to set up two over the washer dryer area, and one that will cover the back side of the room where the toilet and closet will be.  Yes!  We'll be able to see in the closet too.  No more fishing around playing "where's that product!"

I learned a couple of things.  Wiring these was really easy.  I also learned that the GFI plug that was in our bathroom pre-reno was not wired correctly.  There was no ground.  It would not have done its intended safety function if needed.  We were not safe the way I thought I was.  And we paid an electrician for that.  That is fixed now.  And the GFI works downstream and will cover all the other electrical components in the room.  In the picture above, you will also see a black thing.  That little beauty is our new  exhaust fan.  It is so sweetly quiet I could not believe it was on.  I haven't installed the ducting yet.  (which will be an interesting thing) because I had to order the ducting kit from the Big Box store.  But soon that will be in and then I'll drop the light fixtures  for a bit and hang the drywall.

The lights work on a dimmer switch that can take them down to 10%  And they have another super feature.  Look at this last pic?  That is the night light feature.  That dims down too!  It is just totally cool.  

Tiling deferred!

Most recently when I texted with my friend and all things construction guru E, he had said he would not be available this weekend.  So K and I planned to work on our kitchen backsplash.  We have filled the niche, hung the drywall, used outlet extenders for the first time, and agreed on a tile. (the latter being by far the hardest part of this endeavor thus far.  We bought about 5 samples and finally settled on this Jeffery Court tile from the big orange box store.  It has colors that really tie to the existing Corian, but has sparkles of bright copper that will be a lovely accent.

We also decided that we would like a pencil trim at the bottom.  I am not a fan of grout lines at the base of the counter and like the look of the pencil trim below.  However, we might have to wait a bit to find out how all this comes together.  E texted last night that he was available after all if I wanted to work together today.  Well of course I did!  And we did electrical!  There will be pictures, in another post but they truly don't do the job justice.  Part of that is because the lights are mounted in a temporary fashion until I am able to duct for the exhaust fan.  But this is fine with me.  

 As a bonus, the extra time allowed me to do yet more research on the tile job and I have found a product that is a sticky membrane called Musselbound and think that I would like to use that instead of mastic.  I ordered that and it will be in before next weekend.  Meanwhile if I have free time (something always in a short supply around here) we can start putting up drywall in the section of the bathroom that is over the shower stall. We have a bit more levelling to do of the base area for the shower pan. And we can finish off the bathroom closet.  It is coming along.  And wait till you see the lights!!!

Spin City or the story of a washer that would not spin

 Last weekend my daughter wanted to lounge on the couch.  I reminded her that her bedroom was not fully clean and her wash was not done.  She gave a huge sigh, went upstairs and proceeded to put her completely full, utterly ginormous hamper into the washer.  Needless to say I wasn't there when she did it and found out when the cycle finished and she came to tell me "my load is still really wet."  You think??? A dead washer is a crisis of epic proportions in our house.  There are 5 of us living here and my wife has a cleaning business that engenders a lot of wash on its own. Easily we do 4 loads of wash daily.

Elisabeth steadfastly maintains that she did not know this would break the washer.  I suspect that although she did not know that, she DOES know how to properly load a washer and just in that moment did not give two flying fig newtons about what would happen.  If you have gleaned that this annoyed me, you would be right. She is almost 15 and has been doing laundry for quite a while.  It was an impetuous act of anger.

Now this is all further complicated by the fact that our machines came from Sears which is now defunct.  Because they were going out of business I opted not to re-enroll in the product protection agreement.  I felt that might also go the way of the once great stores and I didn't want my money tied up there. Local appliance people (all two of them) do not work on Kenmores.

Youtube to the rescue.  I did some research and discovered that our model does not have a belt.  It has something called a motor-stator and that was what probably needed to be replaced.  I ordered it on line and my wife and I watched the youtube video over and over as if it would somehow impress the instructions into our little brains.

The part arrived and we took off the back of the washer.  No problem.  We tried to remove the cover to the motor stator.  Problem.  The nifty spin and pull maneouver they show in the video did nothing. Zip. Zero. Zilch.  We both tried.  I am really fairly strong after a year of renovation.  I carry drywall, put up walls, rip up floors.  But this?  Nothing worked.  My wife tried.  No joy.  

