Three Months

90 days till we break ground on the kitchen remodel! 30 days until we begin to engage in talks with contractors.

We are getting more and more encouraged as our milestone nears. The plans are firming up, we are pretty sure on what we want, and how we will get there. I won't get into the details, Bec has already blogged several posts about plans, but 3 months is worth celebrating!

I just can't wait to see the room gutted and the slate blanked.

Of course, if you know a good kitchen remodeler that we can trust, do tell.

Stake Cover!

So, before I get into the meat of this post, I want to acknowledge a very cool fact. This weekend is our garden's first birthday! Last year Chris traveled with some friends for a Memorial Day weekend mancation. The previous weekend we'd gotten the lumber in the ground for our garden beds, so this weekend last year I did our planting. It's amazing to think that was only a year ago. We've already been enjoying the fruits and veggies in our garden, and this time last year I was just getting our beds filled with dirt and planted. So amazing! 

 

 

So, last year we had few strawberries, but the plants just kept reaching out and sprouting. This spring we've been absolutely LOVING the berries. They're incredible. They taste so different than a grocery store berry. They're red all the way through, and drip juice down your chin when you take a bite!

 So, the other day when I went out into the garden, I saw a very tragic sight. All around the garden bed were half eaten, rotting berries. I've heard about birds bothering berries and figured this was the case.

This is especially insulting considering I keep the birds (and unfortunately the squirrels too) very well fed and watered on the other side of the yard! The nerve!

 

So, in emergency mode, I went to our local nursery today and looked at what I could do. Here's the gear I ended up with. What's great is, I only had to purchase the net, which was $4.99. We had everything else. 

I drilled holes in our old landscaping stakes, which we originally purchased to lay out the garden area last spring.

I ran old gardening stakes through the holes, then cut the stakes to length. 

Finally, I stretched the nylon mesh over the stakes and tucked them in with more old gardening stakes.

While this isn't the fanciest arrangement, it cost only $5 and will keep the birds out for now. I'm devising in my head a structure Chris can be kind enough to build me for the long term, with screens and hinges. For now though, I think this will work.

 

While at the nursery, I also grabbed some stakes and ties for my tomato plants, which have really begun to grown with all the rain in the last week. Last year I used tomato cages to contain the plants, and felt like they interfered with the branches as the plants grew. So this year I've been looking forward to trying using stakes and ties to keep them upright.

The ties are really cool. They're a nylon-coated wire, like a very soft twist tie, that won't cut into the stems of the plants and that I can easily move as the plants grow. 

The plants look much less huge with 5' stakes in the ground, but I'm sure they'll catch up before too long. 

Happy Friday Eve from our garden!

Creepy Crawly Garden Helpers

"I got worms."

When I used to watch Dumb and Dumber as a child, I never thought that 1) there might actually be worm farms out there, or 2) I would one day make a purchase from one. I guess you just never know. Yesterday I went to the local nursery and purchased 100 earthworms. They will arrive by mail sometime next week.

Why, you may ask, did I purchase 100 earthworms? I'm not going fishing (although, that does sound kind of fun . . . ) My new pets will soon be at home in the compost bin Chris built me last year. They will help all the old food and yard scraps we've been collecting over the past year become nutrient-rich soil for future plantings. Isn't nature amazing?

What's even better . . . in placing the order for my worms I learned that there are LOTS of bugs that people buy for their gardens to reduce harmful pests naturally. For example, people buy ladybugs to get rid of aphids and mealyworms, or green lacewings to get rid of spider mites and whiteflies. But those don't appeal to me nearly as much as this guy:

That's right - you can purchase praying mantis eggs for your garden, and I'm totally excited about it! This HGTV article fully outlines why you want praying mantises to live in your garden, but the long and short of it is if it's a bug, the mantis will eat it. Plus, they're just pretty cool! 

For now I'm just waiting for my worms to arrive, but I think some praying mantises are in my garden's future!

Things are Looking UP!

Porch swings are an absolute must on old houses. It's the best seat we have - with a nice spring breeze, surrounded by flowers, sipping a glass of wine . . . . pure bliss.

The summer Chris and I moved in, we attempted to hang our porch swing from the porch ceiling. While this may sound simple enough, the end result was Chris, Wrigley and me crashing down on the porch. Fortunately no one was injured, and no neighbors witnessed what I'm sure would have been a totally hilarious incident to see.

Later that summer, with the help of my dad and brother-in-law, we managed to get the thing up. In doing so we found that our porch beams are really weird and run diagonally through the ceiling, rather than in any sort of logical, linear fashion so that's why we missed them the first time. So, we drilled HUNDREDS of holes to find the beams, leaving the ceiling looking like this.

Fast forward two years, and we've finally sanded and painted. This is one of those things that, once it's finished, we ask ourselves why on earth it took two years to do. I'm not exactly sure, but we're happy with the nice, clean end result, even though we're still not fans of this drab color.

And here's the best part - we realized while we were sanding down the putty that the previous color of our porch ceiling was . . . .  light blue! That's the very color I want to paint the ceiling when we attack the entire exterior next summer. Talk about a good omen!

