Kitchen War... Boxing Match

March 23 was the one year anniversary of our home purchase.  We've made a tremendous amount of progress but are probably starting our most difficult project, except for maybe the bathroom.  We spent just about the entire weekend working on the kitchen.

Sunday afternoon we took a break for the weekend to go pick up our stained glass mosaic from the place we took our class a couple of weeks ago.

Here's Robyn's:

That's a copy of the sun tattoo on her wrist.

...and here is mine, a copy of a stained glass mosaic that I found on-line.

********************

This weekend we got started boxing in the ductwork that is exposed in the kitchen.  If you remember, the last time we did this, I conked Robyn on the head with a 2x4.  So I tried a different approach this time, building the box on the floor in sections out of 2x2's.  This made it lighter and easier to handle.

Here are the pieces as they were built and assembled.

Top part of the first section

The top and bottom pieces for the first section assembled.

Robyn's help was needed to hold up the box sections and to assist a bit more, 

 I screwed some 3 1/2 inch screws into the wall just below where the box section will ultimately be attached.  That actually worked fairly well...

Cause that bubble was pretty much in the middle.  Here's what that first section looks like from across the room.

Things went fairly quickly and it wasn't much longer before we had the next section built...

And hanging up...

We're planning on putting suspended shelving along this wall.  I haven't made up my mind exactly how they will be attached so each section was attached with six 4 inch long lag screws in addition to the 3 1/2 inch wood screws we first used to attach the box sections to the wall and ceiling.

Ratcheting in the lag screws was quite the workout.

Here's Robyn cranking away.

About the worse problem we had was this one lag screw...

Which pulled the plaster away from the wall before it finally dug into the underlying stud.  I forgot to take a picture but we did splice the two sections together.

Next day it was time to hang some sheetrock.  

First piece up. 

Here you can see the box where the track light will go.

Pieces two and three up with the wire for the track lighting run through the box.

And finally, the last piece up and the remaining hole in the ceiling patched.

Now it was time to run the wire for the microwave.  But first I had to fix the slats which were loosened when I cut the hole for the box.

To do that...

I re-purposed the spacers I had ripped when we were putting in the laminate flooring.  Here's one of the other holes which had to be patched as well.

If you look closely, you can see the repair in the background.

In addition to the wiring which I was threading between the slats through a hole I drilled in each stud with a spade bit. Running the wire was extremely difficult.  Like Robyn says, I knocked the "bark off" just about every knuckle.

This went so well, I decided to change the route for the wiring for the track lighting.

So well, that I busted up a good portion of the plaster on that section of the wall.  Fortunately, it will be behind the new pantry.  But it will still get patched and painted.

The kitchen war continues... Eagles Nest and Evening Battles

One of the great things about where we live is the proximity to downtown St. Paul (less than 2 miles) and the diversity of our community... not just the people but also the wildlife.

This morning on my way to work I saw a couple of turkey hens casually foraging alongside Pacific Avenue just down the street from our house.

Robyn was driving a bit behind me and didn't even see them... She was probably so focused on why I had pulled to the side of the road.

And it's not just turkeys in the neighborhood.  Back on New Year's Eve, the St. Paul police should a black bear only a couple of hundred yards further from our house than these turkeys were.

The most recent news has been the return of the nesting pair of bald eagles to the Indian Mounds Park and a story was featured on the local Fox News station.  I also found a video of the eagles on youtube from 2011 which was posted by laurierose28 from Callaway Photography.  The video includes photos of an eaglet.

*************

We have a long road to finish up the kitchen so it's fairly important that a get a bit done whenever I have a bit of time I need to get some work down... even if it is only for an hour or so.

Yesterday, I covered up the main distribution trunk from the HVAC system.

You can see the sheetrock on the right side of this picture (I forgot to take one of just that portion.)

I also hate that we only have one working light switch for the kitchen... right in the middle of this room.  I decided it would be nice to put some track or recessed lighting in the soffit box I'm building for the kitchen ductwork.

The above junction box isn't currently in use and will ultimately be behind the pantry that is currently on the other side of the room.  Using a spade bit, I made a channel to run electric wire to a light switch...

Which will be around the corner.  It was a bit of a challenge because there was a stud about two inches further in after I drilled through the wall.  Even with a long spade bit, I couldn't make it through and I had to widen the hole so part of the body of my drill would fit in the hole

Too bad that it was only later that the stud was cut off only about 3/4 of an inch above where I was drilling.

Let the kitchen war begin...

March 23 will be one year we closed on the house.  We feel pretty good about the progress we made but everytime we're in the kitchen we can't help but be reminded that just a year ago this was a foreclosed, former rental house that had the ocassional homeless squatter in it.

That morning we closed on the house and then that afternoon, we did walk-throughs for HVAC contractors since the old gravity fed system had been eviserated... literally.  The weather was much, much colder a year ago and we were fortunate to get a great contractor who was able to get a working HVAC system in place in about a week.

But I still have yet to box in the kitchen ductwork...

There was a very small built in pantry in the kitchen.

It serves as a great channel for the main distribution duct for the HVAC ductwork.

Our plans for this side of the kitchen are to box the exposed ductwork, replace the cabinets, and move the stove and refrigerator.

First item of business was to move the stove to its permanent location.  This should give a more open feel to the kitchen compared to the original arrangement.

