What isn’t Apple, audiobooks, or alcohol is probably cats.
We live in a 105+ year old Victorian. It’s got quirks, and we’re constantly renovating, in small and sometimes large ways.
A quick update on the kitchen remodel. (Look, I wrote it without a qualifier! I must be coming to acceptance…)
A quick update on the kitchen remodel. (Look, I wrote it without a qualifier! I must be coming to acceptance…) The photos in the previous post about the remodel were from the end of March. Two weeks after the second one, our kitchen looked more like this:
This is the before-and-after, the reeeeally early version.
Here’s the before photo (which is after we removed a bunch of stuff from that side of the room):
There is no doubt that I should have seen this coming. Should have been ready, mentally, financially, for this to get really complicated, really fast. But it really did seem simple to me, back when we first started.
I am writing, of course, of our apparent decision to rip the kitchen out to the studs.
There is no doubt that I should have seen this coming. Should have been ready, mentally and financially, for this to get really complicated, really fast. But it truly did seem simple to me, back when we first started.
I am writing, of course, of our apparent decision to rip the kitchen out to the studs.
Continue reading “The Tragic Consequences of Reasonable Decisions”
On New Year’s Eve we had a daytime open house and “freecycle” party. I thought I’d post the invite here, since people told us it was pretty amusing…
I wrote previously about our New Year’s Eve open house and “freecycle” party. I thought I’d post the invite here, since people told us it was pretty amusing…
You know that “oh shit” moment at the top of a roller coaster, when you’ve just finished the slow climb up, and haven’t really started the first drop. The point where you’d really like to take just a couple seconds to summon your courage, but it’s too late, out of your hands, and carrying you away whether you’re ready or not?
That’s what buying our new stove was like tonight.
You know that “oh shit” moment at the top of a roller coaster, when you’ve just finished the slow climb up, and haven’t really started the first drop. The point where you’d really like to take just a couple seconds to summon your courage, but it’s too late, out of your hands, and carrying you away whether you’re ready or not?
That’s what buying our new stove was like tonight.
Rochelle found a terrific deal on craigslist.org for a used Viking 48″ stove. Six burners and a griddle, two ovens, black finish. Huge is not the word. (Though, actually, it’s only 8″ wider than our existing stove.) It’s a $6,000 stove when new, and not something we even had dreamed of getting, it was so out of our budget range. We went and looked at it Wednesday night, and wrote a check on the spot. Gulp.
Rochelle’s going to see about finding someone to help us with transport and delivery to our house (hopefully it will fit through the front door!). And we’ve got a lot to do in the dining room and kitchen to get ready for it. But things are in motion now, and we’re too committed to stop until it’s done…
“Look out Michael, here comes the kitchen remodel!”
On New Year’s Eve, Rochelle and I had a “Freecycle party,” where we put all the things we were getting rid of in our dining room, invited people over, gave them plenty of alcohol, and then told them they could take anything in the pile that they wanted.
On New Year’s Eve, Rochelle and I had a “Freecycle party,” where we put all the things we were getting rid of in our dining room, invited people over, gave them plenty of alcohol, and told them they could take anything they wanted from the pile. The idea being, people would go home with new treasures, we would get rid of a bunch of crap, and whatever didn’t go, we would take to Goodwill the following Sunday.
Except, it was raining Sunday, and for a couple of weeks afterwards. We couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to drag bags and boxes to the car, multiple times, in the rain. So we skipped it.
This weekend we finally took the second car load of stuff to Goodwill, and can at last rearrange the dining room back to a semblance of its normal state. Still one more load to go, but that will definitely happen this week, and then our dining room will be back to normal.
For a couple of days, until we start dragging the entire kitchen in there, to start work on that project…
It started innocently enough. Rochelle’s mother very generously offered to buy us a new stove, after we complained about our current oven during Thanksgiving. And, if we could have just done that, it would have been a great kitchen improvement that would have cost us almost nothing.
It started innocently enough. Rochelle’s mother very generously offered to buy us a new range, after we complained about our current oven during Thanksgiving. And, if we could have just done that, it would have been a great kitchen improvement that would have cost us almost nothing.
But, we started looking into options, researching in Consumer Reports and in cooking and food resources. Rochelle eventually found this article, A Range of Options, by David Rosengarten, which blew away both the Consumer Reports mantra of low cost, high value appliances, and our gift budget.
But, once you commit to getting a centerpiece-style range, is it even possible to just do that? Not if you’re Rochelle or me.
The next obvious requirement is to get a new stove hood, because we currently have no ventilation in the kitchen, except opening the back door and window. And, well, looking at the wall it would be mounted on, it’s actually a fake wall, built (by the previous owner) to hide the brick chimney behind it. Let’s take that out!
And, when we measure the chimney in the basement, it’s clear we’ll be getting a lot of space back. And when you combine that with the need to conceal the ventilation pipe, you come to the inevitable conclusion that we need new floor-to-ceiling cabinets in that corner.
After doing all of this, is there any doubt that we’ll need to paint the entire room afterwards? Especially since we’ve been planning to take the over-sink cabinets off the wall for over a year? And that horrible fake tile siding that lines the lower half of most of the room?
And these are the plans we haven’t quashed. Because taking the cabinets off the wall is really the first of many things that should happen to that side of the room.
