Drywall + Door Knobs

Drywall and a coat or two of mud went up this week, so here are a bunch of pictures of that ...Sherisa :).

From the kitchen into the laundry room/powder room

 Looking at the half wall into the dining room

 And the rest of the kitchen

 That thing on the right is the recessed area where the fridge will go

 Left side, the washer/dryer side of the addition

 Right side, the bathroom side of the addition

 And I installed deadbolts!

And here's a sample of the wood that we picked for the floor. It's handscraped, which I'm not totally crazy about because I think it's too trendy, and it's engineered hardwood. Still wood, but an eighth-inch thick veneer of acacia over HDF (high-density fiberboard). 

Although, as Todd accurately surmised, I am opposed engineered hardwood as opposed to solid on principle, I had to admit that its purported better durability, thinner construction and lower price tag made sense for our setup. Thin is nice because we're going to have a height difference between the dining room and kitchen, and solid wood is 3/4 in thick. This is about a half, so there'll be less of a difference. Also, it was about $4/sf and not $7 like my other choice. It's also acacia, the grain of which I've loved for forever. So we all win. 

Big Fat Kitchen Update

It's been a bit slow in the last week or so, but a flurry of activity yesterday has made up for it with the walls and doors going up. Here's the latest.

Earlier this week, this was the view from our kitchen looking into the garage. Literally. Into the garage. That's the laundry room/powder room, with the frame for the pocket door on the left.

 This was our exterior "door" for about five days. We're not altogether sure why the exterior door to the street was removed that far in advance of putting in the new door, but we have one now, so whatever.

 Speaking of the old doors, bye-bye! They were thin, breakable (obviously) and in really, really bad shape. Plus I always thought they were ugly. Not a fan of those half-light doors.

 This is our garage right now. That box in the back left is the addition.

 This is the new door into the garage. It feels so solid, probably because it's made of steel. Instead of matchstick wood and glass. Thinking of painting it a bright spunky color out here. Orange? Coral? Not sure.

 This is the exterior door to the street/circular drive. It has built-in blinds so they don't get dusty and don't smack all over when you move the door. LOVE.

 Here's the door to the garage from the inside. Pictured again is the pocket door frame (inside which the pocket door will be hung).

 Here's the addition from the kitchen. It's so great not having a huge hole in the back of our house.

And moving again to the right, here's the other corner of the former laundry room. I am so looking forward to having a mudroom and a space that can function as an entryway. I'm thinking I will put a dresser in that corner.

Not a great pic, but you can kind of see the recessed lights in the kitchen. It's hard to tell though, because there are a bunch of holes that will be patched soon. They were used to fish the wire through the ceiling. I'm a little nervous about the layout of the lights, and I'm hoping it won't end up looking really weird and random. We didn't plan it out very carefully and I was running late for a meeting when the electrician was trying to finalize things, so it wasn't exactly ideal. Fingers crossed.

 Pocket door frame also in kitchen. Two pocket doors are going in.

 Here's another shot of the door. See the blinds inside? So great! Also, yes, we are currently missing deadbolts on the doors.

 From outside... We'll be adding a new porch light. Yesterday the reason for the malfunction of the old one was identified: the wire had been cut. Helpful.

Once the remodel is done, I'll be motivated to spiff up the outside and use this more as our main entryway. It's stupid to walk all the way around to the front of the house to use the front door, and now using the side will be even more convenient.

Oh, and lastly we picked out counters. Our plan had been to use dark gray porcelain tile that mimicked soapstone (which was out of budget). However, we couldn't find anything that we liked in the way of porcelain tile and ended up deciding on slate. I had no idea slate could be honed. It comes in lots of colors (almost all of which I dislike). Among the colors is dark gray with minimal variation and no random purple or orange mixed in. 

We both really liked how it looked, and the price is the same as what tile would be. Sold. Here's a really bad picture.

Fresh Coat of White

With the exception of some details, the house is mostly painted outside. The gutter guys came earlier this week and put up new seamless gutters, which make a surprising difference. That's an un-fun way to spend your money. I'm glad they look good.

