Super Insulated Efficient Farmhouse

Today's Report

2012-02-12T19:56:00.000-08:00

Someone accused me today of not updating the blog enough. She wanted to see all the progress in the kitchen.

I asked, "What progress?"

We really have not done a lot the last couple weeks. I have spent them cleaning out rooms and closets and reorganizing since the fridge moved. I'm not sure the house has ever looked this good. (But please remember, I have set a pretty low bar.)

I even got one more box of random seldom-used stuff unpacked and stowed in the kitchen yesterday.

I've also been cooking and baking lately as I hosted friends for the Superbowl (thank you again, Giants) and had some friends for brunch yesterday. Lots of leftovers for dinners...

But back to the kitchen, Troy got up the new lights in the west part of the kitchen on Friday. It was a long tedious process of overhead work, but he pushed through and got it done.

We had a time looking for lights. Troy had some specific requirements (nothing recessed and the shade had to be clear glass so none of the light would be blocked) and I had a hard time finding anything, let alone something I liked. In the end perseverance won out and I thought I found something I liked. But I couldn't really be sure until I had them up.

My first reaction to them was that I liked them very much. So that's good. Next up is to figure out where six light fixtures need to go in the east half of the kitchen. Yes, six. This is why my lighting worries are not over.

Today I started looking at the tiling on the west wall. I laid it all out on the counter again to make sure I didn't end up with an inch on one end or bad cuts around the outlets. Everything came out pretty good, so I'm relieved about that.

I didn't take very good overall pictures, but I took plenty of detailed ones so I wouldn't have to do it all again next time. I also took notes and marked the back of the tiles so I would know where they go. Let's hope it's enough.

I didn't have time or energy to get anything on the wall today, but next time I'll be set to go...

My Appliances Have All Come Home!

2012-01-29T20:32:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty tired so I'm going to use a lot of pictures tonight.

First, you can see that sometimes Troy is laying down on the job.

He was putting in the final string of rope lights for our under cabinet lighting.

He also got the oven and sink lights hooked up this week. It's been delightful. Besides the benefit of having task lighting, I was also grateful we found flat fixtures that will be hidden by the valances.

Today I got to the ever-more pressing task of moving the fridge. (I've only been talking about it for two weeks now!)

First, pack up all the fridge and freezer contents and putting them in God's freezer:

Then Troy moved the fridge into place and I set about cleaning it. Really cleaning it. Like it's never been cleaned. (Now, I'm not saying I've never cleaned it, because I have.) (But it has been a while.)

Finally it was all shiny white and new:

Then I filled it. (Cleaning all the bottles as I went. You know how they can get.)

Finally I had a properly placed, cleaned, and filled fridge:

For fun, contrast that view with this one:

Besides the fridge being in the foreground, you can see that the shoe shelf that used to be in the front foyer is now in the back room. Makes much more sense as that's the entrance Troy and I use. As Troy likes to say, "It only gets better from here!"

And finally, no fridge is ready until it's dressed:

(Thanks again, Patricia, for sending me your magnet. Troy even noticed and said it's a great pic of her!)

More Tile

2012-01-21T20:22:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to show you what I got done today...

Worked a lot on the focus tile to be put above the stove. You can read all the details on this post of my other blog, but what I ended up with is this:

Yes, that is a Canadian flag. I love it.

Once that was done, I turned my attention to the window well. I got it covered in tile and had just enough energy to get up the frame tiles that didn't need cutting:

I wanted the seams to match and I wanted to miter the corners. The cuts didn't work out so that I could do both. Now I'm debating putting little 2" squares of the Mexican tile in the corners. I'm not sure yet. Let me know if you have any bright ideas.

Good night.

-c

Ok, I'll Say It: "I'm Good."

2012-01-18T20:46:00.000-08:00

My tiles have been sitting on the counter for more than a week now. Troy's been patient about it because, as he put it, even without that counter we still have way more than we did a month (two?) ago.

I could say that it has been sitting there because I had company and wanted to show it to them and obviously I couldn't work on it while they were here. But really, I was gathering the fortitude to begin this new thing.

I thought it would happen last Friday when I was off work for the day but I spent it on other more comfortable projects (like knitting and more knitting). Saturday I was gone all day and Sunday didn't make it happen either. (Probably watching too much football. Oh ya, and catching up on paperwork and banking.)

Yesterday I almost got started, but somehow didn't follow through on the thought. But tonight! Tonight I ate dinner promptly and started prepping the space by 6:30. I originally thought I'd just give myself two hours and see where I got. Then I thought, if I work til 10:30, that's four hours (as much as I'd probably put in on a Saturday) and I'd still have time to get to bed on time. So I started.

It took me half an hour to get things set up. Clean the tiles off the counter, organizing them as I did so. All the coloured ones were numbered/coded so I would know where they went. I put all the worst cut cove tiles together so I could use them in the back corner. Cover the counter with a drop cloth and an old shower curtain, and then gather supplies and read some directions. I was glad to discover that the thinset was premixed (I was thinking it was the grout) so I could just open the bucket and go.

Oh, but first I had a miter cut to make on the very first tile to lay. I think it will be the only one in the kitchen:

I think I did a pretty sweet job. And this was only tiles #3 and 4 with miter cuts. ;)

After that it was throw up some thinset, throw up some tiles all night. By 8:30 when I had put in my original two hours, I had a pretty good inkling that I was going to have this licked in one good night.

And I did:

Once again, I have to ask: pretty sweet, right?!

Worst spot of the night was this cut around the box:

Not so sweet, but I am living with it. I misunderstood Troy's direction about the electrical boxes so the holes are all a little big.

