Getting back to work..

Due to Christmas, we haven't been getting much work done in the house lately. Which is a little disappointing. But we're too busy, and family comes first.

Thanks to a beautiful blizzard (our first in the house) this weekend, and Christmas being over, we did get some work done, finally! Today I did some more unpacking in the Kitchen and Living Room, and Ryan installed the new knobs on our bedroom built in cabinetry. We also decided to re-use the existing cabinet "locks" (basically just a small piece of hardware that flips over to keep the cabinet doors shut). We were both a little concerned about the doors (especially the ones in front of the fireplace) opening. So we decided that we'd just spray paint them to match the new knobs. That was when we discovered this on the back:

February 27, 1843

While unpacking more Kitchen stuff (I seriously think I own every single Kitchen item ever made!), I also cleaned up a bit. Because we've been so busy, I never really cleaned the countertops up after R was working on the beadboard 2 weeks ago. So I cleaned up all of the dust and tools he left behind, and unpacked some of my countertop items (spice rack, knives, utensil holder, etc). It actually looks like a real Kitchen now! Who knew that all it took was a spice rack!

My Office

While the guys were downstairs working on the sill and the door, I was upstairs painting my office. Last night at Lowe's (Trip #4 for Saturday), I picked out a paint color spontaneously with my mom. It's a really light, bright color, which will make the space seem bigger. Add that with the soon-to-be white trim, and you have a beautiful office space!

So remember when I said how easy it was to take down the wallpaper in the office? I thought it would take a whole day and it only took about 2 hours. Well, the room made up for that time we thought we gained. It's taking about 4 coats of white to cover the trim, which is fun, especially on the built-in bookcase and the fireplace. And for the walls, I have to wash them with TSP, then sand them to get rid of the leftover pieces of wallpaper, then wash them again, then fill in the holes and imperfections, then sand again. Five hours later, I get to paint that wall. AHHH! AND, the beams have peeling paint on them, so if it's lead paint, it'll need to get removed, or if it's not, it'll need to get sanded. Either way, it's not something I could do today.

This is all I got done today. All day. This room is going to drive me crazy!


Oh, and look what my uncle found in the walls of the Kitchen... Cute, huh?

Kitchen Demo Day 1

Our Kitchen extends for about 3/4 of the back half of the house. That's a pretty large Kitchen. But it doesn't feel big. In fact it feels small, dark and cramped. Today, we took the first step toward fixing that.

To give you a better idea of what we're working with here, this is what we have. We have half of the Kitchen as an eat-in breakfast area. I love this part of the Kitchen. I've always wanted to have a Kitchen table. This half of the Kitchen has two large windows, a HUGE fireplace, plenty of room for a large Kitchen table, a built-in cabinet with shelves and cabinet doors below, plus the door to the back stairs and an opening into the hall. The other half of the Kitchen has all of the appliances and cabinets, two more smaller windows, an opening to the Dining Room and a Dutch door that leads to the backyard.


Separating the two areas is this:

The bane of my existence. I hate this thing! It ruins my big Kitchen! And it's so old and gross. The cabinets don't have any shelves in them, and open on both sides. Half of the drawers open on one side, and the other half open on the other side. All are filled with garbage, papers, phone books, tools, bowls, plastic silverware.. And it's right next to the door, so after struggling to open that pain of a door, you feel squished and cramped as you enter the house. And this is the door we will be using on a daily basis. It (the cabinet, well, the door too) had to go. Sure, someone back in the 50's thought it was a great idea. It's a tough Kitchen for cabinetry because there are so many windows and doors, and the only long wall is taken up by the cooking fireplace.

Goodbye. Good riddance. It was pretty easy to take down.. the only problem was a stray crowbar making a hole in the ceiling, but that's easy to fix. It was the top of the cabinet that was the most disgusting.. it was covered in about 60 years of dust, dirt and mouse poop. No wonder the Kitchen smells so bad!

Since they were on such a roll, the guys decided to also take down some of the other upper cabinets and cabinet doors off of the lower cabinets to make Demo Day Part 2 easier. We also learned how the mice had been getting into the Kitchen (though lucky we haven't been graced by their presence (knock on wood), they left plenty of evidence that they had been there in the past). The corner pantry cabinet had a hole in the floor beneath it that had been cut to run wiring up from the basement to an outlet on the corner post. A mouse (mice) had been squeezing through the hole next to the wire, and in doing so had frayed the wire. So unsafe! Good thing we saw this before we ever used this outlet! This wiring also went to the stove, which was plugged in so we could use the clock on it. That also got unplugged.