Lovin' the Spring!

Spring is in full force in Kansas City, and we're loving it. We spent yesterday walking around the neighborhood and hanging out on the porch. Fun times were had by all, by we think most of all by Hazel, who spent the afternoon hunting bugs in my primrose.

Can you see Wrigley and Hazel in the picture above?

That's what we've been up to. We hope you're enjoying the nice spring weather as well!

We Have Strawberries!

 

 Yesterday morning I picked the first two ripe strawberries from our strawberry patch and each ate one. Amazing! And lots more to come!

Finished Vanity

Chris was on a men's camping trip this weekend, and while he was gone I finally got around to finishing setting up my vanity in our bedroom. We moved this old desk into our bedroom from the guest bedroom in January, when we painted trim in our room. The desk is a great, solid old oak desk that I bought at an estate sale in college for $25, then refinished and put on new knobs.

Vanity corner after we finished painting trim in January.

   
I finally got around to hanging up my jewelry holder, which I made a few years ago out of an empty picture frame and some photo hanging wire.  I bought the old mirror at a garage sale in college and have moved it everywhere I've moved since. I love that I can see the age in the old metal lines in the glass - it weights a ton! 

 

 

I bought this little bowl a few weeks ago at an adorable antique store we found just a few blocks from our house. It's a great catchall for sunglasses, spare change, bobby pins . . . whatever!

 

Urban mining, a cool monthly flea market in Kansas City had this chair for $8 a few years ago, so I couldn't resist. The worn green finish is lots of fun.  

Dark and Light

  
Kitchens with rich, dark wood cabinets beneath the counters and white, glass front cabinets on top have really been catching our eye lately. We think we might work this nice, eclectic detail into our plans.

Photo courtesy of Granite Gurus.

Taming Old Faithful

   

Photo courtesy of Yellowstone National Park.

As we've hinted in several recent kitchen posts, our fall project grew in the last year to include not only the kitchen and downstairs half bath as originally planned, but renovation of the upstairs bath as well. After much ado, I'd like to share how this additional project was thrown into the mix.

When we moved into the house the three major eyesores (there are countless minor eyesores, but these are the big ones) were 1) backyard jungle, 2) kitchen, and 3) upstairs bathroom. The backyard jungle has been dealt with and discussed at length, but for anyone unfamiliar you can read about the progress here, here and here, and see the current state of things here. Kitchen planning, which included adding a much need half bath on the main floor, began soon after we moved in and you can see that process here, here and  here.

The upstairs bathroom, however, was on the back burner. We figured we'd get through the other two major issues, and the bathroom would be next on the list. It seemed more or less functional, despite being very ugly, so we were set on living with it for a while.

Fast forward to last Thanksgiving. We hosted Chris' family for the weekend, and the evening they left I noticed a little puddle on our kitchen counter. I thought nothing of it (blamed the husband for being a little messy) and went upstairs to relax in the bathrub with a glass of wine and a good book. When I came back down to the kitchen I noticed a BIG puddle on the kitchen counter, apparently caused by the light rain coming from our kitchen ceiling! YIKES!

My parents were kind enough to come up to save the day, and as Chris and my dad tore out the kitchen ceiling we saw the problem. The previous owners had been kind enough to replumb the bathroom, and they did a terrible job! The drainage pipes were held together at odd angles by flexible rubber pipes with metal collars at the end, rather than with actual pipes. Very flimsy, and not nearly substantial enough to do the job!

 Crappy pipe photo courtesy of Home Depot

Because the kitchen sits directly below this plumbing monstrosity, we decided it would be just plain foolish to invest lots of money and nice materials into the kitchen when the phenomenon we now endearingly refer to as "Old Faithful" is just waiting to blow directly above our heads (get the blog title?). The entire bathroom needed to be replumbed, and as we've always envisioned a new layout for the space we decided that we needed to just renovate it as well when we do the kitchen this fall.

The good news is that in the long run, we'll save money because when the kitchen is gutted, the crew will already have access to bathroom plumbing, and it just makes sense to have the plumber and electrician do the bathroom while they're already out here anyway.

And the best part - we'll have a pretty bathroom sooner than planned! No more major eyesores!

So, onto the plans. As always, I warn you that if you are an architect, you should probably not look at my terrible drawings. As much as I love drawing out floorplans, I have a feeling your entire field would be horribly offended by the fact that they look like my 4-year-old niece drew them.

That said, here's our current bathroom layout:

Our main issues (besides the fact that it's ugly) are:

1. The room has absolutely no storage. There's a pedestal sink (so no cabinet), no medicine cabinet, no anything to keep stuff in. We put a cheapo towel tower in the weird alcove at the end of the room (more to come on that soon), but in terms of daily functionality, the room just plain stinks.

2. The L-shaped layout of the room makes it IMPOSSIBLE for 2 people to use it at once without constantly bumping into each other. In addition, the way the door swings in means that it's constantly in the way when we're using the sink.