But, since we’re not really remodeling, those will have to wait. Hopefully…
Our water heater tank has sprung a slow leak, and today the plumber said it would need to be replaced. We’re considering a tankless water heater, probably the Bosch AquaStar 250SX. Any suggestions?
Our water heater tank has sprung a slow leak, and today the plumber said it would need to be replaced. We’re lucky, usually when a water heater goes, it goes fast, failing catastrophically, lots of water everywhere. You have to replace it immediately, no time for research.
In our case, it’s a slow enough leak (from the top, no less) that we can take a couple days to figure out what to do. And one thing we’re considering is getting a tankless water heater, probably the Bosch AquaStar 250SX.
Searching the blogosphere, I don’t see anyone writing about meaningful experiences with this or any of the alternatives. Anyone know someone with a tankless water heater, especially if they are very happy or very sad with it?
Don’t you hate those projects you start, thinking they will take 10 minutes, and they end up taking hours?
Don’t you hate those projects you start, thinking they will take 10 minutes?
I just spent almost 3 hours fixing the dining room light switch, after my 5 minute “project” to replace two dead bulbs turned into a trip to the hardware store to get new bulbs (30 minutes), and then turned into disassembling the switch because the light wouldn’t come on, discovering that the ancient wiring insulation was crumbling, and then fixing it with heat-shrink insulating tubing (60 minutes, including all the trips to the circuit breaker to turn the current on and off), and sanding the wiring to take off some corrosion (15 minutes, because the sandpaper was packed away in the basement somewhere), and finding that the light still wouldn’t come on, so replacing the switch entirely (30 minutes, two trips to the circuit breaker), which after reassembling didn’t quite fit, preventing the switch from throwing completely, so I had to fabricate a tiny plastic insert to give the knob a slightly longer stem (15 minutes), which finally got our dining room light working again.
So then I had to vacuum up all the plaster, crumbled insulation, and wiring bits, which lead to vacuuming half the house (30 minutes, it needed it), which lead to this posting (10 minutes).
Whew! I’m sweatin’! Now it’s time to watch 24!
2004 was a decent year for us, and as always (at least since I started this blog), I like to take a few moments to reflect on some of the important things that happened.
2004 was a decent year for us, and as always (at least since I started this weblog), I like to take a few moments to reflect on some of the important things that happened.
For me, the thing that dominated the year was my new “job” as a consultant. I’d done some consulting before, but in 2004 I managed to string together almost an entire year of work. Mostly half-time, so it wasn’t quite the income I would have liked, but I was able to pay the bills, and that’s pretty amazing. Really, all the credit goes to my primary client, Nicely Done Solutions, where the majority of my work comes from. They’ve kept me busy, and I hope to keep doing work through them for some time.
That dominated my day-to-day, but my biggest accomplishment in 2004 was my five year wedding anniversary with Rochelle. We have many more of those in our future, if we can both resist the temptation of butter.
“Honey, honey, honey! Let me tell you my great idea!”
“Look at the mess your last great idea got us into.”
“Honey, honey, honey! Let me tell you my great idea!”
“Look at the mess your last great idea got us into.”
Reflections on the state of the house during preparation for our NYE Freecycle party.
Some of what we’ve been up to for the last four months or so…
Been awfully quiet here in the past few months, with my last active posting going on in February. That was when we started the painting project for the bedroom, which we did eventually mostly almost finish. Our original intent was to move onto the parlor and office, which are connected through pocket doors that are nearly always open.
We didn’t do that. Instead, we decided that we couldn’t take the various stains on the light blue-gray carpet that covered half the house. (Two years ago we got rid of the other half, by putting in hardwood floors, which we are still in love with.) Time for new carpet.
Rochelle and David had already spent months finding just the right pattern and color, so when Rochelle’s twice-yearly ESPP kicked out a chunk of change, we decided to go for it. This involved moving everything out of three rooms (including, once again, the bedroom) for a day. And because of the noise and the strangers in the house during the installation, the cats liked this less than the painting. Let’s just say that Billie didn’t stop at puking this time.
But the carpet was fast, in no small measure because we weren’t the ones installing it. We were moving furniture back into all three rooms by the end of the day. We got a lot of the big stuff, but three months later, we still haven’t moved everything back to where it should go.
This is because we’ve decided not to move anything until we’ve decided where it really belongs. Which means we’re throwing out crap, giving away crap, selling off crap, taking crap down to the basement, etc.
To go with the lovely new carpet, we also bought all new furniture for the office. It’s all from IKEA, so it was reasonably cheap. Two bookcases, a three-level horizontal filing cabinet, and two huuuuge new desks for probably less than a grand, and the office is far more usable. And if we ever actually paint the office, it’s going to look really fabulous, too. Which will be good for me, since it looks like I will continue to be self-employed (gainfully, really) for a while. It’s almost to the point to where I could have clients visit!
In the last few weekends, we’ve moved a bunch of stuff to the basement, taken a bunch of stuff from the basement and either thrown it out or taken it to Goodwill, and generally spent a good 30+ hours working on house organization. It’s starting to feel good!
We also had a friend, who is a professional contractor, come and paint, stain, and varnish our brand new back door, which is really beautiful, with small glass panels framed in wood, and lets far more light into the house. The new door framing and brand new weather stripping mean it seals far better than the old door; in spite of being glass, the kitchen is actually 10 degrees warmer than it was before. This is going to be great this coming Winter.
Anyway, all of this is to catch up, and explain a little bit about why no posting. We’ve been really, really busy!