The following picture is the back of the house, featuring not-falling-off gutters and the shake dormer which I'm not sure I've ever mentioned. When we did the bathroom upstairs, the windows were replaced, which meant ripping up the siding, which meant replacing it. And since said siding is not readily available, we went with a shake accent. It turned out pretty cute. It still looks like kind of a mess back there, but it's so much better than it was. Todd worked hard at getting all the wood stacked last weekend, so we don't have a pile of oak logs in the back anymore.

And here's around front. It looks better in person, but not having the shutters up is taking away some of its charm right now. I'm not sure when we're planning on getting shutters back in place, what with money's unfortunate habit of not growing on trees, but the new paint looks lovely.

 Front-ish, from the side. Taken from the "orchard."

And here's a before. this is actually from five and a half years ago, before we bought the house. The paint had gotten progressively grungier since then.

And a before close-up of the door. Also taken several years ago. Bleh. We are so glad that project is done and are enjoying not looking like the grimiest house on the block.

Life With No Kitchen, Week 2

This is kind of cheating; it's really only closing in on a week without a kitchen because we were in Bend for the first week. Still though, two weeks since demo. And let me tell you, it's a bit messy. We returned home to find our kitchen looking like this.

 Wall is gone, and the dining room is on the other side of the black plastic. The 2x4s standing there in the middle of the room were just for support between when they took out the studs and put in the header. The beam is a bit lower than what I'd hoped for, but it's even with other doorways in the house and also accommodates the air supply vent.

 One more...  to the left of the doorway you can see where the pocket door will be hung.

 And here's the laundry room and powder room! Well, use your imagination...

 Framed in, as of Tuesday. The toilet will go in the left corner and the sink on the other side of that. In the part closest to me, the washer and dryer will tuck in behind bifold doors. Technically it will all be one room, but at least the W&D will be hidden.

It wasn't the original plan, but the spacing got too tight. This will leave the existing "laundry room" completely clear. A pocket door will separate that passthrough area from the new powder room/laundry room.

And here's where I now make my coffee and morning smoothies. Having a coffeepot in my office is pretty nice.

 

Not exactly wild about our kitchen setup though. Range isn't functional at the moment and we've been eating dinner at Todd's parents' house and Chipotle. Never thought I'd say it, but I'm starting to get sick of Chipotle.

And the spillover of the dining room and the kitchen has made its way into the living room and my office. Just six more weeks of chaos, and then... :)

Kitchen Demo and Other Goodies

It is with great excitement that I announce the completion of kitchen and laundry room demolition. When we began Friday afternoon, this is roughly what the kitchen looked like.

Totally dreadful. And a mess, too. It's amazing how knowing you're leaving or emptying a space demotivates us to clean or maintain it.

This is the laundry room, with only a few holes in the wall. You can see how narrow and dysfunctional it is from this angle.

I was in a stalemate with the floor since we moved in. It's definitely dirty, but it's really hard to tell how much of that is permadirt. We didn't actually rip that out. Trevor said he can just go over it; he'll be installing 3/4"-thick walnut floors and can just float them on top.

Horrible pink sink. Goodbye. This is still in place though, because the plumber will be here this coming week and it made more sense to let him fix the leaky valves than mess with it ourselves.

Stupid little corner desk that only a 6-year-old could fit at. This, along with every other piece of cabinetry, turned out to be very sturdily constructed and was highly resistant to my giddy Friday after-work attempts at easy removal. The only thing I managed to do was pop two holes in the plaster, and then I got mad and stomped off to find some dinner.

Todd pulled up the gross carpeting in the eating area Friday. That was both easy and satisfying to dispose of.

So by Saturday mid-morning, we'd managed to remove most of the doors and some upper cabinets. Once we got going, it was a lot easier. Except that everything seemed to be held together with about 20 nails. Where a normal person might conclude using two or three would be sufficient, the builders evidently wanted to be on the safe side in terms of possible earthquakes, tsunamis or other natural disasters. Come hell or high water, those cabinets were not going anywhere. Prying things apart was not easy.

The whole process did get a lot more fun after Todd's dad dropped off this splitting maul, which made a nice stand-in for a sledge hammer.