She called a friend and he came over with his son.  They could not move it with the youtube system either.However they did devise a system where one person held hte barrel of the washer (this is a front loader) while the other backed out the bolt and that worked like a charm.

They left, and we found that there were 5 more bolts to fight with.  We tried with no success but it was honestly late and we were tired having worked all day.  Today, my wife tried while I was at work and the next thing I knew I had a text with a vid of our washer working! No more laundramat nights!  And I suspect my teen daughter has learned a valuable lesson as several times she had to wait longer than usual for a preferred outfit to be clean. And, another skill in our toolbox of tricks!

New kitchen cabinets!

 I realized that I forgot to post up pictures of the new kitchen cabinets.  Say what??? I remember to take pictures of holes where the shower will drain and I forget our sexy new cabinets!

Well, behold!  Here they are, looking all shiny and gorgeous!  They are also 4 inches higher so you don't have to contort your hand under the cabinet in order to reach the outlets and the light switch.  The bridge cabinet has my serving bowls that I haul out for family holiday gatherings (and essentially never use at any other time)  The insides are frameless so it is easy to load and unload. And they are soft close which is my favorite feature of all.  I installed a under cabinet light under the bridge cabinet. It is rechargable with a usb cord and you wave it on and off with your hand.

There is green board that is going to get installed under the cabinets down to the base of the counter so that we can put up a tile back splash.  

There is a matching cabinet down in in the alley way of the kitchen.  It is the same height as the ones over the sink, so it is a nice sight line.  Underneath it we installed the coolest storage thing ever--a magnetic knife holder. So easy to grab my correct knife when I am cooking supper.  It's awesome.

So things are moving along and now you have a prettier pic to look at than the hole for my someday shower drain!

Build a wall and a shower will come!

 Saturday E came over to help with more bathroom tutoring.  While I had hoped for installation of the bathroom sink, he patiently explained why this was not next on the list.  It makes sense, but I was still a teensy bit sad.  However, he explained that when you do a big job like this you work from the top down.  We have framed our new ceiling all ready. But we still have to do that electrical and the new exhaust fan for the bathroom. We have a wall for the shower to build. We needed to finish a bit of plumbing repair to the work done for the toilet trap and we needed to reroute the electrical for the washer and dryer so that the aforementioned wall could be built.

So this was the first order of business after the trip to not one but two big box stores trying to get needed supplies.  We re routed the electrical for our washer and dryer and after the wall was built secured our electrical cables neatly and safely on a 2 x 4.

E is a great teacher and I have learned about grounds and the correct gauge for outlets vs switches and various other cool things.

These are 220 outlets though as they are dedicated to the machines.

This is the wall we built.  Now I realize that it is ia SMALL wall and not probably all that exciting to look at. But will you for the love of all that is holy just oooh and aaaah a bit here!   Why?  Becasue this wall represents the needed third wall which will support our shower!!!  We are getting closer friends!  As close as I wish we were?  Heck no, but doing things right, especially when you can only do it on weekends, is going to take time.  

This is the drain hole for where the shower pan will go.  There is no plumbing there yet but I would imagine that we will hook it up around the same time we do the sink.  There is stuff to do before we can install the shower.  My floor slopes significantly so I need to level it with concrete.  I need to then install my vapor barrier because the shower walls install direct to the studs.I need to put two plywood blocks on the new wall.  One will hold the shower temptrol. The other will hold the shower head and the handheld shower that attaches to it.

I also ordered the lights for the bathroom.  I am going with 4 recessed canless lights that have a dimmable feature down to 10% and a night light feature.  Both of those things sound cool but not as cool as the fact that we will have a light directly over the shower and for the first time in my life I will be able to see when I shave.  LOL

This coming Saturday we are going to go paint my mom's study for her so no bathroom work or very minimal bathroom work will occur.

Kitchen wall face lift!

 Last weekend I took our kids on our final campout of this year.  We camped in Maine with friends from church and had a marvelous time.  My wife never comes on this jaunt. She proclaims it "too peopley" as there are more than 100 of us who gather there.  So she stays home and it is her time to use as she wishes.  This year, she decided to surprise me by painting the kitchen walls.  I present to you the before:

Essentially our entire kitchen was unpainted knotty pine, probably installed by my grandfather. There was one wall that had only horsehair plaster. We had enough reclaimed wood to put wood up there to blend in with the rest of the walls. It is not that I hate the walls. It is just dark.  And we have new white upper cabinets that we want to install next.