3. What is with the weird alcove at the end? It's just a total mystery. We're pretty certain that this was not the original layout of the bathroom, but just can't figure out why the last renovator added this weird, totally unusable space.

Whew, that's done. Ok, here's our plan for our future bathroom:

 

The main change are:

1. We're going to turn the tub 90 degrees, which while it actually makes the room smaller it makes it look HUGE! No weird alley shape to contend with anymore, just a nice, open space. 

2. The pocket door will alleviate the problem of the current door hitting us while we try to brush our teeth.  

3. The more open floor plan allows us to move the toilet next to the shower (which I'm told is also very efficient plumbing-wise) and we can then put in a double vanity across the entire wall! Two sinks! YAY! 

Finally, about the future of the weird alcove. It's been a bit of a challenge to figure out. It sits behind the closet to our third bedroom. The closet isn't wide enough to be a walk-in, so adding the space to the closet just makes it dead space. Recently, my fanciful husband decided that it would be fun to make this its own little space for our future little ones to play in. A secret fort if you will. Then, in the long run, it can function as secondary storage for things we don't use a lot. 

I think this is such a fun thing to do with dead space - I love the idea of little kids having a secret tiny room (which will be nice and bright due to the big window) to play in.

So that's how it will look. More on the details to come . . . .

Touching up shingles

Touching up shingles with paint

I replaced some broken shingles last year. The bottom row was all beat up and fragmented, so we cut the nails off and replaced them with new ones. 12 months later, I still had not gotten around to painting them. I think its partially to do with the fact that I don't care for a khaki house, and I plan on going marine blue in a year. Anyways, we did this for the interim, and for our neighbors.

Nothing fancy, but it looks a little better.

Before paint

After paint

Strawberry Fields

Things are coming right along in our strawberry patch. We're getting lots more flowers, and many flowers are turning into little green berries. Nothing is ripe quite yet, but we're getting close! 

One Man's Stump . . .

Is another man's coaster?

BEFORE: Maple stump section

After: End-grain Maple coasters

My neighbor had a big stump in his driveway. It was too heavy to move, so I offered to take a chainsaw to it. I'm always looking for an excuse to fire up "the beast," and this past weekend, we put some wood chopping fury into the big old stump.

Once we sliced up the wood, I realized we were dealing with some really pretty maple. I asked for a small chunk to take back to the shop, Bryan obliged.

We counted 20+ rings in the entire stump

Cutting the stump into a cube was the biggest challenge. Once I had a flat edge to work with, I used a miter saw to chop up the wood into coaster slices.

The wood is surprisingly stiff. Almost feels like slices of light rock. We counted the rings, and it was something between 20-30 years old.

Bottoms up.

Trial run

Island Dreaming

  
Chris and I (well, mostly I) have gone back and forth many times on the design of our future kitchen island. When we knock out the wall in our kitchen the room will get much larger, but it's still a bit boxed in with walls on all four sides, so we want to make have things feel as open as possible. That said, I'm obsessed with adding as much storage as possible to our current storage-free kitchen.

So there lay our dilemma. The design-obsessed side of me wanted a nice, open island that would feel light and not imposing in the new kitchen. But the practical side of wanted to pack as many drawers and cabinets into the kitchen as possible.

Well, to Chris' great joy (and in response to his pleas) the designer side won. This weekend we found the perfect island to give us a nice, classic, open feel in the new space. 

Photo courtesy of John Boos

The walnut butcher block top will be tough and beautiful, the classically shaped white legs will be light and open (and leave plenty of space for some stools underneath) and the design overall feels open and classic. I gave up my ideas of storing stuff in the island, mostly due to the fact that we plan on adding LOTS of cabinets other places, and also plan on making the cabinets as "smart" as possible by customizing them to our needs.

Since landing on our decision, I've wavered a few times. Each time I do I just remind myself of what I'm most excited about with having an island in the kitchen - this will be a comfortable, special space to gather with friends and family and prepare meals together. I think we found the perfect means to that end!

Peg Board Makes the Shop

New pegboard wall section in basement finally gives my tools a home

Our basement has been through many phases since we took ownership two years ago.

Year one, it was a catch all for anything that did not fit upstairs. Basically, junk covered the entire floor, piles upon piles of boxes, bags, and other stuff that you wonder why you have.

Year two, we put up shelving - and consolidated stuff into plastic containers. A big win. Also, I claimed part of the basement as the "wood shop" by taking all my random tools from the garage and putting them in the front section of our basement with a new workbench.

My friend Orion gave me a section of extra peg board from his garage. I mounted it into the wall today and installed the pegs — and I can now say that no workbench is complete without a peg board wall section to compliment the space. All the junk that was covering up space on my table is now on the wall, organized and entirely visible all at once. It's like walking into your own Ace Hardware, which is pretty cool.

Where the wood works

I think the peg board wall is a right of passage for any guy. Something like taking him from dude to man status.

Special thanks to Orion for helping me get my stuff in order. See that clean workbench? Guess it's time to make a new mess.

Rare view of a clean workbench