With a white cover, they will blend in nicely:

I have to say I enjoyed tiling more than I thought I would. I thought I would be under more of a time crunch with the thinset drying out, but it stayed pliable for a long time. I was able to cut around the boxes without any pressure. I expect the grout and cleanup to be a big chore, but it is the final step so that will be motivation enough.

Any opinions from tilers out there as to whether I should grout this before moving on to putting tile on the east wall, or put all the tile up and grout it all at the same time?

Another thing that got done this week was the counter edging:

Troy's been working on sanding and staining some hickory after putting on the beveled edge. He custom tinted the stain because he couldn't find a pre-mixed one red enough for him. I think the red highlights the "Colorado Granite" counter top beautifully.

One more shot of the north wall just to bask in it a little longer:

I probably won't tackle any more tile work tomorrow, but we may be (finally) moving the fridge in. Can I get a wOOt wOOt?

My Very First Tile Cuts

2012-01-08T20:55:00.000-08:00

I have been talking about tile and thinking about tile for quite a while now. I obsess a little. I've been waking up in the middle of the night with new problems to solve or solutions to ones I thought of in the middle of other nights.

But this weekend, I decided it was time for some action. I've never tiled before so the first step was to get a familiar with the tile saw Troy bought. On Friday night I boldly told Troy that I was going to cut some tile on Saturday if it was the last thing I did.

And I did!

I cut a few of the Mexican tiles and I cut some of the cove tiles down so the whole thing would be the right height to fit. I just did a few to try the pattern out, and Troy and I decided it was going to look fine.

I stopped cutting tile because I had some trouble with the tiles chipping at the end of the cut. Troy "fixed" the saw Saturday night so I could cut a little on the back side first, and that stopped the chipping. Yeah, Troy!

I also unpacked all the Mexican tile and did some sorting. These will go in my kitchen:

These will be saved for later:

I will work the blue and white ones (bottom row) into a bathroom. I think blue and white tiles are neutral enough you can match them with most anything.

The tile saw is very, very messy.

I set it up in the appliance room. (Ok, I had one quick trial run in the kitchen where it was warm, but I quickly realized that that was not going to fly.)

Not only is the tile saw a mess, but I am a mess too:

All that red on my sweater? That is splash from the blade. Red from the terra cotta Mexican tiles. Troy insisted on the mask so I wouldn't breath in lead dust, but somehow it didn't keep me from grinding stone bits in my teeth later! When I complained of it to Troy, he said it was ok to eat, just not to breath it. That wasn't really the response I was looking for....

After cutting, I sanded all the edges to take the sharpest bits off, and being me, couldn't help but sort them again:

Mostly blue on the left side, greens towards the right. I got to do this part while watching the NFL playoffs and in front of the wood stove where it was warmest. That's my type of work environment.

Once I had the pieces cut, I tried a layout on the counter:

The uncut square tile is sitting on top of the others, just to see if I wanted to add that detail.

Here I let it sit til Troy had a look and he confirmed my opinion that we did want the square tiles. And I thought that might be as far as I got today because I was tired and hungry and didn't think I'd be able to get myself to do more.

But after two dinners of my favourite comfort foods (first, two pieces of toast, one with peanut butter, the other with cheese; and then popcorn) and some overtime NFL playoff action, I decided I was going to try to do the cut outs for the square tiles. This was at 9:00 at night and just when the Downton Abby Series II was starting, so I hope you can see how serious I was about getting this done!

I made my lines and cut my cut outs, one section at a time and had it done in about an hour. This is me after staring down a saw blade to make sure I was cutting on the line:

Yes my hair is wet through the rag, and can you tell I sight with just one eye?! Anyway, it all washes off. I just had to do it several times to make sure I could see what I was doing.

After the hour, I had a true mock up of the back splash on my counter top:

Now that all the planning is done and pieces are figured out, this will be easy to put up, right?

I didn't really think I would get this all done this weekend, but my initial decision to just cut a tile led to the rest. (Of course, having Troy to help me over the rough spots helps a lot too.) In this house we talk often about fooling yourself into getting things done by not looking at the whole job but just telling yourself that you'll do only the first step, or just start, or just do 20 minutes. But by the time you do that, you either realize you want to keep going or that you're practically done already. It's a good trick on yourself. And if it doesn't work, at least you've gotten a start. Win, win.

A Little More Progress

2012-01-07T12:52:00.000-08:00

The other day we got the holes drilled for the handles on the island cabinet, so I was set to vacuum them out and fill 'em up.

The first drawer to get to was the top one, the one with the knives:

The plywood boxes that Troy made for our previous drawers fit pretty well and otherwise the more used knives seem to lay nicely on the padded toolbox liner. It's a little decadent, but we have the space. (Wow, did I just say that?! Woo hoo!)

I had enough toolbox liner to do a couple shelves that are holding pots and pans:

It seems crazy decadent to use upper cabinet space for pots and pans, but we do use these items a lot and they sure are convenient to the stove.

I'm going to try storing potatoes, etc, in the bottom drawer on the island:

I'm hoping to find a couple plastic containers that fit better to hold the produce. I am really tired of stuff sitting out so I'll be donating the container that used to hold the potatoes and onions and trying a drawer.

And what, you may ask, is that lone potato doing outside of the bag? Well, that is actually a stone. Troy's mom found it in the garden a couple summers ago while she was visiting and thought it looked like a potato. She sneaked it into my potato bin, but (just like her son) couldn't wait for me to find it on my own and ended up pointing it out to me. It gave me a chuckle and I have kept it in my potato bin ever since. (Psst...sometimes it's even fooled me.)

A Great Steal!

2012-01-05T18:07:00.000-08:00

I have been eyeing a certain chair that was left in the basement at work (for years).

And, I must admit, doing a little coveting.

