The kitchen is no longer just a black, soulless void.

It's blue!

We're thiiiis close to putting in the maple floor. Just have to do some gas line work for the oven, and we'll be ready. Pretty much.

The beadboard ceiling is painted. The crown is painted. The walls are painted. Once that floor goes in, we can drop those cabinets. Then it will officially be a kitchen again. It will!

Here are some photos of the priming and painting procedure:


Robyn's a UNC hoops fan, but our kitchen won't be Carolina Blue. This is just the primer. Although, I would like this for a kid's room.




A closeup of the detail on that outside miter, courtesy of our carpenter-friend Nathan Geier, who luckily will work for cinnamon-raisin bread.


The final shot of primer-only.


Jonsie, rollin' it.




Sweet Jehova -- a light fixture!


More photos to come...

A Few Shots of the Kitchen, Mid-Reno.

So the thing we're in the middle of right this very moment is the kitchen. It was the first thing we wanted to tear apart (after the carpeting) once we bought the place, because it was so heinous. Please see initial blog post for a photo of it before.

Last Fall we just started ripping it up. Holidays intervened. Financing worries intervened. Malaise intervened. But now we're so close to being done with the thing, and we already have most of the materials, so we're plowing ahead.

The following photos are some I took the day we installed the beadboard ceiling. You may ask yourself, "why is there 1/2" plywood sheathing on the ceiling, underneath that ridiculously warped and knotty (and cheap) pine beadboard?". The answer to that is twofold. First, we installed plywood with the intention of putting up tin, which turned out to be too expensive. Second, we have a major tearout planned for the 2nd floor bathroom, which resides directly above the kitchen -- so, to avoid any damage to our sparkly-new kitchen ceiling, we used the plywood to protect it. Which is kind of why we thought we'd do tin...it's kind of confusing.

Anyway, enjoy the following photos. Within a couple of days, I'll show you what it looks like now, with primed crown molding, a professional drywall job and baby blue primer all over the walls.

Sabbatical, Bloody Sabbatical

I've been away from working on the house lately.

Concentrating more on trying to find a job...and my latest back injury (not a bloody one, as the title may imply, btw).

But I'll be back at it again soon. We do seem to have a need for a functioning kitchen, what with three kids under 7 and all.

Until then, here is a photo of our messed up (roller coaster-like) kitchen ceiling in mid-install:

Be on the Lookout

I'm trying to find 2 matching registers. If I could find 3 of these (the 3rd needn't match, except for dimensions), I would freak. But two will definitely suffice.

Below is a photo of one of the back to back registers in two of the 2nd floor bedrooms. There used to also be two of them in a third bedroom back to back with the 2nd floor bath. But when 1960's man is butchering an old house, why not go all out? So the duct outlets were covered up and the registers disposed of in some capacity. But now I've redirected the duct work back to the same spot, and I need the registers.

The dimensions of the opening in the baseboard is 9" high x 11.5" wide. The outside dimensions of the existing registers is 9.75" high x 11.5". So something in that ballpark that looks kind 1905-y. That's what I want.

Can anybody help me????




Dusty.

Catching Up.

Ok, we've lived in this house now for exactly 2 years. We began tearing things out and putting things in...and re-tearing things out and re-putting things in immediately. And I started the blog four days ago. So I have a little catching up to do before I can get to the current project (the kitchen) (oh, and the mudroom...currently on hold).

I'll be posting these little catch-ups as much as I can. Today, it's the exterior. Also a current project, currently on hold.



Here is a BEFORE photo, of sorts. This was taken on January 23, 2008, which was more than a year after we'd actually moved in. We'd (I'd) already started to take some of the siding off of the house...you'll notice the front porch looks a little nekkid. And we'd already removed the funeral home-esque hedge that used to sit in front of said porch. Yes, that's our X-mas tree still sitting out there.









And here's the exterior of the house, as it pretty much looks right now, back in July of 2008. We'd just torn off all of the siding and discovered a lot more work than we'd (I'd) anticipated. So the cost estimates for repair and painting ended up being more than we could swing. This has now been moved to summer 2009. Which is rapidly approaching, I know.

Begin Here.

I hate movies that spend the first 20 minutes spewing exposition. So I'm not immediately going to go into a long, detailed explanation of who we are and why we're tearing the living hell out of this house.

But I'll give you a thumbnail.

We (Patrick, Robyn, Reghan, Conlan and Rowan - who was in-utero at the time of the move) moved into 216 Cottage on January 10, 2007. Our first official act as owners of the house was to tear out every inch of cat piss-scented carpet in the place. That, of course, left a lot of old timey wood floors that are in need of some repair and refinishing. We still haven't done it and will probably leave that job for last.

We'll get into the bathroom remodel we did last winter, the half-done mudroom/laundry from last summer and the half-done kitchen we're currently struggling to finish. Oh, and I may even get into why I decided to tear off all of the aluminum siding last summer even though we didn't have the money to repair and paint it. File that under Wild Hair...

So for now, enjoy a lot of BEFORE photos. We'll get into DURING and AFTER later.



The master bedroom. Nice room, save for some rotten, moldy carpet and a lot of cracking and peeling plaster. We probably won't do much to this room except floors and plaster repairs.


The upstairs hall. You may not be able to tell from these heart-breakingly low quality photos, but that's exposed (textured and painted, though!) duct work on the wall to your right. I didn't want to buy the house because of this. But it's currently being taken care of.


Beautiful pine and oak staircase. Stanky carpet, gone.


Foyer. Now also carpet free.


The kitchen. Everything you see here is gone. Well, the windows and doors are still there. This was an exercise in wasted space.