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.

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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.









Is that the floor I see???

For the past few months, the dining room has been the staging/storage area for Robyn's thrift store and Craigslist finds.  With the 3rd bedroom finished up, we were finally able to organize the dining room.

... and utilize the plate shelf

...and not worry about knocking off our thrift store plate collection.  Most of the pictures I take of the house are taken with my cell phone camera.  Focus and contrast can be a bit challenging as you can see by this photo.

...and to prove it is just as possible to take a video with a cell phone that will give you motion sickness as with a regular video camera.

...and I forgot to include the last posting a picture of the rug we put in 3rd bedroom.







Under the wire...

With my mom coming in this weekend to stay before we head south to Nebraska for Kyle's wedding, Robyn and I were down to the wire to finish up the bedroom we were getting ready for her stay. 

Friday, we finished putting up the ceiling paneling.  We were delayed a day because I didn't want to go back into the house to get my tape measure to measure a piece 7' 7 1/2" long so  instead I used the t-square to measure off a 16 1/2 inches to cut off the short end.  Of course, it was a foot too short.  Tino helped us get the new mattresses up the stairs.  Because of the two 90 degree turns and narrow widths, carrying larger items can be a bit of a challenge.

Using the wall paneling to create a beaded board look on the ceiling didn't come out quite as good appearance-wise as we hoped...

But with the new light fixture, was still a significant improvement over the old ceiling treatment.

Saturday, we volunteered from 9:30am to 2:30 pm at the Irish Fest.  Here's a shot from Harriet Island, on the south side of the Mississippi, across the river looking on to the Cathedral of St. Paul.

Once we finished up there, back to the house to move start putting the bed together and replace some defective wall outlets with newer, safer one. 

Saturday evening, we headed out to the drive-in for a couple of movies.  I'm glad I had just stuffed my jackets behind the seat because they were definitely needed for a night in the low-60's.  Robyn was even smarter and had brought a small quilt.

Sunday, we headed off to the Mall of America for some shopping for a dress for Robyn to wear to the wedding.  If we hadn't gotten our workout already for the weekend, we definitely did during that trip.  After a short stop at Wally World to pick up blinds and bolts to bolt the headboard to the bed frame (a Craigslist find), we stopped by our storage unit to pick up a few items to complete the room furnishings.  With the finishing up of this bedroom, it looks like we'll be able to get all of our items out of storage finally.

Sunday around 7:00 pm, we finally finished up.  Here are the results for the 3rd bedroom.

As soon as the bed was made, Angel and Lucy were giving it a test.  (Angel is between and underneath the pillows. 

In addition to the found headboard we distressed and the thrift store lamp and found cabinet, You can recognize some of our other finds in the next few photos.

Everything appears to have met with Angel's approval.