And justifying. No one is using it. It's one lonely chair. It would match my kitchen perfectly.

Today my coworker told me to liberate it. I accepted her permission to do so.

Only later did I learn that she had a good reason to want a little revenge on the boss today.

I decided I didn't mind being the beneficiary of that little drama.

The chair looks great in my future kitchen!

My Own Private Island

2012-01-02T20:33:00.000-08:00

There hasn't been a lot of progress in the kitchen lately. We've been visiting family and friends and enjoying the holidays. Troy's been playing with his new lathe. I've done a little more organizing (2 more boxes unpacked today!) but am having a hard time figuring out a lot of the remaining items. They either don't fit nicely into a category or are seldom used or...(fill in some other excuse)...

One of the issues is that we didn't have the island installed. There were things that I wanted to put there and couldn't. They were getting in my way, either literally or mentally.

Troy fixed that yesterday when he decided that he didn't want the island cabinets in the way in his shop anymore, and we moved them into the kitchen. We covered them with the counter top that we had been using in the dining room (cutting it to length) so that we could try it out before making anything permanent.

We started with the location specified by the plan, which gives a three foot lane between the island and the other counters. We may move it a little further away. As you look at the pictures, keep in mind that the counter will overhang about 12" on the side facing the camera in the above picture.

Even without the sink, it's been another treat! Lots more counter space! I haven't yet moved anything into the drawers because we still have to put the handles on, but I have marked them.

One thing I did do today was remove the doors and drawer front from the sink unit:

It's my idea to have the garbage here in this open cabinet, and you can see where I'm trying the paper towel dispenser. I was happy to learn that there's enough room for the compost bucket to sit there too. They are out of the walking lanes and still easily accessible.

Maybe you think it looks funny, but I am going with it. When Troy came home and saw it, he had the idea to put the drawer front back on so the paper towel would be dispensed through a slot:

We'll try it and see. I think it looks better than having the gaping hole.

I also filled up the open shelves at the end of the island:

I planned these shelves to echo the open shelves on the wall behind them. I filled them with cookbooks (finally out of my living room!) and stuff that used to be kept on the table. I am very committed to keeping the table clear of clutter and hope these shelves will keep things handy yet out of the way. :fingers crossed:

It's back to work for me tomorrow. I am not ready for it, but I wouldn't be any more ready for it even if I had another week off. I wish all of you a Happy New Year!

Un-Boxing Day

2011-12-26T11:34:00.000-08:00

Happy Boxing Day--the biggest shopping day for Canadians and from what I heard on a radio story this morning, the Americans are catching on. Gift cards to be spent, bad gifts to be returned and all that. They really need to catch on to the name, though. Not that it's a good name (several theories, but none of them catchy for why "Boxing Day"), but at least it's a name with some history.

But I wasn't shopping today, I was having my own un-boxing day--moving into the kitchen. I am weary and it is not done, but I have made good progress.

I got all the handles installed on Saturday. Troy finished putting the Formica on the counters yesterday so I can use them and as far as I'm concerned, we are in the kitchen to stay.

Isaac and I also cleared out the perpetually junky corner and moved the table in:

Looking at the picture, I notice again that the walls are looking pretty bad and are bringing down the fanciness of my table, but they will have to wait. Again, the final plans include a booth here, but in the meantime the table will suffice and this will get it out of the way in the dining room. I have to say as I sit at the table typing this, it sure is nice to be in the room with steady heat!! Troy will be happy that the odds of our eating dinner at a table like civilized people instead of sitting on the floor in front of the wood stove have increased dramatically!

Otherwise I worked on moving stuff from where it has been stored in the appliance room, the dining room closet, and Isaac's room. Some of it has been stashed in cupboards, some of it has been thrown out (why did I keep that?), and some of it donated because it doesn't fit or I haven't used it or missed it in years.

I spent the whole time vacillating between joyful glee at having space for everything and anxious worry that I would run out of space. Then I found two cupboards I hadn't filled at all!

So I stopped worrying about space and then most of my mental energy was been spent on trying to organize. It's been exhausting. I have most of the easy stuff moved in and will work on the harder to categorize or organize stuff as I go. I see more chipboard boxes in my future!...

Let me also say, I have never cleaned so much in my life. Everything was dusty or worse from being stored on open shelves and had to be cleaned before it could find a home. Not that I minded since I could do it all in my new fabulous sink (!), but it's nice knowing that once they're in cupboards that problem shouldn't be a problem any more.

At the risk of picture overload and boredom on your part, here are some pictures of my newly filled and organized cupboards:

Finally get to put out the orange enamelware I've found over the last couple years!

Drinks (coffee/tea/cocoa) and lunch supplies

Baking supplies

So far, all the small appliances fit in the base corner cabinet. I even found a square elephant tray in an odd box that fits perfectly under the toaster to catch all the crumbs. It's really cute and I'm glad I found a use for it.

Cups/glasses

Dishes in a drawer seems to be working well. It's a little full right now because of the Christmas dishes that are out. I lined the drawer with toolbox liner so that it would be a little padded and the dishes wouldn't slide around.

The divided tray cabinet is filling up.

And finally, my spice rack with all my spices alphabetized once again. (A-L on the left, M-Z on the right.) Yes, I am sleeping better already.

Besides the luxury of having a big fabulous kitchen (I figure this is triple the counter space I've ever had before!), it is also great to have a fresh start. From now on, I'll have to make myself do spring cleaning to get anything like the same experience! (Who's making odds on that one?)

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T12:04:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas to all of you. We don't have big plans except to visit with Isaac, have a nice dinner and do some work on the kitchen. Why not? It's our Christmas gift to each other (and ourselves) this year. Don't worry though--we're having dinner with friends tomorrow and will see my family later this week to celebrate Christmas "properly."