Now, the after!

The entire kitchen is painted this creamy french vanilla color.  The lighting is presently unchanged in the space so you can really tell how much brighter it makes things feel.  It was an amazing thing to come home too.  The two uppers that you see best in the first picture are the two cabinets we are replacing.  The niche area in between is going to be filled in.  A cabinet bridge 12 x 30 will go betwen the two uppers.  The uppers will also be about 4 inches higher as they are so close to the counter level that turning on the light switch and the disposal is awkward.  The remainder of the space between counter and what is left of the odd little niche will be greenboarded and tiled.  Tomorrow my wife and I both have the day off from work so we hope to work on the cabinet install.

Construction Updates!

 There is likely no one on the planet quite as excited about our renovations as I am.  Each little thing we accomplish is another skill learned, another honoring of the legacy of this home (as the 4th generation to live here there is a very real sense of responsibility to care take wisely for this home), and improved functionality for our space.  

I have definately been slacking in the blogging of this journey.  Weekends we were   working on the projects, and there were 4 days of camping which left me off line and relaxing in the mountains with friends.

But I present to  you the most recent efforts in our various projects:  I'll start with the least "sexy" things first:

Yes, that is a toilet flange on our new bathroom subfloor.  Why would I subject your tender eyes to this?  Well, remember functionality?  Part of making the bathroom function better was moving the toilet over to where the sink used to be and putting a small sink where the toilet once was.  This meant installing a new flange, replacing all our cast iron waste pipe with new PVC and other amazing feats of plumbing that took place in the crawl space.  It will make the walk space better in the bathroom so that you don't step out of the shower and knock a knee on the toilet.  And I learned cool new plumbing skills.  I will not lie. I was petrified to do this part of the renovation.  My friend assured me it was not that hard.  And except for cutting up the cast iron pipe and hauling from the cellar, it really wasn't.  I'll get to reinforce my flange skills in a few weeks as I have to pull the toilet again (we put the new toilet on right away so we had a downstairs bathroom) I'll need to put on a new flange after we lay the new floor in a couple of weeks.

Next non sexy pic?  I present the bathroom closet subfloor.  The whole room has a new subfloor actually, but this particular closet has always been so hard to use, so lacking in functionality, in any form of pleasing aesthetic, that honestly, seeing a smooth subfloor in there kind of rocks my world.

All right if you have oohed and ahhed over picture one and two you will really like this:

See that tall kitchen cabinet?  That was a stock 84 inch tall, 24 inch deep 18 inch wide cabinet.  Except that for our house, 24 inches deep stuckit out about half way across that built in that you can see in the picture.  The built in does not have deep shelves--it backs up to a chimney--and we had been trying to use it for storing baking spices--all the sweet things like extracts, and goodies for decorating cakes and such.  We made it work but it was not really great.  The shelves were narrow and things fell out tipped over and jostled easily.  

Where that tall cabinet is there used to be a smallish home made cabinet that we used for medical supplies.  We decided if we could yank that out and put a tall cabinet in the top part could be for meds (pain relievers, band aids, after bite and such ilk) and the bottom could have multiple shelves for my baking needs.  This would mean my russian decorating tips would not roll out at me any longer and I would be able to find my favorite sprinkles.  Alas, we measured the space as we wanted it to look as "built in" as possible.  The space would be 11 1/2 inches deep.  This meant either a custom cabinet or cutting one down.  Guess which one we did?  My wife rocked it and it really tucks into the space nicely.  It rests just behind the door casing to the built in.  I'll have to take another couple pictures of it as it has handles and I'd love for you to see how wonderfully it is filled and organized. I really can find things in a jiffy!

If  you look super close in the picture you will see that under the window there is no wood.  Most of the kitchen has knotty pine but for some reason that outer wall is just horsehair plaster.  We saved all the wood we removed from anywhere during this renovation and had enough scraps of knotty pine to piece in under both windows and behind the fridge.  Now we are washing the walls with TSP and then we will prime and paint --that same creamy french vanilla color.  I don't mind that the boards we reused have dings or nail holes from prior use.  I intentionally left them.  They are part of the history of the house, the generations that came before me and treasured these walls as much as we do.

