cat outta the bag

I have a bunch of pics queued up and tales to tell, just no time to blog. So, a quick interruption in the kitchen progress for this update.....For about 8 hours per day, I fight my way out of the TimeThief's clutches to earn money to feed her. The super-secret project I've been working on has finally been revealed here.

And before you ask, no, I haven't met Bono yet.

Edited to add:
More links. Yipee! (really just bookmarks for myself)
Interview with Dave J
CNet Australia
MacWorld UK

Reason #23

....why I'm not bringing plastic storage back into my kitchen -- observe lunch fresh out of the microwave:



Okay, that's not entirely true. I'll probably continue to use the plastic I have, but that's been dwindling as things get destroyed. In its place, I like to use the glass storage/cooking dishes I nabbed at my grandma's estate sale. I'm sure there's a name for them, but I don't know what that would be.

I also try to re-use as many glass food containers as I can (think wide-mouth, squat salsa jar). They're great for small bits of leftovers or storing an appropriately sized small meal. Since I can't recycle glass at the curb, they're kind of a pain to deal with otherwise.

Thinking about these for bulk food storage because they're so dern cute!

Are your lights boring?

So I'm working on a mood board for the whole kitchen / dining room / nature room area...mostly so I can pick out light fixtures that don't completely clash in tone and feeling. Anyway, browsing around and I see this:




I seriously thought somebody was playing a little joke. Who does that? But that really is the name of the line. Someone at George Kovacs has a sense of humor.

kitchen of yester.....month?

I don't seem to have a lot of pictures of the whole kitchen demo process. But you know what that looks like right? Lots of cloudy picture bits. This demo did have a bit of a twist though. Next to the kitchen is a small bedroom. A bedroom with probably the best light in the entire house. So, naturally, you'd want to sacrifice the bedroom and enlarge the kitchen, right? So that's what I did. Tore it all out. Salvaged as much of the floor as I could. Because, well, this is what the floor looked like when I moved in:



Yuck!

Then after it was all opened up.....it just wouldn't work. All sorts of jogs in the wall (that I knew were there beforehand) made it impossible to come up with an efficient layout. And it was like destination nowhere. It would not have helped the flow of the house. So, I put the wall back. Which was good because some of the rafters were all rotten and saggy and this gave me the chance to reinforce things. And I changed the bedroom closet into more of a "shelving area" so I can have a corner in the kitchen.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, THE LIST. When confronted with a daunting task, I make even more granular lists. This one was after the major kitchen demo was finished. I had to do some things in order to open up the space. Scary things. So I listed them out step-by-step like I like to do. (List on recycled envelope sitting atop dishwasher I managed to sell on craigslist for 30 bucks!)



Speaking of craigslist....the day I demoed the kitchen I took a break for lunch and listed the old range in the "free" section. It was gone less than two hours later. Yay, craigslist!!!

Anyway, look, less walls:



With pipe feature! There is also an added joist or two which you probably can't see here. But believe me, I know it's there because I had to cut all kinds of pipes to put them in. Then I got the flu. And the bathroom nearest my fevered bedroom was out of service. :( Walking down stairs to pee with a 102 degree fever is not fun.

After the size of my swollen brain returned to normal, I brought in my favorite not-free plumbers. They spent about 9 hours here and they hate my plumbing. Especially when leaks appeared in areas they hadn't touched. I did some work after they left and it looked like this (from the dining room side):



But wait! No peeking!! Here we are, back at those kitchen-related-but-not-really-kitchen related things.

This pic of the dining room is from last December.



(Wow, I'm glad this big kitchen thing gives me the chance to repaint everything. I never did like these colors; especially not together.) Anyway....

A temporary wall was built by my occasionally :) helpful boyfriend and sometimes free plumber.



I rented three of these about 2 hours before the rental place closed. Two of them worked. Note to self: always get extras. But aren't they cute?



These little guys were used to jack up the wall/ceiling so it was actually level all the way across. (Even though the ex messed with this wall once before, the sag had only been lifted halfway.)



All level and the first header in. The boy was very excited at this point. He'd never lifted a wall before. He was on build duty, I was on the saw.



Viola!



With all the kitchen junk strewn about, it's kind of hard to figure out what's going on. Come back soon and I'll have drywall shots!!!!

One final note....since the kitchen was opened up, I took the opportunity to add another light in the hallway. It's an odd shape and there was always a dark hole in the back. Thank goodness for the consistency of the Rejuvenation catalog. Aren't they cute? (Hmmm...maybe I should be less sloppy about the trim paint if it's going to show up in pictures.)

kitchen of yesteryear

Please, don't be afraid. Come on in and I'll show you around the kitchen.



I dug this photo out of the archives. It's REALLY old, but it's the closest to a true before without digging up paper photos and scanning them. Items of note: door on the right leads to the basement, making a total of 4 doors in this less than 8x14 kitchen. The dining room is on the other side of the wall you're looking at. Every time I would visit open houses in the neighborhood, they were opened up and I loved them so much more. I was ready to sell my junk house and move in. Bet you can guess where this is going to go....

But wait! What are those tools there? Oh, those are there to replace the cast iron plumbing pipe in the wall.



That's right...when we (the ex and I) were redoing the upstairs bath, he re-plumbed for the bathroom, but put the pipes in the EXACT same place. When I suggested, "you know what we should do....", my comment was met with a resounding NO. What the plumber says goes, so new pipes, but new pipes still in my way.



Door on the right leads to the dining room; door on the left leads to the recently re-built nature room.



Look! There's a bunch of vents there, too. The one on the right I even helped install to provide the bathroom above with lovely fresh air. Oh, Look! The door to the basement is gone! Someone must've moved that.



Here is the view out the kitchen window. The dividing rail falls right at my line of sight. Annoyed the freakin' hell outta me! Stoop or tip-toes, stoop or tip-toes. Argh! Yes, that's snow on the ground. I started the kitchen demo in January. You got a problem with that?



Here's that sink wall in all it's yellow Laminate glory.



Here I was in the midst of a last-minute pot of soup before I ripped everything out. Note that I get a tiny kitchen and I don't even get the corner! The wall there is for a closet in the bedroom next door.

Oh, you like my filthy stove? Want to see a head-on shot?



You want a cooking light like mine, don't you? I have three in the basement you can have.



Continuing around the room, here is where the fridge had stood. Clearly, I was really ready to demo.



And here we are, full circle back to where we started.

In case you missed it, we have my favorite ceiling coating in here, too.




And a final word. Heed my warning yee all. Do NOT put carpet in a kitchen or it will look like this under your fridge.