The Forms of Tile

Do you ever feel the closer you get to something, the further away it seems?  With the major construction complete on the house, one would think that we are close to being able to get that assessment and listing, but alas the list is still dauntingly filled with smaller tasks that can be tedious and require a lot of time just gathering the supplies and tools.  Still at this stage, the results are quite satisfying because when the little task is complete, there is nothing left to do, but enjoy the finished product.  Sadly, this is the most beautiful our house has ever been and we’re moving….

Here is the nearly final for the den that is attached to the kitchen.  The dogs are so exited to see the couch again.  Slipcovers on the furniture are a lifesaver! Across from the couch is the see through fireplace we had installed last month.  This past week James took some of our left over slate tiles and tiles the hearth and surround.  If you look closely you can see the coffee table in the living room through the fireplace! I show you that to see how pretty things can be around here, but also to point out they don’t last long.  The very next morning everything was changed to store large items from the kitchen.  Ah….. This was all done for those boxes in the foreground.  James is planning on installing the kitchen floor.  Here’s a before picture…. We’re putting in a resilient plank/tile flooring called allure by trafficmaster from Home Depot.  We chose it for the speed of installation and the price did not hurt either.  It’s a floating resilient floor where the planks have adhesive strips that glue one piece to another.  The biggest issue is making sure the substrate is flat – for unlike laminate floating floors, these planks will show every bump and crevass along the way.  Fortunately, like laminate, it goes down quickly.  In half a day, it was finished.  No curing, no waiting, voila! Now don’t think I was simply watching – while James was on his hands and knees, I was working on the living room side of the fireplace.  The old fireplace had a stone hearth and partial stone surround.  We did keep the hearth and were able to salvage much of the stone from the surround, but there was not enough for the new.  There was no more stone to be found that matched, so we settled on strips of small stones to fill in gaps.  Here’s the before…It took some hands on attention and a flexible sense of playfulness.  It was really rather fun – like playing in a mud puddle and working on some summer camp arts and crafts project.  The stones themselves turned out better than I expected, but the grout really finished the job.  And the after… Much closer and a number of items crossed off the list.  Now the big hurdle is to clean out the James’ shop!

Life’s been a blur….

Here’s the latest on the kitchen.  We have countertops and appliances in place.  If you haven’t checked out Craigslist we highly recommend it – we were able to outfit the kitchen for $1000 and that includes a range and microwave combo that have never been used!  Sorry this picture doesn’t show the appliances but the old ones are in the center of the room awaiting their sale on Craigslist!

I must say I was thrilled to get a kitchen sink back and the dishwasher was a great boon, but once I had a range, fridge and pantry in the same room – I felt like I’d dies and gone to heaven!

Most of the push is because I have taken a new position and we will need to move to Tennessee.  I start tomorrow and have decluttered all that I can.  It really quite therapeutic.  I can officially say that I have removed college from my life – particularly all my college notebooks!!!  Fear not all that could be recycled has been!

Tomorrow is a new adventure and today is aimed at getting there.  i have no idea the next time I’ll have personal access to a computer – but know that I’m thinking and hope to catch up one day!

In the meantime – know the puppies are doing well.  They look wonderful in the new kitchen.  Black really dresses up the gateway gray.  The last two weeks between jobs and being at home has been precious.  I will miss them terribly!

Old Mother Hubbard Went to the Cupboard

Here’s where we left it last week – thrilled to see rebuilding to a point of changing the atmosphere…

 

 

We were preparing for the cabinets that James had built and were at a furniture refinishing shop being painted.  The clock is ticking… The cabinets showed up on Wednesday and it’s been a week of installing them, making measurements for the countertop, and glory be – putting in the plumbing for the sink and dishwasher.  In fact, I am just now hearing for the first time in weeks – the hum of a dishwasher! Here’s a better picture without the overhead light to see how the ceiling, crown molding and cabinets all come together. Another big news for the week – while in New Zealand we commissioned a sculpture to make a crèche for us.  It came in this week.  This is by Ian Anderson who lives in Oamaru in North Otago on the South Island.  Ian works in limestone that is from the local quarries.  The crèche stands nearly a foot tall and is out of the multicolored stone.  There are reddish hints that run through it and add a new dimension to the folds in the robes.

Walled In

So here’s where things ended last week.  That much hated orange red is almost gone!More sheet rock up this week, mudding sheet rock, nail holes and gaps caulked in the ceiling, mudding sheetrock, sheet rock primed and even most of it has a coat of paint!  Then the corner will be mudded!It’s called Gateway Grey from Sherwin Williams, but we bought Valspar from Lowe’s.  It covered so well, we just kept going down the wall to the other corner into what will be the den. It’s amazing what sheetrock and paint will do – we are so motivated at this point feeling like we’re almost there (even though we aren’t!)

