Martha Sits

Now, the tedious work of painting in the leaves, and highlighting them. Meanwhile, Meet the Press blares in the background.

He's So Martha...

Me, I can't bring myself to do anything much today. Not even a good thing. I polished silver and washed the new china, put it all away in the new china cabinet. And cooked.

But Steven has been very industrious.






















second coat going on



















the finished product: blue reed bundles, red maple leaves, brown lowlights at the reeds, chartreuse highlights at the leaves. a definite good thing.

CRAZY snow!!

See that crazy pattern of Holstein / Rorschach blobs? They are moving fast, disappearing, reappearing like a summer thunderstorm. 15 minutes of blizzard. 15 minutes of blue sky. Repeat. It is soooo frustrating! I was going to work on some of our remaining moulding work for the kitchen, but I just can't bring myself to go out on the front porch (table saw, under a blanket), or back porch (screened, keeps the snow out at least) to do anything. It's just nasty and cold, and windy. Steven started the paint treatment on our last batch of moulds (requires FIVE different layers of paint and rubbing off to complete the effect), putting the base coat on on the porch, and then standing each piece up in the living room to warm up and dry.

All of the little sprouts on our bracken are dead. The peonies are looking reeeeally limp. And Steven says even the little forest of Hostas, that we very carefully covered, are burned. What a drag. I'm glad we haven't planted any of our vegetables yet. We saw on the weather channel that even in Atlanta, they've had hard freezes at night, which must really be demolishing everything. Our vegetable garden there would have been well on its way by now, were we still there.

I'm going to read my Michael Cunningham book and take a nap.

Rosewood Slab

This gorgeous slab of East Indian Rosewood was saved by someone in Florida after all the hurricanes year before last. We bought it to mill into a new, wide, window stool for the kitchen. Now, I have to do this, then install the pebble stone backsplash, and we'll be all done with the kitchen.

In other news, I sprained my back last weekend, and have had some pain from that. Yesterday at work was unbearable sitting in my desk chair. Today I went to an acupunture doctor here, and I'm feeling much better. I didn't go to work at all, and it was nice to remain horizontal for most of the day, and to take 3 hot steaming baths so far.

Off for a fourth now.

Time to Roll some Dough!

How exciting. Quelle pierres belles...

Been Gone for a Sec

See that? That's snow. I thought we were through with that. Ugggh. It was nice and breezy today, not too cold (had the top back yesterday), and now... suddenly... snow.

I had a little emergency design job at work in the past coupla weeks, and then a trip to Vegas last week. Which was all good. Only, in Vegas, all the food is HUGE. I fasted for the last 24 hours, just to try and return to some semblance of equilibrium, and am now looking forward to the roast chicken, rice salad, and green beans we are about to prepare (my first non-liquid meal since yesterday's lunch). I wish I could make myself fast for more than 24 hours, but it seems to be beyond me. Well, maybe if i can make myself do it again very soon, i can work my way up to a 3 or 4 day stint of no solid foods. I read this book called The Detox Diet but i think i need to expand my horizons beyond that. Anybody have any suggestions re: detoxification and fasting?

Looks like i'll be working on a really cool outdoor exhibit in the desert for several weeks, with a really great Tuscon architecture firm, line & space. What a cool name. And they seem like very cool, accomplished people.

In other news, our marble counters have arrived and will be installed Monday morning. After that, all that is left is the backsplash. I'll post some pics after the install, and all of our choices for backsplash. Instead of the options narrowing down over the past few weeks, they seem to have mushroomed. I'm now leaning toward a nicely patterned carrara marble tile composed of polished 2x2 and 2x6 tiles, while Steven is still just totally in love with the whole stacked pebble thing. We'll compare all our samples after Monday's install. Ciao.

Details :: Kitchen Day 50

This weekend we've been working on all the little stuff. Tiny pieces of moulding, painting, getting the door casings and heads and the rail up. If you check Steven's blog, you'll see that we now have a complete, functioning kitchen. We still haven't baked anything yet, but I will soon. But we've cooked all kinds of things... a seafood bisque yesterday, grilled cheeses, a Chinese tofu dish with bacon and mushrooms, lots of vegetables, some seared, breaded chicken, Chinese spaghetti and meatballs. Tonight we'll have daikon with pork ribs and ginger and who knows what else.

I'm really liking this blue we've chosen for the casings, rail, and base mould. It works well with the greeny glass of the cabinets, and everything else too. There's still alot of detail work to do, some painting, a bit of caulking and a final coat on the moulds. But, all in all, i'd say we are 85% complete. Our to do list for the next couple of weeks:

*pickup new glass shelves for china
cabinet. This is the only terrible mistake that
has happened with the ikea stuff: 12 tempered
glass shelves don't fit, and we have reordered
locally, rather than asking IKEA to fix
the problem.