I was saying to Troy recently that I couldn't wait until we could plug the small appliances into the wall and would no longer have to deal with the mess of the power cord we are currently using. "And," I excitedly said, "it's already done." And it is. Troy has supplied power to all the outlets in the kitchen. They are ready to use. Can be used any time. We aren't yet using them because the counters aren't ready and there's other stuff still to be done. But at that moment I was flooded with delight that it was accomplished even as I was still cooking in the dining room.

It occurred to both of us that this was an analogy of the new kingdom. It has been accomplished. It is done. But we're not there yet. We are prevented from fully living in it.

But at that moment of excitement when I knew I had power in the kitchen and was living that experience even though I still was forced to use the power cord in the dining room, I really had a glimpse of how we can live in the knowledge of and in some way experience the new heaven and new earth even though we aren't there yet.

Then Troy tried to take things too far and claim that this analogy makes him God since he was the one that hooked up the power...

Finishing Touches

2011-12-23T09:17:00.000-08:00

I don't want to mislead you so don't think that we are actually finished the kitchen.

But we have gotten some things far enough that we have put on some finishing touches. First off are some outlet covers, which always make a wall look finished. I have been able to put up three of them since I got the painting done last night.

I thought finishing the painting meant that we could move the fridge in (Troy hooked up power this past week in case I hadn't written that yet) but Troy wants to finish the edge of the counter there first. Makes sense. I know he is itching to do the last of the Formica so I'm sure it will be getting done soon.

One thing that may hold it up is that I would really like Troy to drill all the holes for my pulls and handles. I have prepped the kitchen with marks on all the drawers and doors:

Yes, this is something I could probably do and would do if there were no Troy. But I am scared of marring these brand new cupboards. I trust Troy to do a better job.

Another thing I did to prep was unwrap all the handles we will need:

I still love them and can't wait to see them on the cabinets! And once they're on, I'll be getting serious about moving stuff into the kitchen from the dining room, upstairs storage and the appliance room. How great will that be.

Troy put the grate over the range fan:

I'll be tiling around it so that it will be flush with the tiles, not mounted above them. You can see the mechanics through the grill--if it really bothers us, Troy said he could paint it black inside. Meanwhile we'll try it like this. I think it's not very noticeable from further back:

and we still have the valance to install which will block some of the view as well.

What's up next? Let's look at the punch list from November:

~~one more coat of mud on drywall that will be painted~~
~~seal joint between walls and ceiling~~
~~close upper insulation holes~~
~~prime drywall~~
~~finish electric hookups~~
~~buy plywood for shims and counters~~
~~shims below cabinets~~
~~install base cabinets~~
~~install oven including converting it to propane and connecting the propane~~
~~install dishwasher~~
~~install plywood for countertop~~
tile back splash
apply laminate to countertop [1/3 done]
~~install sink~~
~~inventory insulation and purchase more as necessary~~
~~install ceiling joists and insulation on west half~~
~~build partial wall for cabinet above fridge~~
~~install upper cabinets~~
~~install oil stove~~

Wow, looking at that list, we should be just about done! But in addition to the couple of things left from that list, we also have:

trim counters
install ceiling lights
install under cabinet lights
install range light (& buy range light)
covers on outlets/switches
install handles
install fillers in cabinet gaps
install valance and corbels
curtains
make dividers for large cutlery drawer

That should get us pretty close to the point where we will be taking a break from the kitchen. Or Troy will be. I have a feeling I'm going to be unpacking kitchen stuff, cleaning and organizing for a long while. (Not that I'm complaining.)

Time to go...might be taking some time to put up some Christmas decorations today (finally).

Quick Update

2011-12-18T20:31:00.000-08:00

Hello again. Just a quick update since yesterday...

Ready for the big reveal?

Yes! All the cupboards are in/up/installed/DONE! Woo hoo. There is still trimming, etc, etc, but this is a big milestone in itself! And don't they look good!? I like the upper cabinets much more than the base cabinets. I don't know if it's just that the drawers are too plain or that the stain is actually darker on the top ones. (Troy doesn't think so.) If it's just that the uppers look darker because of the bad lighting we have right now, I may not let Troy improve it! Ok, maybe not.

You can see in the pictures that I mocked up the under cabinet lights by taping up the strings. We need to check how many bulbs we need and where. Seems like it should work once they're mounted better. But they will be handy even as they are as I am constantly reaching to turn on a light over the sink.

I did do the sanding yesterday and have declared it "the end." Troy said it was as good as professional but he didn't really mean that in a complementary way. I got the new mud primed today and I hope to paint on some color very soon. Then the fridge can move it. Oh my goodness, that would put all my big kitchen appliances in one room.

Something that didn't happen today was a new phone line. I won't get into it, but our phones have been out since Wednesday. Now that the line to the house is active again, Troy needs to run a new line into the house. Because he needed another thing to do... But anyway, you can try our cels if you need to talk to us.

Meanwhile I'll be figuring out how to sleep while staring adoringly at my cabinets. :)

Cabinet-palooza Continues

2011-12-17T09:57:00.000-08:00

We've had another busy and productive week.

The dishwasher is fully functioning. The sink works. (In case you missed my many posts on Facebook!) It has been such a blessing. I feel free to do stuff now because I know I have an easy way to clean things up. Such a relief.

What I was surprised at is how much nicer it has made the bathroom again. The counter is clear, I can hang just one hand towel again and there are no dirty or clean dishes spread on the floor. It can just be a bathroom again. Nice.

Troy got the power running to everything but the plug for the fridge. I haven't moved in the small appliances yet as the counters aren't ready. It will be nice to be able to melt the butter at the same time as popping the popcorn. Or to use the microwave while the coffee pot is on.

