Monday, July 23, 2012

Kitchen War... In a pickle

Wow, it's hard to believe it's been nearly a month since I posted an update about what has been going on around the house.  Robyn and I have been really busy... vacation, garden, volunteering, Twins game, and working around the house.

Towards the end of June, the greens in the garden started tapering off.  I did get one last big mess of turnip greens:


Which I blanched and then froze for a later time. 

In Minnesota, and the Twin Cities in particular, there is so much to do in the summer.  You just have to take advantage of it while the weather is nice.  We kicked off our vacation week on the Saturday before the 4th of July with a Twins game.


Robyn had to work the Monday and Tuesday before the 4th but I took those couple of days to get some stuff done around the house.  Unfortunately, it was so dang hot it was difficult to get much done.  I did finish up painting the upstairs back room where I've set up my office and finally got a motion activated light up on the garage to shine on our driveway.

Wednesday, July 4, we headed up to visit our friends, Pat and Bruce, who have a place up on Lake Superior in Cornucopia, Wisconsin.  A Unique small town just a short drive from the Apostle Islands.


Spent a lot of time relaxing and Robyn gave kayaking a try.  Here are our friends Pat and Bruce paddling across Siskiwit Bay.


The scenery was amazing.  From the Russion Orthodox church in Cornucopia...


To the falls of the Siskiwit River...


The view across Siskiwit Bay from the Siskiwit Lodge...


The panoromic view from Hauser's Superior View farms towards the Apostle Islands...


With their "kicking machine"...


Bayfield, Wisconsin is another picturesque town on Lake Superior with a ferry to Madelin Island and a large inventory of Victorian-era homes, including this one, Rittenhouse Inn, converted to a bed and breakfast.


I was wondering if this might be part of the same Rittenhouse family that is in Virginia.  I'm related to some of the Rittenhouse descendants.

Heading back to St. Paul, we stopped at a small community flea market alongside Highway 13 in Port Wing, WI.  Robyn fell in love with a late 19th century camel-back immigrants chest.  $25 later we were squeezing it into the back of her Sportage.



Even though it was missing the top shelf, it still had the original paper liner.


Back home, the cucumbers, yellow squash and zucchini was starting to come in:


And the squirrels found the sweet corn.


The week after the 4th of July, we started back on the house.  I cut a hole in the door to the basement for a pet door so the cats could get downstairs to the litter box:


Lucy and Angel aren't too terribly happy about it but we don't have to leave the door cracked anymore.  We're letting them get used to going through the hole before we put the actual pet door up.

In the kitchen, it was time to rebuild the cabinet under the sink.  When the ductwork was put in, the bottom shelf and ledge were cut out plus it had to be extended to accomodate the larger sink.  First down was the supports for the new shelf.


Then a piece of 3/4 inch plyboard was cut to fit to hole from the remnants of the plyboard we used for the suspended shelfs on the other side of the kitchen.


Screw holes and gaps were filled in with some wood putty.


Since I have a tendency to be a bit "generous" with paint, I decided to try Frog Tape when I taped off the re-built cabinet.


While I was doing this, Robyn was painting the remainder of the walls in the kitchen.


She used the Frog Tape as well and absolutely no paint bled through to the new countertop.  I, on the other hand, was not quite so lucky.


We finished off the sink cabinet with a skirt that Robyn made from some damask material she picked up at a thrift store.


This past weekend, after some volunteer work on Saturday, we started on the next phase of the kitchen, the backsplash.  But first, we had to get our homegrown cucumbers soaking in Mrs. Wage Pickling Lime.


We're making sweet hot pickles with the hot peppers which are from our garden as well.


In between the steps of soaking, making syrup, soaking and canning, we started on the backsplash.  We'd debated about different materials, black granite floor tile, black ceramic tile, pressed tin, etc., but finally decided to use a leftover sheet of beaded board paneling; an idea Robyn found online.  She'd painted the whole 4x8 sheet the week before while I was working on the sink cabinet so all we had to do was cut and fit.

As with everything in this house, nothing is square and the distance between the countertop and the bottom of the cabinets ranged anywhere from 14 to 14 1/2 inches.  How did I find this out?  When the first piece I cut was 1/2 inch off.


Other than that, the biggest challenge I had was fitting a piece over the faucet and under the cabinet supports and not smear the Loctite adhesive everywhere.  I'd hoped to use a single piece of board centered over the sink.


But there just wasn't enough clearance.

The other pieces of paneling were a bit easier to do even though there were some involved cuts for the piece over the right side of the sink.


After some black caulk around the exposed edges, the backsplash was complete.


Just in time to finish up our sweet hot lime pickles.


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