*door, window casings, chair rail and wall base need
to be finished (i'd say we are 75% done with this now).

*toe kick at cabinet bottoms needs to be cut and
installed (EASY!).

*red skirt board at bottom of upper cabinets needs to
be cut and installed (EASY!).

*counters need to be installed (they are on order; 4 -
6 weeks, hopefully sooner).

*backsplash of pebbles will go in last.

Not much of a punch list. Thank goodness nothing huge like plumbing is on the list.

Green Eggs & Ham

Look at that yummy chartreusey ceiling! I love that green. It really is close to Green Eggs and Ham green, and the red is not far off from the Cat's Hat. The green will continue down the walls to the rail at about 4', below that, the green will switch to another shade or two or three darker. The fake beams are in place, the star chandeliers are burning. I make my coffee in that red cabinet to the right of the fridge every morning. The cereal is in the cabinet to the left. Everything is still not totally done, but it is getting closer and closer everyday!

Today I hope to finally get to the duroc surface betwixt the upper and lower cabinets. And more tiny pieces of wood will be cut and nailed in place. I've already gone through 1.5 boxes of 1,000 1" finish nails. Yes, that's right boys and girls, 1,500 finish nails, so far... and i'm not even tallying the 2" finish nails, and even a few staple nails. Staggering. Literally.

Red Hot and Cool

Just after snapping this photo just now of our cool fridge surrounded by hot hot hot, I realized our little special fresh Fluffy Butt lounging in the unmade bed (can't. be. bothered. KITCHEN.) represents the same tableau. She is to Stainless as Red 800 thread count cotton is to lacquer. Yes, I'm going crazy. CRAZY

I've dropped (accidentally of course) so many big heavy tools from up on high, I now realize--painfully--how a standard construction process would finish the floor LAST. We have so many dents and gouges in the floor now, i've started laughing each time the hammer falls again, or the air nailer, or god knows what. And since i am so intimately, obssessively acquainted with their locations and sizes, and relative effect to the whole, i'm thinking maybe i'll start naming them all. There's a triangular one i'll call Condi, a long, slight (inconsequential) one we could name George, and a big whopper that I will always spot FIRST every time i walk in the room. We'll call that one Dick.

Crazy. CRAZY i tell you.

Let There Be Light :: Day Thirty-Two

All the gobs of lighting are hooked up now, and everything is aglow. The 2 star chandeliers can't go in until the beams are placed, which can't go in until I paint the wood paneling at the ceiling (which is all finally in place now). We decided to do the 4 ceiling spaces on the diagonal... the hope was that it would be vaguely frenchey chevronesqueish, but in its unpainted state is looking more Ikea: 1976. I'm deep into getting all the tiny, nitpickey finish work done now, starting at the ceiling and working down. The soffit and ceiling are done and just about ready for paint. The hours just melt away as I do a little ADD dance, careening from outlets and wiring to ten thousand cuts for finish work to rerouting plumbing and electrical in the underneath to crying over the little hiccups. Today's hiccup: 12 glass shelves for the 3 tall china cabinets are like 1/16" too wide to fit. Honestly, after 32 days, this is the first challenge we've had that I can say is Ikea's problem and not mine. I'm going to try and find a shop in town tomorrow that can just grind two edges down a bit, but who knows how much that will cost. Or maybe i'll call Jada and see what she can do for me. Bruce told me there would be some inevitable problem with the order from Ikea, and i guess it has arrived.

Glam Green!

While Steven and I are doing all this work to our house to bring it from 1925 to 2007, we would love to make the place more green. We'd be willing to spend 10% of all we are putting in, say $5k, on solar panels, a wind generator...anything that harnesses the power of the earth and uses it. But it is all so damned expensive, still. Five thousand will buy us nothing.

Announcement to the manufacturing demi-monde: I want affordable solar and wind collectors, NOT a flatscreen TV for less than $1k. Could you please offer that to me? I'll look out for your email.

Why can't feathering our nest be less sticks and mud, and more photovalics and silicon surfaces? Why does updating our house feel closer to 1925--at least in terms of technology--than to 2007?

I just read this report, and it really makes me wish we could do something. The US is so far behind in this area. Why are we so resistant to letting technology help us in this area? It seems every company offering tech here considers tech to be the latest ipod or gas-guzzling gadget machine, NOT improving the energy hogs that our nests still are. Look people, "the entire city of Reykjavik, Iceland, is powered by geothermal waters." Why can't we get away from coal and the fossil fuels? Why don't we realize what a huge growth area for business this could become?