Troy's been trying the under-cabinet lighting:

He "unvented" (as Elizabeth Zimmermann would say) the idea of using LED Christmas lights for under-cabinet lighting. I would prefer rope light to this messy style of string lights and when I went to look for them in Menards, there were actually more options in the lighting department than the holiday department--more people are using them under the cabinets! Unfortunately the rope lights were way too white and "cool" and we preferred the light from the ones above. They should be mounted so you can't see them so I guess it doesn't actually matter that they are "messy." (I'm assuming they'll be sloppier to mount as well, but who knows.)

Now that some of the cabinets are in, I am thinking of how to put stuff in the drawers and cabinets. One thing I did this week was make an organizer for the cutlery drawer:

If interested, you can read all the details on my other blog. I haven't gone crazy with moving stuff into the kitchen since we are still making big messes and would like all the handles on first. I expect it to take a while as everything needs to be thoroughly washed before coming into my new kitchen. (That's the rule!)

Yesterday I did final sanding and primed the wall on the south end...

and the north end...

and the ceiling. I used up every last drop of primer I had. Which is good because it was an old nasty can. Once again, getting a solid coat of white everywhere really helped to make the room more finished. The north end by the fridge location is ready for paint (which I bought earlier this week). The south end needed another touch of mud, which I applied this morning. After a trip to town for supplies, I hope it will be dry enough to sand and prime tonight.

When Troy got home from work yesterday he was suitably impressed with the painting I had gotten done. He was also inspired to keep it going and wanted to hang the upper cabinets. I told him I wasn't up to it and he countered, "What if all you have to do is put a support under the cabinet while I lift it into place?" I didn't answer because I knew that wouldn't be all that it was.

We hadn't hung any yet so I knew there would be some planning that had to be done, thinking through where stuff has to go, reading the "map" of where the studs and cross supports were. But Troy was not to be stopped. He asked for a cabinet. I showed him where it was. He lifted it into place. I held it up. He screwed it into place.

By 9:30 we had four of the cabinets up:

Yes, it looks great. Yes, Troy wanted to continue. But the next one was the corner cabinet which is not only still in the shop, but much heavier. More than I could handle. I drew the line and said I was done. Troy conceded, and not 5 minutes later commented on how tired he was. Good time to draw the line.

The other thing we had last night? The first dinner made in our new oven:

Pork roast with onions and potatoes and blueberry pie with crumble top. We were too tired and busy hanging cabinets to eat it. But the oven worked great. The continuous top is wonderful and it's nice to not see a huge open flame in the bottom of the oven like you did with our last one! (You can see a picture here where I was treating some wool.)

Exciting stuff going on here and I expect it to continue...

The Flip Side

2011-12-12T20:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was a little down on the whole shopping experience, but I neglected to tell you the best part.

When we first mocked up the kitchen and brought in all the base cabinets for a dry fit, I held up our handles to see how they looked. First the style that we agreed to use (and had already bought a full supply of), and then the one that I preferred (and still had the one sample I couldn't let go of). I still liked the one I liked. With just a little wheedling (honestly, I stayed on the right side of whining and it really didn't take much), Troy gave in with a gracious, "Oh honey, get what you want." Why thank you, Mr. Honey, I think I will.

So I've been waiting these many weeks for my handles to go on sale. They finally did last week and I bought enough for the whole room. Yesterday, I returned the ones I didn't like. Happiness.

I will add that the tile I wanted was on sale as well, so I picked that up in the same trip. (This was all on Wednesday last week.) So now I have enough white tile to do the back splash. I'm still looking for a good green tile. Apparently they are out of fashion and now are hard to find.

So far I have managed to get the sinks, faucets, handles, and tile all for discounted prices. Now I know people do this every day. But usually when I get a sale, it's for something I wasn't really looking for but could use at such a good price. In these instances, they are things I know I am going to have to get, but I manage to get them on sale. Happiness.

Today I found the lights we are going to use for general overhead light. Now I will wait for them to go on sale and get them too. We need five or six. I'm willing to wait. (And it won't be that long.) Unless Troy goes superturbo and needs them sooner. For that, I wouldn't complain about paying full price...

Servitude Sunday: Trip to Hell and Back

2011-12-11T19:55:00.000-08:00

One of the first screws to hold in
my cabinets (Monday Dec 5).

I can't believe it's only been a week since I've given you an update on the general kitchen progress. So much has happened!

For one thing, after we had the three cabinets in place last Sunday, I told Troy that we were moving a cabinet in each day just to keep them moving in. The first two I did myself...the 12" tray divider cabinet and the 6" roll out spice rack. They're on the far left in this pic:

The spice rack took quite a bit of Troy's time on Tuesday and Wednesday but he got it done. It's designed to hang off the adjoining cabinets, but we put it on an "end" (next to the stove). Troy had to modify an end piece we bought for the situation. It worked but did need some customizing. It looks great.

After that was done, Troy started working on the cabinets on the other side of the stove. One part of that was the dishwasher. Wednesday evening I walked in through our back door and saw this:

That's where the dishwasher used to be! Surprise...it was moving day.

It took a few days of getting things arranged and the rest of the cabinets installed on this section.

But once that was in, it was time to make a counter top! Troy cut plywood to shape and then we put the Formica on. Here it is last night before Troy cut the sink hole in the Formica:

It was so beautiful! That's where we went to bed Saturday night. All the base cabinets in, dishwasher installed (electrical hooked up but no plumbing yet) and one counter installed.