Kitchen starts to come together!

 After having most of the 4th of July weekend devoted to fun--we hosted a large BBQ which meant lots of cooking decorating and socializing. (in short, all of my most favorite things!) This weekend we were back at it and working on the house.  This Thursday our two new cabinets for the kitchen alley are due to be delivered so we need to finish this space so we can install them promptly.  As the chef of this large family, the camping style cooking that I am doing is getting old.  I am not complaining really, just that it is understandably more challenging planning my menu around which box I need to look in for the supplies!  

So this weekend we worked on the walls of the alley.  The first thing we did was figure out how we would hang our cooking pans.  Over the years, they have hung all over the wall, but with no real order.  This meant that some of them were bumped as we walked down the alley and we had to have little signs that my wife made reminding us which pan went where.  Since this was now a clean slate, I took advantage of the opportunity to organize the pans.  They now look like this:

My tidy little Virgo nature loves this!  Actually the kids do as well and the free spirited Aquarian wife is adapting!  LOL

We also painted the walls this weekend.  The pictures don't really show the color of the paint accurately.  It reminds me of the color of french vanilla ice cream.  Anyway, here is a picture of the walls painted:

Not only does this brighten the space, but it also allows the old and new woods to look good together.

After we finished that we replaced the cabinets on our kitchen island.  It now looks like this:

The doors and drawers are all soft close which I absolutely adore.  We still have to resurface our formica but it is a very functional island.  The cabinet that has the big door is frameless and so it is now easy to get big pans in and out.

Construction anyone?

 There is still lots to do, but we have also made some great strides!  Picture number 1 is one of our three new windows.  The windows were installed by a contractor friend but all the finish work was done by us.  We had to do some insulation work with spray foam and then we trimmed it out, made the reveal and the sill.  The large shelf is the top of what will be a built in book shelf.  I will be able to have a nice place to keep my cook books at some point in the future and the cats will have a lovely shelf where they can watch the birds outside and where Val can eat up off the floor so that Rocky does not bother her. There were a few things that excited us the most about doing this. First off, finish work is fun.  It's like putting on make up or decorating a cake.  It's the reward for all the sweat and heavy lifting that goes into the job before you get to that point. The other  thing that made this so cool was that our contractor friend intentionally left the finish work for us.  Not because he did not want to do it, but because he looked at the work we were doing and felt we were up to doing it.  He is really picky about how his jobs look so I honestly feel this was a very high compliment.

OK in  picture number two, aside from me apparently moving at the speed of light, you see that we have made another huge step forward. We have begun laying the subfloor in the bathroom.  It goes into the lower part of the kitchen, which meant that I also had to rip up the 7 layers of floor that were there. Yes, you read that right. 7. There were two old lino layers, an insulating layer of newspaper and 4 layers of tile and various subfloors.  My wife cut the flooring with our circular saw and then I pried it up so that we are down to the original boards.  This was important so that the subfloor could lay through the bathroom into the lower part of the kitchen. It was also important because we were trying to find (and did) a missing heating duct that I plan to repair and activate in the lower kitchen area under that pretty window. Lastly, it is important because we have ordered two new base cabinets for the kitchen and I want to have the subfloor done in that whole area before they are delivered.  Laying this section of the subfloor also lets us work on building the wall between the bathroom and the kitchen.  That wall will be what one wall of our shower rests on so it is beyond exciting.  

And this is what we found as the final layer when I was taking out the old floors and subfloors.  Newspapers, which my mother says my great grandfather put down as insulation back in the 30's. Specifically in July of 38.  It was kind of intriguing to me as in September of that same year there was a big hurricane here that took down all the trees on our property.

We have tons more to do. It is sometimes daunting how much remains yet to do.  It takes so much time, partly because I only have weekends.  My friend who helps with things I need to learn how to do (such as plumbing or electric) is not always available.  He too is doing a bathroom and also has lots of kids and things that take his time. I hope that this weekend we will make more strides but we also have to make a dump run to get rid of the debris we have accumulated from the last few weeks of work. We are having friends over for a BBQ on the fourth and I don't want anyone getting hurt on the construction detritus.