Does anyone know if that Sharp system is available on the market? I just googled it and came up with nada, except for vague media plants like the article i'm referencing here. The article says the lowest installed cost is $31,500, which is too bad. It's a sad reflection of our culture that giant flatscreens can be had by the bundles of 30 vs. one tiny solar energy collector.

Do any of you have any green characteristics built into your homes?

Kitchen Reconstruction :: Day Twenty-Three

Well, 23 days in and things are looking pretty good. We have ALOT of finish and detail work to do, but the basic nuts and bolts are there and in place. We need to get someone who knows about gas to come hook up the range and check for leaks. I will hook up the sink and DW myself, I can handle those. I think the DW must get blocking below or something so it doesn't look quite as short as it does in these pics. Time to read the installation manual!




Now here's a pic of the corner of the sink and the stacked river rock we are planning to use as the backsplash, below the upper cabs and above all the countertop. What do y'all think? I think it will be very zen, especially when grazed with halogen lights from under the cabinets. The paper towel holder is there for reference: we are planning on a white carrera marble, similar to this thing, for all the horizontal counter surface.

We also considered doing carrera subway tile, lots of different varieties of mosaic and tiny glass tiles, but we like these stones the best. They certainly won't be the easiest to clean, given the extreme relief, but practicality has never guided our decisions too much. We also have some samples on the way that are more flat tiny river rocks, instead of these which are stacked and thus create lots of dimension and nooks and crannies. I have moved all our power receptacles up to the underside of the upper cabinets, where they will occur in a wood surface that turns into a plate rail running all the way around the space at approximately 48" above the floor. All receptacles and light switches will occur in this detail mould, rather than interupt beadboard paneling or the river rock.

Let us know what you all think of the stacked river rock... will show the other options when the last of the samples come in, and maybe we'll take a survey: that worked out well with the beadboard decision :) Whew. Off to bed.

A Couple Days Hard Work

We've gotten alot done in the past few days. Still not yet a usable kitchen, but alot is in place. The hood is all hooked up, the remote blower mounted to the side of the house, and the 17 feet of painstakingly installed and taped ductwork complete. The old sink is gone, as are ALL of the old cabinets now. The new Bosch fridge is in place, stocked, and in glorious use. And it was worth the money:

1.) the ice cube dispensor does so in a polite, gentle fashion. Not 39 cubes in .5 seconds. And the cubes are dainty. Not big monstrous ones. This alone is worth a million bucks.

2.) it is SOOOOO quiet, we can hardly hear it running. Compared to ye olde whirlpool, now redeployed to the garage until we have a sale in the spring, it is super quiet. That thing sounds like a concrete mixer in comparison.

3.) it is *very* nice to dispense with the brita water filter pitcher. We now have filtered water through the door.

4.) gentle little bell chimes remind us that we've stood with the door open too long! Walt would have DIED to have had this circa 1975 or so! I can't tell you how often my dad was the wasting-energy-through-the-open-fridge-door police, a badge he proudly wears.

5.) digital readouts and gadgets galore. Well, i hope those have longevity and will still be working in 5 years. nuff said.



Here is the start of the soffit framing which surrounds all the up high cabinets, and which hides the long duct from the exhaust hood. In the gaps between cabinets, paneling will infill for the most part, though in some of the gaps that are 12" or more, we will open it up and have finished niches for cookbooks, old milk bottles, Steven's teapot collection, etc. Lots of lighting up there.

Here are doors for those upper cabinets in the soffit. Lots of behind the scenes work has been done like this, doors all readied and hinged and hardwared and pulled, but we will wait to snap them in until the finish work is done, painting, etc.

Steven spent alot of time today salvaging what we could of all the old cupboards; we'll refashion to create a plant-centric accommodation in the new greenhouse. Steven also got all the plants into the basement for a brief stay until construction on the greenhouse is done. Roof is to be redone on that and the skylights installed asap, weather permitting. They would come tomorrow, if only it would stop raining here. It's been rainy and a balmy 60 degrees for the past several days. Meanwhile, snow and ice in Dallas? Bizarro world.

Tomorrow, lots of jboxes get their locations tweaked, duroc goes up, all the upper cabs in, and then hopefully we'll get to locating the lower cabinets, sink, stove and dishwasher. It is an admittedly ambitious agenda for a holiday, But I think Martin Luther King would approve of the non violent evolution happening in our kitchen.

Note to Self:

Tin ductwork is sharp.

Very sharp.

And I need these thumbs.

Careful.

Patience.

This is my mantra.

Moving Along... At the Pace of a Snail

Well, we didn't get a whole heck of alot done this weekend, but a few of the way up glass doored cabinets are in place. You can see the start of the surrounding soffit here in this pic, above the two new pantry cabinets surrounding ye olde fridge. Not alot to see, but hopefully next weekend I will have 3 days to devote to the project. We'll see if I can get out of work on Friday.