This morning Troy cut the edges of the Formica even with the counter edge with a router and cut out the sink hole. He had a few other tasks to do (not related to the kitchen) and commented on the way to church that if the whole day went like the morning, then he should have the whole house done today. ;)

We got home earlier than usual (1:30) and Troy got right to it. Today it was plumbing the sink and dishwasher. He sent me to Menards for some supplies. We wrote a list, but some of it was more like a goal than an object. ("Something to go from a 3/4" pex to a male garden house--you won't be able to do it in one piece." or "3/4" pex to 1/2" female end with at least 20" of hose between--you'll need an adapter in there somewhere too.") But off I gamely went.

I did a little looking on my own, but when the helpful employee asked if I was finding everything, I went ahead and asked for his help. I thought I'd start with the easiest thing on the list--something I knew existed but just wasn't sure where to get--a 3/4" to 1/2" pex adapter. I said the part's name and I described what it did, and although he took me to the right aisle, he confidently told me that it didn't exist. You couldn't do that. I would need to put another piece of pex in between. I knew this was wrong and excused him as soon as I could. (I mean if you need pex in between the 3/4 and 1/2 pex, how do you attach that piece of pex? With the very part I was looking for.) Anyway, once on the right aisle, I found that part.

The rest were much harder as I had to consider which 2 or 3 steps I needed to take to go from Starting Point to Destination. It didn't help that the signs weren't consistent and many parts were misfiled. And once when I finally found the part I needed and verified it fit into the other part I had, I went to get the second one I needed and I couldn't find the bin again!! Oh I'm sure you've been there so I'll stop; suffice it to say, an hour and a half later I was able to leave that little version of hell.

I came home with my haul:

It doesn't look like much for being at the store for an hour and a half!! And it turns out I got the wrong hose. (That discovery wasn't soul-crushing as I was pretty much counting on something being wrong.) But I know they make the one we need and it was in stock.

Btw, I allowed the employee to redeem himself when I couldn't find the plumber's putty and he not only knew what I wanted existed, he could take me right to the shelf where it was.

Anyway, that was pretty much the end of my servitude this Sunday. Troy was very sympathetic when I got back and agreed that shopping in the plumbing supply place can indeed be hell. Then he made me some popcorn which helped a lot.

By the end of the night, the plumbing looked like this:

Of course the supply lines are not connected because we don't have the right hoses.

And above the counter? We have this:

The sink is completely installed--no cheating with a dry fit and taking a picture! I think it is so beautiful. I maybe a little obsessed with the

sink. Maybe a lot. I love it. I will love it even more when water comes out of the tap and then drains away. Can you imagine doing dishes in a sink like that? It will be heaven. (With the dishwasher out most of the week, I am not overjoyed by doing dishes in the tiny bathroom sink.)

I really should have taken some pictures earlier in the week when the stove was in place (sort of a "dry fit") and everything was cleaned up. It was lovely. Now it's a big ole mess again and it's hard get a good picture of the whole room.

But here's a try:

But things should just be getting better from here...

Troy has the second piece of counter cut (of three). They should go a lot faster since there's no sink to deal with.

I also dragged in all the upper cabinets, so they are filling a good chunk of the kitchen.

The upside...I am parking in the shop again. Hurray for heated parking!!

New Appliance

2011-12-08T18:41:00.000-08:00

Yes, this is what our woodstove setup now looks like.

Troy was tired of running the woodstove and having to adjust the damper. Since we burn glycerin (which burns very quick and hot), we really needed to make sure the fire didn't overheat or get out of control. Troy had already installed a heat sensor with an alarm that would go off if it got too hot. (That's the lower bar extended from the wall to the pipe.)

But the alarm only works if you can hear it. I.e. if you're in the house paying attention. And then even it if works, it means you have to drop whatever you are doing and run to the living room to close the damper and shut the alarm off.

So with the thought that there "has to be a better way," Troy started to research. What you see in the above picture is the result. [ETA: Troy did extensive research but did not find a single example of this type of system. He had to design it himself.]

We've had it installed for about two weeks now. And I have to say, for a new installation there was very little adjustment needed. It worked pretty much right from the get-go. And despite being what I might charitably call "visually obnoxious," it really does work and make life much easier around here.

We can load up a normal amount of wood/glycerin and when the temperature sensor knows that it's too hot, the big orange box will close the damper. When it cools off some, it opens it again. Those are the only options it has: open or shut. The temperature sensor is smart enough to measure rate of change as well, so if the temperature is changing quickly, it will shut the damper sooner. It has worked great.

Although it looks awful (Troy says it'll be much better when he neatens up the cords--what?), I do not at all mind it in my "pre-improved" living room. I am somewhat concerned about how to integrate this into a living room wherein I am actually responsible for its fashion sense. Bright orange box in my kitchen--that might actually fit in. In my living room? Not so much.

Well, until that is actually an issue, I'll just enjoy the extra freedom and safety that the appliance provides. In the meantime, if you have any ideas, please let me know.

Tiles

2011-12-07T07:29:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to show off some Mexican tiles I ordered for the kitchen:

I bought 75 tiles (actually got 77) on eBay. They're 4" and there are three to file tiles of each design.

I plan to use the darker and bolder colours as they will play against a white field. I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing with them yet, but I have some ideas. I'm a quilter and am thinking like a quilter. So to me these are bits of fabric to be cut up and pieced together. We'll see...

Kitchen Cabinets (Close Enough)

2011-12-04T19:28:00.000-08:00

Boy, did we make some exciting progress today!

As soon as we got home (around 3:30), I got right to it. First up was some sweeping and cleaning up. Put away all the tools (and crap) that found themselves on top of the corner cabinet we were hoping to install today. Troy loaded all the extra lumber to be returned into the truck. The room was clear and ready for a serious make over.