Cleaning the portal to H*ll

 

 Today's renovation photo is far from pretty!  This is the crawl space in my house where all the plumbing and HVAC live.  Last weekend I visited it under emergency circumstances for the first time in I think my whole life.  (which is kind of bizarre if you know I am in my 60s!) In the course of  stopping the plumbing leak with my friend, we tripped and scrambled over literally generations of debris.  It was immediately clear to me that I needed to get tripping hazards out of the space since in about a month we will be doing plumbing and electrical work down here.  

Yesterday was that day.  I put on my daughters wellies and waded in.  I moved out pipes that apparently plumbers had replaced and just left the old ones disconnected and lying around.  I moved out an old cabinet, old chair, broken fittings, pieces of wood that were lying around, 2 giant boxes of broken flourescent light bulbs and more.  

I would bring them to the main part of our cellar and then Chet ferried them up to the dumpster.  There is still damaged insulation that I want to bag up and get out but it is a lot better.  It still sort of looks like a portal to hell but at least you can move around in there safely!

I Can't stop the rain!

So this weekend my friend and construction guru was back from his business trip.  He stopped over Saturday and together we safely disconnected electricity to two outlets so that I could remove those last two boards.  This is necessary because when the new window goes in, it will allow us to install a straight wall and gets us those precious 8 extra inches in our bathroom.  After we handled the electrical, we reviewed the work that needs to be done and I have a plan for the final demo and when we will do the plumbing and electrical.  

There was a copper pipe with our old showerhead still standing in the middle of the bathroom.  "You can take that out you know, " E said to me. I was dubious.  He assured me not to worry, and explained what to do.

Today I made the cake for our Sunday dinner, and then took out a couple of boards that needed to be removed. Then I decided not to do more because we need to have the dumpster brought back.  I thought I would remove that pipe. It was small and surely would be quick.  I got my pipe wrench and gave the fitting a turn. . . and heard water.  I could not see water, but I could hear it. The washer was going and for about 10 seconds I convinced myself it was really the washer.  Then I shut off the washer.  I could still hear water.  

I went down cellar.  My plumbing is largely concentrated in a gross crawl space kind of area of my cellar.  Over the many years my family has lived here (remember I am the fourth generation to live here) that crawl space has become the repository of things people did not want making it a hazard. The plumbing has been higgldy piggly cobbled together.  In short folks, it.is. a. mess.  And what I found when I climbed in and shone my flashlight was that a copper pipe had totally separated and was gushing hot water on the brick back exterior foundation.  I scrambled in and looked for a shut off.  There were lots of them but many went to pipes that were disconnected.   I tried pushing the pipe back into the fitting.  This resulted in giving myself a shower.  Just what one wants to do in a crawl space!  Um, maybe not.

I climbed out, ran upstairs, texted my friend, gave my phone to Elisabeth and said for her to let me know when he texted back.  I went back down and resumed my search for shutoffs.  I finally found one that slowed the flow but did not stop it.  Then I got a bucket and put it under the remaining leak.  

E arrived.  It took him a while to figure out how to stop the flow so we could work on the pipe but eventually we got it to cease.  My wife got home and she knew where the main shut off to the house was and that helped.  He showed me how to fix the mess, at least temporarily.  The piping is both old and not really done correctly. And all the weird little shutoffs really need to be consolidated and  a different kind of shut off used.  The reason the pipe came apart when I used my wrench was because they were not fit together properly.  The pipe actually had to be cut so it would fit in properly. We got it fitted and soldered.  And took our  cobwebbed covered selves out of the crawl space.  E promises that when we do the bathroom plumbing we will re-do all of this and it will not be an issue again.  He also promises that it will be a half day job.  I am betting it is a full day job.

 

Chet makes a plan!

 This past weekend was Easter weekend so it was light duty in the home improvement arena.  I got a new medicine cabinet for the upstairs bathroom and installed that.  I picked up a new vanity for that same bathroom, so I can install that when the downstairs one is someday finished. LOL I did some picture hanging, pulled some nails, kind of  kept things low key.  

Chet found getting rid of the old medicine cabinet rather heart wrenching. I had him help me pull it out and we looked at all the rust all over it.  Honestly there was so much we had covered it with duct tape  years ago. It was put in when I was 4 and i am in my 6th decade; this owes us nothing!  It helps him to  be part of taking the old thing out and he calmed doing that.