With that and the Sawzall, I made short work of this countertop. Mike (torso pictured) stopped by just moments after I dealt the death blow, let out a victory yell and spouted something about having smote its ruin upon a mountaintop. You say a lot of grandiose things when your brain is adrenaline-addled. It was a rush.

Mike was a huge help. He knocked out half the wall in the laundry room and ripped a bunch of the MDF out of the wall in the garage.

After removing the carpet in the eating area, we got to dig into removing the rubbery foam pad underneath. Not super fun. Suppose it could have been worse though, since we didn't have to get it perfectly clean.

Finding this red pine made us cringe. Evidently in the 40s, laying linoleum of an unidentifiable pattern with a maroon line that ran the rim of your kitchen was more stylish than just finishing this gorgeous wood. There's no salvaging it, not without a lot more work than we're willing to put in at this point. Even then, there might be parts that are too far gone.

In addition to the work in the kitchen, Todd also removed the wilting workbench and sawed it up to fit in the trailer. My suggestion of putting in upright and sticking up about 10 feet was ignored.

This is after I requested a "thumbs-up" picture for the blog. Sunday afternoon, somewhat grudging compliance. Reluctance to be photographed aside, I couldn't have asked for a better partner to tackle this with.

 So this is roughly what we're leaving for Bruce&co, as Todd likes to refer to our contractor.

We're left with a lot of unanswerable questions that would be directed at the builders and original owners who chose so many questionable materials. Like, why did you pick that ugly green paint? Was it really necessary to build that 18-inch-long wall next to the fridge with three studs and countless nails? Did you really like the pink sink, or did you get it on extra-super clearance because all the people who weren't sniffing so much glue in their free time left it on the shelf where it belonged?

These are things we'll never know.

We semi-sealed the kitchen from the dining room and rest of the house, after I spent an hour today swiffering from yesterday's oversight. Neither of us considered how much dust violently bashing in plaster walls was going to kick up. Been a few years since we've gotten this dirty. But we're good to go now, and Bruce will tape off the rest of the area next week.

 One more...

And here's the result of our weekend of destruction. I don't really feel like this picture does the trailer justice. It's really big, like probably 8 feet wide and 12 feet long. And obviously piled well over the brim.

This was an interesting find on one of the cabinets. "Built Dec 19 - 1941 Walter Clark." Frank Clark is a rather well-known local architect; we speculate that Walter was his less-successful younger brother. He was obviously compensating for something with all the nails he used. Kind of a fun find. We wish we had more history about this house, but I suppose all old-house owners feel that way.

Of course, what we really want to know is where the money is hidden. Our cabinet removal yielded another mysterious key of unknown purpose. We've been over this house pretty thoroughly, but we've heard that Clancy, who lived here before the idiots who tried to flip this place for $400,000 (see: the heat didn't work) in 2007, was the sort of crazy old codger who would store his life savings in some random wall. We'll keep an eye out.

Two other bits of non-kitchen news. First, Todd's dad has begun painting the house. Here's a close-up. The left is primed, the right is not. It looks like it could just be the lighting, but it isn't; it's really that dramatically different.

You can't tell as well from this picture, but whatever. New shutters and gutters will be going up at some point soonish. 

AAANNNNDDDD... Those delinquents who were building the fence finally finished. I probably haven't ranted about this yet, but it took them three weeks from start to finish. One day to dig the holes and put in poles. Then a week and a half later, they showed up to put up half the slats. A week after that, they finally decided to finish. 

I shouldn't complain though; it looks really nice and our yard is a ton more private. The dead shrubs are gone and the neighbors' dog can't see us anymore and consequently doesn't bark at us all the time. 

So we've covered a lot of ground in the last week, and definitely in the last two days. The guys will be here while we're gone for work this week, so it'll be fun to see any progress that happens while we're out of town. The wall between the kitchen and the dining room should be gone when we get back. Other than that, electrical and plumbing this week. 

For our next installment, tune in to find out where we'll be "cooking" until the kitchen is done. Dinner invitations welcome in the interim. 

WAHOOO KITCHEN REMODEL!!!