I rounded up the paint supplies (from the basement, foyer and shop because why would all your paint supplies be in one spot?) and set to it. The goal was one coat of primer on everything that would end up behind a cabinet. (The rest of the walls need more mudding and sanding.)

What a lot of white. That's some good primer because one coat covered permanent markers, mud marks and everything else. (Except a little bit of very persistent mulberry bird poop. Good thing that will be behind some tile.)

Okay, check out all the blinding white in the following pics:

Once the paint was applied, Troy was ready to put the base down for the cabinets. This will make sure that the bottom of the cabinets will be even with the flooring we eventually will be putting in. Starting the cabinet work right after painting was no problem as the paint dried very, very quickly. The room is dry and very warm (we turned off the oil heater early in our day) and of course new paints have fewer volatiles, which makes them dry very quickly.

Once the base was screwed down, we could move in some cabinets:

Don't they look so pretty!? They room is also amazingly roomy without the 36x36 corner cabinet sitting in the middle of it! (It's like every time we empty stuff out of the room I rediscover how big it is.)

When we first put them in place, they were not level. :( How does that happen on a floor you made sure was level?? In any case, that's when we took a break for dinner and then I decided I was done for the day. (But don't worry, I had put in the equivalent of two Servitude Sundays already.) Troy went back to work on it and got a couple of shims in place to level the cabinets. He reported that they are not actually screwed in, but that is all they lack to be installed. I said he was off the hook for the evening then...

Kitchen Catch Up

2011-12-03T15:19:00.000-08:00

We've made some milestones in the kitchen and it feels like things are moving fast right now. After missing a few weekends (where Troy still made progress), I have put in some time during the week. Troy has also been able to use a couple of his "free Wednesdays" for kitchen work.

First up--Troy finished the box for the cabinet above the fridge, first the framing,

and then encasing it with drywall:

And earlier this week, Troy finished up the insulation on the ceiling of the west half:

I have no progress pictures (shame on me), but he worked on it a lot over the Thanksgiving weekend. His dad was visiting and helped a lot with this project. Each bay is filled with seven inches of foam insulation. This means that the kitchen is completely insulated!!! Isn't that amazing!? Thank goodness. The room is toasty and I do not at all miss the freezing draft that used to pour out the gap where the beam now is.

Once the ceiling was insulated, we could drywall. Or at least that's what Troy said we were going to do last night. But he neglected to mention that we would have to do more plastic first. That was a "big sigh" moment for me, but then I remembered to just carry on.

So first we hung some plastic and stapled everything up to 4 inches from the wall. Then Troy went around and put caulk all around the outside edges:

Then we pushed the plastic to the edges, into the caulk, and stapled it to death:

And of course, we had to let the lightboxes "out."

Once the plastic was done we still had time to put up the drywall. We ended up with the cliche footsteps on the ceiling.

(I still find that funnier than it actually is.)

Here's a better view of the whole ceiling:

I successfully convinced Troy to do the big pieces in two 6 foot lengths rather than an 8 foot and 4 foot. (We had to cut up two pieces either way and it resulted in the same number of seams.) I'm not sure I could have held up an 8 foot length. I do not have the strength for this!! We had to use a bunch of 4 foot patch-ins for the very west edge. They don't look good, but they'll all end up under the upper cabinets, so we're not worrying about it and neither should you!

We almost got it done--there's just this little corner left:

By the time we got this far, it was 10:00 and Troy was calling it quits. (Yes, please note it was Troy for once who said he couldn't take any more.) It's left me with a full day to kick myself for cutting up the scrap piece of drywall that would have been perfect for this gap.

You see before we got started, I cut up and threw out some drywall scraps to keep myself busy while Troy was doing something. Little did I know that one of them would be needed later. Troy tells me to get over these things, but I find it hard to do. What I should really do is go look to see if there's another "perfect" scrap in the shop to fill this up. And take out the garbage bag with the cut up scrap. Then maybe I could stop thinking about it. It's getting late, but there's still a chance I could do that before Troy gets home from work. We'll see.

So if I don't get to it first, tonight we will finish the drywall and then tape and mud so that we can paint tomorrow. (Now that the work pizza party and Thanksgiving are done, it's time to get back to Servitude Sundays.) Then we'll start installing cabinets.

It's really going to come true. I can barely believe it.

Kitchen Work Continues

2011-11-19T12:16:00.000-08:00

I think it's been a while since you got an update, but I assure you we have been working.

Troy got the oil stove installed in the kitchen and what a difference it has made. In a case of perfect timing, we got our first snow the day after he got it in! It is still a very foreign feeling to walk into the kitchen and have it be warm; and for a day or two, actually too hot! Big change.

It's very gratifying to feel the effect of the insulation already. Even though the oil stove made a big different last year, the kitchen was never actually warm. Just not freezing. I can't wait to move the table and chairs into the room (or even better, to install a booth) because it is by far the most comfortable room and right now we can't really sit in it!

We've continued the mudding and sanding of the drywall in the kitchen. I made a rookie mistake and did some final sanding this morning without changing the sand paper. So...I did more mudding today to fix the mistake.

I also capped and mudded the last of the insulation holes:

If I hadn't had to mud this morning, I may have been able to paint. Paint!! I can barely believe we're that far. I need to put one coat on the all the drywall before we put in the cabinets. And Troy is really pushing, so I may yet do the areas behind the cabinets tonight. We'll see...

And speaking of cabinets, they have been patiently waiting in the shop.

But they haven't just been sitting there. I had to move them again today. Troy has been dying to order a lathe for the last while. (He can tell you exactly how long...) He finally saved enough to do it and was told that it would be a couple months before the company was able to ship it, so he went ahead and "pulled the trigger" about two weeks ago. Imagine his surprise when he got an email on Wednesday that his lathe has shipped!