It's finally gone...

Here’s where we left the kitchen in the last entry two weeks ago – The cabinets were out, the side wall taken down to the studs.

Since then there’s new insulation and electrical in that wall. And the sink cabinet was taken out. We did keep the sink by propping up the countertop with 2x4s…

In the ripping out, we found a vintage bottle cap…

The cabinet had to go so we could take the flooring down to the subfloor. I may have mentioned it before – so excuse the repeat if so – but that was a layer of linoleum on 1/4” plywood, then three layers of linoleum that had been tarred to the heart of pine flooring. All was unusable, so out it goes.

And in goes 3/4” plywood. Here’s a tip for all your DH. This furniture grade plywood was $5 a sheet. It came from the dunnage pile at the local distributor. These sheets made it there by being dropped to bumped by the forktruck. I honestly couldn’t find what was wrong with them. In any case, the new subfloor will be cherry, mahagony, birch, and figured maple…. Raven is pleased with the first two sheets of cherry…

During the week, James was able to put up the sheetrock. The next Friday all the flooring was taken up and plywood was down. Saturday was time for the ceiling. Here’s my father and James putting up 4 x 4 foot sheets of beadboard in an alternating pattern to cover up the blown ceiling. Oh and no more dishwasher…

Then Sunday was the removal of the sink. I’m therefore declaring the kitchen gone! We rebuilt the back wall and put in a new window. You may be able to see that the left window is partially blocked by an exterior wall. Why? I have no idea, but it’s fixed now!

The puppies are still being great troopers – especially when they have to spend the day in the backyard away from pneumatic tools. Here they were able to get a moment inside and chose it to admire the flowers I’ve been planting in the front…

Down to the Essentials

A few have asked how Raven and Shadow are getting along.  And my answer would be. “Quite well considering the amount of changes that they are being put through.”  We’re about to hit week four since Raven came to live with us.  She learning all sorts of things and so are we.  I couldn’t pass up this one of them “holding hands”.  They really do have some sweet moments – and then there are others, but overall they both seem happy with the deal.

So what have we been putting them through?  A kitchen renovation – might I say a complete kitchen renovation.  I mean complete in the terms of take it all out and start all over.  I’m afraid I don’t have a photo from the very beginning – but you can at least see how we’ve started today.  You can see a hole on the end.  There was a set of top cabinets there above the range and freezer.I can tell you I’m so ready to get rid of that burnt orange.  I was cleaning out the attic and found pictures from my high school home with this same color.  I figured I must have lived over 20 years with a kitchen this color – it must something from the 70s or 80s. One layer of linoleum has been taken up with plywood on the back.  We found there are another 3 layers before one gets to the pine wood flooring.  Above is layer number 2 from the top.Back to today’s work – first we took out the bottom cabinets.  These had been built in place, so the only recourse was to take them out piece by piece – see the pile of wood waiting for me to remove the nails????Then we took out the top cabinets on the wall and around the sink.  I just loved the parallelograms James was making as he worked them off the wall.  Then sheetrock was removed and the blown insulation bagged up to be placed in the attic.  We’ll replace these with pretty pink rolls – you can see how the blown insulation sinks leaving gaps.  Oh and there used to be a window in that wall!Here’s how we ended the day – leaving one grouping of bottom cabinets so we can have a sink and dishwasher as long as possible. Shadow is inspecting the work, but Raven is satisfied and let’s us know with an enthusiastic tail wagging.

Shadow comes to give his report that it has been a productive day – but where’s dinner???  (I love the perspective in this one – his feet look so tiny compared to real life!)

Tomorrow James builds the cabinets and takes them over to a refinisher who will paint them for us in his spray booth.  Hopefully we’ll be ready for them when he delivers them.  We’ve got to get the floor and the remaining walls down to studs, then rebuild back up to start putting in cabinets.  If not, every room may be graced with a cabinet awaiting their turn to be installed!

There you have it – I feel like I’m living in that campervan in New Zealand again – trying to figure out how to live on very little!

Remodeling the Kitchen

Weaving on the loom has been put on hold for just a couple of weeks, partially because I'm still considering what to do next and mostly because Thanksgiving is this week. So I thought I would share the other BIG thing going on in the Peavey household. We've begun a project of moving our kitchen. I keep a newspaper cartoon on the fridge just to keep things in perspective:

My husband started demolitions when I cried out - "We need a plan!" So here's what we are living with until that plan is a little more defined. We started by taping off the cabinets and the island - so we could "walk" through it. My husband then discovered Google Sketchup which has been GREAT for being able to see what we are imagining. We've already made two major improvements from the "new sight".

This project is really more than just the kitchen - it includes the den, the dining room, the laundry room, a room for the music and the weaving.