The Careful Art of Pretending You Don't See It

This is what I came home to tonight. Troy obviously had been up to something.

I walked around for a while and finally identified it. He had removed the little "butler table" shelf that was in the pantry between the kitchen and dining room. Looking around a little more, I saw he had started his plants in the dining room in a large heated box. I assumed the box didn't fit through the space and Troy was sick of it. (Sick of bumping into things, I mean.)

Here is the corner I'm talking about before we moved in:
Here's how it's been for the last couple years:
Not a great angle, but you can see the drawers that opened to the dining room had been removed (and all the lathe and plaster, obviously).

And here it is as of yesterday:
The drawers that opened into the walkway were removed and the left wall and open shelf above the drawers were trimmed back to the same depth as the other shelves. It really is amazing how much wider it makes it.

Current long term plans for that little walkway include pantry shelves, but they won't jut into the space as much as these ones did. I doubt there'll be drawers into the dining room. And on the opposite wall there may be room for narrow shelves for a lot of canning storage.

And back to the pile of wood in the middle of the kitchen...I just walked around it. It was apparent to me that Troy had already cleaned up a lot. (It was in a neat pile, after all.) And I figured he had plans for cleaning up the rest of it as well.

The Olympics being over, I will also update you on what else Troy's been up to. He's been making a lot of soap. Three batches over the last couple weeks. He's trying different combinations of oils, including primo high end mixes with olive oil.
The spare bedroom has become a soap curing facility.

Troy's also experimenting with colouring the soap, and produced a very lovely shade of spring green:


Change of author...

Christina has pretty much hit the nail on the head. Here it is from my perspective.

Every day is an adventure at our house. You never know, with certainty, what will take place that day.

On Tuesdays, I only work six hours at my day job. That leaves me free to putter around the house and the shop until 1:15 in the afternoon. Tuesday's goal was to get the pepper plants planted and set up in the germination box. It was a simple enough goal and should not have taken more than 30 minutes.. We didn't take that direct path though...

A little background first. Twice in the last two years I have failed to get a successful bunch of garden plants started early enough to provide good yields at the appropriate time in the season. The first time, I was just late. You have to start tomato seeds a good eight weeks before the date of the average last frost. I planted mine at six weeks, and had runty little four inch plants to set out. That turned out badly.

The next year ('09), I had carefully set up my calendar to get my full eight week early start. But my potting soil mix went all moldy and killed all the seedlings. Dashed again! By the time I replanted, I was late again and got skimpy wimpy little tomato plants again. Rats!

So...

This year, I had taken every precaution. I was on a mission. I was not to be deterred. The date was carefully marked on the calendar. The perfect anti-fungal sterile potting mix selected and mixed up. All the little sterilized pots carefully set up on their little tray that I set in the home built heated germination box. Everything was in readiness.

However, there is a narrow little passage between our kitchen and our "dining" room, which serves as my plant nursery at the moment. It's a consequence of two dinky doorways with a lot of trim, and the stairway to the upstairs, all conspiring to make for a tight squeeze. Danged if I didn't snag a corner on my tray squeezing through that passageway, and dump a load of pots and soil all over creation.

This is not the first time I have run into trouble squeezing through there. It's just too tight. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. Something snapped inside of me. I grabbed a wrecking bar and I tore every piece of trim out and made both doorways a good two inches wider all around. I cut off the shelf that stuck out into the passageway. I totally removed the superfluous door frame. Ahhhhh! So much better.

There is nothing quite so cathartic as demolition with a vengeance and a purpose.

Of course, the consequence is that Christina came home from work to find a substantial pile of debris and destruction sitting in the middle of the kitchen. What can I say? Living through a remodel is a new adventure at every turn. I'll have the wreckage bagged up and taken care of tonight this week.

Finest regards,

troy