While the cabinets on the sink side of the kitchen are original to the house, the cabinets on the stove side of the kitchen are not... And the person who installed them did a less than stellar installation job.  Apparently they didn't read that note which said "Attach using hanging strip not back panel," and they're pulling away from the wall.

That black stripe on the middle cabinet is duct tape holding the cabinet door closed.  Even so, we were able to use the cabinets to store a few light items.  Which meant we needed someplace to store them as cabinet space in the ktichen is at a premium.

So a quick trip to Home Depot to purchase a 24" wide by 84" tall pantry.

I had to put a piece of scrap laminate under the front edge to get it level enough to stand... Guess there is a bit of a slant to the floor.  Probably to be expected for a house that is 110 years old.

To say it was nasty behind the cabinets would be an understatement.

With the wall pocked marked with screw holes from unsuccessful attempts to stabilize the cabinets and apparently never painted.

But Robyn did a clean sweep while I was outside "deconstructing" the cabinets with a hammer.

Suspended Animation - The Hallway & Stairway

One of the most difficult areas to re-do in the house was the entrance foyer, stairway and upstairs hallway.  With the 1 3/4 style of our house, it seemed like all of the angles came together in the stairway, plus there is an incredible amount of trim and built-ins, not to mention the how high everything was.

...and the walls were horribly grubby, even after scrubbing.  Because we were using such deep, rich colors throughout the house (and we needed to cover stains, etc.), we used a gray primer in most of the areas.

The downstairs entrance foyer was fairly straight forward and was painted and the floor in before we moved into the house.

The wall between the front door and living room is decorated with a vintage mirror I picked up via Craigslist when we were back in Ohio.

With other accroutrements beneath it and on the wall between the stair and kitchen doorway picked up a various thrift stores.  (Here you can catch a glimpse of the next major project... the kitchen.)

As I mentioned, the height and angles provided a big challenge in this area, not only reaching everywhere but also doing it neatly.  These photos should give an idea about what we faced:

Ended up, I had to put the roller pan on the landing that was about 2/3's up, stand up at the top of the stairs, dip the roller or pad in the paint from the end of a long extension pole and then try to accurately paint the wall and ceiling.  Whew!!!



And inevitably, I missed a spot.  Guess I overlooked it because it was down next to my feet and not 15 or 20 feet high up.

Robyn and I decided that this area would be where we would hang the melange of photos from our two families.

In the upstairs hallway between the middle bedroom doorway and the built-in cabinets, we put the wedding photos that Kyle and Alyssa gave us for Christmas... just enough room with about 1/2 inch on either side of the frame.

...with the remainder going on the stairway wall.



Suspended Animation - The Bathroom

Ever since my son’s wedding back in August, the bathroom has been in sort of a state of suspended animation.  My mom was flying in from Mississippi so I had to get the waterproof wall board put up to cover the stubs and busted plaster in the bathroom.  But I wasn’t able to get the walls mudded and painted nor the flooring put in before she arrived.

The next big push of activity came when I found out my niece, Krystan  and my oldest son, Kory, and his wife, Serene, were planning an early January visit.  You can tell I was in a bit of a rush because I didn’t take in pictures of the work in progress until I started on the flooring.  The flooring in the bathroom is a 12” X 48” sheet of DuPont white and black slate laminate.

It had to go down quickly because this was the only bathroom in the house and I had to pull out both the toilet and the sink to lay the laminate.

In retrospect, I wish I had gone with 12” inch squares of laminate (once we’d seen this product we didn’t look further.)  It was a major pain in the ass to install.  To get the checkboard pattern, I had to cut off at least one square from every other row, more when necessary to stagger the seams.  Plus, I had to make sure the “grout” lines lined up.  Because this is a small room, I also had to center the laminate in the room.



But all in all, I’m happy with how it came out and how it looks.  That bit of laminate leaning against the wall is all that I had left from the two cases I’d bought… Cut it a bit closer than I would have liked.

Once this was done, everything other than the floor molding came together fairly quickly.  I wanted to keep the old-style look of the molding so I made my own using a high grade of 1”X4” pine, with a piece of quarter-round on top and another piece around the bottom.  I didn’t think about that by doing this, I tripled the number of cuts I was making over what I would have had to do if I had used a piece of manufactured molding.

However, it looks much nicer than most manufactured molding. Because this is a bathroom, I sealed all of the seams once the flooring and molding was in.

Then it was time to decorate.  This “lean-to” shelving unit was purchased as Menard’s.  There is a 1X block behind the top shelf which is attached to the wall and the shelf is attached to it. 

Robyn was in charge of decorating (as usual) and had been accumulating items for the past couple of months.

Rudy, the tissue holder, was a gift from her friend Patty.  Robyn was happy to finally have it up on the wall.

It was a good feeling to also get a shower curtain up in front of that clear shower liner.

Eventually I got the correct wall hanger and now Rudy rests flat against the wall.  (And Robyn learned after one middle-of-the-night adventure to not drink from my shaving cup.

In every room, we incorporate something old.  The wall hangings and shelf, plus the mirror on the adjoining wall were on Robyn’s bathroom in her Ohio home.

And it was good to finally have a couple of towel racks so we could hang our towels somewhere than over the shower curtain rod.

The panda panel is a gift from my Shanghai employee from when he traveled here in September.

...and my niece, Krystan, opening her 21st birthday present from her mom.