Later he came and asked me what was behind the walls in his bedroom.  I asked if he meant did it have insulation and he said yes.  I explained that there is no insulation in those walls, actually in any of our bedrooms.  There is no heat upstairs either but we are all used to that.  Chet then asked if I could someday "rip his walls apart and put in insulation."  LOL  Well, yes, i could, once the other projects I have going are done.  It would really only be two walls so it would be pretty straight forward, though getting the debris out of the second floor will be a pain in the you know what.

More than that though I was concerned over how Chet would handle mess in his space. And there would be mess.  I explained that I only can work on the weekends and it would take about 4 weekends for me to get the job done. You have to understand that Chet essentially lives in his room. He comes down and socializes at meal times and for occasional short bits during the day. But by and large, the man l ikes to stay in his room.  And he doesn't like mess and he doesn't like change.

I said I was willing to do the job but it would probably be late summer or early fall.  And that he needed to think this through carefully.  He nodded and wandered off.  Two hours later he was back.  He said he had thought it over and he thought we should really do this because his room is cold and this would make it more comfortable.  He had decided that while I am working in the day time that he could hang out in Elisabeth's former bedroom and he had checked to make sure there was tv access there and a place for him to sit comfortably.  In short, he was a man with a plan!

I can't begin to express how impressed I am by this. I will check in with him again in the late summer to make sure he still feels the same way but as it stands now, I will be taking his two north facing walls down to studs insulating and hanging new drywall.

Of course, more reno!

 This is actually part of last weekend and this weekend's endeavors.    Last weekend, I helped my wife open a doorway that had been closed up between her bedroom and the kitchen.  While it had afforded the bedroom privacy, it was not done in a way that made it look like a seamless wall.  With reclaimed knotty pine from other parts of my endeavors we were able to do that.  K hates the demo.  I tell her you need to talk to the nails and ask them how they want to come out.  LOL  She remains unamused.  However she ROCKS taking the materials and fitting them back together in a virtually seamless re-install.  This is the "new wall" 

 Finishing the wall in this manner also gives more walkspace which is an added bonus!  I love the way it looks and I feel like my very thrifty grandparents (who originally installed all this knotty pine) would be proud that we salvaged it so carefully and created this wall out of it.  

On the inside of the bedroom K had to hang new drywall which she did yesterday.  She is a whiz with drywall too!  Wednesday on her day off she will tape and mud it. Then all that will be left is sanding and painting that wall.  If the paint store can't match our chip we will just make it an accent wall and do it a shade or two darker than the other walls.

Today I insulated the back wall of the "alley way" of our kitchen. Our house has little and in some cases NO insulation. Well it has foam board that went on when we had it sided but I am sure judging by how cold our home is in winter and how high my utility bills are, that the R value on that is pretty low.  We are having a new, slightly shorter window installed at the end of this skinny part of the kitchen because we stole 8 precious inches for our bathroom re-do.  This will give us a straight bathroom wall (maybe the only straight one in the house!) and an energy efficient window as the existing one was put in by my grandfather in the 60's.  When I was harvesting boards for the wall project I got them out of the bottom and top of this back wall as well as from a strange upper storage cabinet that we removed.  Of course taking off the horsehair plaster and lathing brought the walls to the studs and there was, as we thought, zero insulation.  This wall is almost on the true north of our home and this part of the kitchen is cold enough that in the winter we have gotten skims of ice on the pets water bowls down here.

So for a lot of folks this would be  a really non sexy pic.  I  mean, it isn't like the beautiful wall my wife made.  But what it is, is the promise of hopefully more warmth!  That is the first few batts of rock wool that I put in.  I have done the whole back wall and part of the outer side wall.  We can all ready see a difference in the way the area feels.  So much so that we are getting a price on replacing the other window on the side outer wall.  This will require moving out a run of cabinets, cutting a corian counter (NOT something I am doing on my own) but then I can remove the wood carefully, take out the plaster and lathing and rock wool that wall as well. We will label the boards and I'll turn over the re-install to my capable wife.  The reason we were able to harvest wood from the back wall of the alley is that I have saved some lovely pine boards to make a bookshelf for cookbooks. It will go right under that window up to where ever the new window will be.  The boards are 8 inches which happens to be exactly the length of the cat perch that used to be down there.  So the top will be kept free of books but can have a cushion on it for the cats so they can watch the birds and squirrels to their hearts content.