Goodbye Old-Fashioned Hammer

Hello Air Nailer! We are ready to build that soffit and put up some panelling. Slow. At a *I-have-another-job* pace. It just didn't make sense for us to rent the air nailer again, when we could buy one. One that we'll use all over our hideous ground level, once we complete the kitchen on the Rez de Chausee. Au Revior. I have a Rendezvous with some wood. Here, the lovely Carol Merrel demonstrates the equipment

Whole Lotta Holes!

When we decide to destroy plaster, we do a fine job. Yes, indeedey.

We Have Hood!

Boy was this a lot of work to hang and get hooked up. We still have to connect it to the remote blower, but hopefully that'll be cake compared to the other steps. I cut a gaping 13" diameter hole in the side of the house today for the blower, and it just freaked me out to do that. And then to hoist that 120 pound blower thingie up there, geez I'm glad Steven had gotten home from work by then and could help with that part, I couldn't have done that myself. It will be nice not to hear the motor roaring along at 1400 CFMs when you turn this baby on (that's the "remote" part).

Poor Gormie seems a little freaked by all the clanging and work going on. Steven's theory is that she's thinking "Oh shit, we're moving again?!" Poor little thing, she hid under the butcher block island squirreled away in the back bathroom most of the day today. Power tools and vacuum cleaners really rock her little world.

Kitchen Reconstruction :: Days Eight and Nine

Well, day eight was mostly clean up day... we spent alot of time trying to clean up dust around the house from plaster demolition (and Steven is still dust mopping now, and spritzing his plants, as I click). I got the floor patched in the new doorway after much tribulation (for some reason the kitchen floor is 3/4" LOWER than the living room floor, so in removing the wall and putting a doorway there, we had to mediate that litttttle surprize!), Steven started stripping paint off mouldings that we are reusing, and I cut lots of same moulding to fit around new doorway.

Today I will install all the pieces and refit the living room base moulds and mostly finish up the new doorway, at least from the living room side. The jamb and head casing on the kitchen side will not, of course, get installed until the end, after the cabinets are in place and we are finishing up. The new pieces of oak I treated yesterday to match the existing oak moulding match very well, and I think when all is said and done, one won't be able to tell new oak from old. Steven will continue to strip, probably in the garage as it seems rain is coming today. We've enjoyed a couple of days of leave-the-door-open weather, unheard of in wintry Ohio. And there are still people out there who believe those ancient ice shelves aren't melting. I had to laugh yesterday when Mike, our neighbor, came over to watch Steven strip moulds on the sawhorses in the back, saying "I've got a really hard-core stripper in the basement." I restrained myself from pointing out the double-entendre, refusing to ask what said stripper's specialty might be or what type of music he might perform to. Does he strip mouldings too?

Hopefully today we will unpack the 2 GINORMOUS boxes that contain the hood that goes above the stove. Seriously, the 2 boxes together are 7 feet tall, 4 feet wide, 3 feet deep. We knew it would be nice from the breathtaking cost of it, but if size is any consideration at all, it's going to suck really well. There's gotta be a lot of packing or air or something other than hood in those boxes, I'm guessing!

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Ok, Here's some pictures of today's work. Does this door look as is it was hatched at any time other than 1925? We are really pleased with the result, it looks good, like it has always been there. And the flow! Ms. Eydie Gorme is already enjoying the MAJOR shortcut to her dining room. The new floor patch I hope won't be as prominent as it looks in this photo: the third coating of poly is still wet and sticking out like a sore thumb here.

Poor Steven has been stripping these moulds again for the entire day, since 11ish. His feet are hurting from being on them that long. But, operation switch-the-doors-around-and-make-a-big-dusty-mess is now almost complete! Whew.

Kitchen Reconstruction :: Day Seven

Ok, we just finished up on day seven at 9 pm. As I commented to Bruce awhile ago, sure wish Daniel Craig had been here to help... That bearing plate took forever to chop up and get out!

Well, the new opening between the kitchen and living room is there. In rough opening form. Tomorrow, we will put in the cased opening moulding, patch the floor, and finish up the doorway. I can't believe how much dust we've inhaled from demolishing the plaster... check out the one photo in which the dust really figures prominently. It looks like it's snowing!

As you can see, my plan to not destroy the plaster from the living room (turquoisish) side worked for the most part. We recently painted that room with a nice glazed, vertically streaked finish, and are trying to get this opening in without having to repaint anything in there. So far so good. I had to move a duplex receptacle about 8 inches to the right, and some of the plaster around that didn't make it. We have all six pieces that crumbled out, and i'm seriously thinking of trying to glue it together like a broken teacup.

We're going to have a steak. We both need some red meat.