What does this have to do with cabinets? Well, Troy needs the tractor to unload the beast. The tractor is parked in the shop. In the shop behind 19 cabinets. I spent the first part of my afternoon moving them over to the other side of the shop. They like to get around. The base cabinets have been moved into the kitchen and then back into the shop. The uppers have been set up in the shop and then stacked back up. And now they all have jumped over about 20 feet to the south. Except the corner base cabinet. (The one we had to remove the front door to get into the house.) It has moved to the kitchen and stayed put. Must be a little lazy.

Another thing that Troy has been working on is the "bump out" that he needs to build to support the cabinet above the fridge. I don't think you can see it, but this corner is covered in his scribbles and plans for exactly how it needs to be done.

The fridge will fit into this nook but the cabinet needs to be further out than where the back wall is currently. So he basically has to build a hollow box that is the exact size of the cabinet. Sounds simple, but there's always more to it than you think.

No update tomorrow. I will be wrapping up the haunting season with the annual pizza party. (More work than fun, unfortunately.) But I'm starting to believe I will survive this season. Three more work days and things should get back to what counts as normal.

Taking Stock

2011-11-06T20:20:00.000-08:00

In August I presented the following list of what we had to do in the kitchen:

Before winter sets in, we would like to:
1. ~~rough in plumbing for sink, tap over stove~~, and island sink
2. ~~put in propane line for stove~~
3. ~~remove pipes from old boiler heat~~ [about 75% done; Troy takes them out now as they get in his way]
4. ~~level floor~~
5. ~~put in subfloor~~
6. ~~rough in wiring~~, including power for island
7. ~~install or at least rough in stove vent~~
8. ~~put up vapour barrier~~
9. ~~put up drywall~~
10. ~~blow insulation into walls~~ [still may need to do one more time but Troy's pretty sure we're not and he's calling the shots. Why would I argue against that?]
11. put foam insulation on ceiling
12. drywall on ceiling
13. install tile on floor where the oil stove will go
14. install oil stove and new oil storage tank

After that we can (listed in no particular order):
15. ~~final measure and order cabinets~~
16. install cabinets
17. install cabinet lights
18. ~~remove paneling from wall~~
19. install counters (including island)
20. install broom closet behind fridge
21. build bench for booth
22. tile back splash
23. install wood flooring
24. install ceiling lights
25. ~~trim window~~ [plywood box is done; we're tiling around the window and not adding wood trim]
26. run telephone wire

Wow! I crossed more off that list than I thought I would. The reason that I was thinking of this list again is that we made another list today. More detailed and including things we want to get done very soon.

one more coat of mud on drywall that will be painted
seal joint between walls and ceiling
close upper insulation holes
prime drywall
finish electric hookups
buy plywood for shims and counters
shims below cabinets
install base cabinets
install oven including converting it to propane and connecting the propane
install dishwasher
install plywood for countertop
tile back splash
apply laminate to countertop
install sink
inventory insulation and purchase more as necessary
install ceiling joists and insulation on west half
build partial wall for cabinet above fridge
install upper cabinets
install oil stove (which involves many steps I didn't get from Troy; more on that below)

Does that make you as tired as me? Probably not. It's all pretty exciting stuff though--counters! sinks! heat! an oven! I promise once the oven is in you may invite yourself over for dinner anytime and I will gladly make you lasagne or a casserole or shepherd's pie or meatloaf or any other oven dish with pie for dessert!

Besides making the list, what were we up to today? Troy is working on the oil stove. He is not going to just re-install it the way it was. (Those who were here in the last few years may remember the five gallon gas can set up in the kitchen. Very classy.) First, he is going to replace the five gallon can with a 55 gallon drum. He is tired of having to refill the can every two days and/or having the heat run out in the middle of the day. The 55 gallon drum will let the oil stove run a lot longer (obviously) and will even give us heat in the house when we leave for a few days.

The drum is not, however, going to sit in the kitchen. Troy is building a closet to hold it in a corner of the foyer. A pipeline will run from there to the stove and he promises it will be very slick.

While he was working on that, I first cleaned said oil stove as it still had cement splattered all over it from when we poured the floor and a lot of dust. Next up was mudding drywall in a learn-by-doing session. (It was my first time.) I did screws, insulation holes, a couple outside corners and an inside corner. Troy had already done one layer on everything. Troy evaluated my work as very good, but I think he just wants me to take over the job ~~for~~ from him. A lot of this drywall will not be visible (under cabinets or tile) or behind the fridge, but I tried not to let that affect the quality of my work.

Also today, we bought tile to go under the oil stove and up the chimney behind it. Tile was on sale at Menards and since I knew what I wanted, we went ahead and bought it. (I tried to add a picture to Pinterest, but it's not working right (again). You can check if I've gotten the picture up yet by the time you're reading this.)

The tile was one that is available with a new (?) "Snapgrid" system so that all your tiles snap together with perfect spacing. Troy, however, does not trust this system because it floats the tiles above the floor and doesn't stick them down. When I asked if they had something similar but without the Snapgrid, they said, "Oh yeah, you can order the same tile without it." When he looked up the price, it was less than half! Gotta love it when you get a product you prefer and get to pay less for it!

We're not sure yet if we'll install it before we put in the oil stove, but since we'll have it we may just go ahead. (I stopped worrying about the timing of it when Troy told me that he can take the oil stove out in less than 15 minutes. That told me I could do the tiling any time--next summer if I had to!) We won't have the wood flooring done anyway and the chimney isn't at all ready for tiling.

All for tonight. Take care!

Insulation Sunday

2011-10-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

So we did get to insulation today! It took some work as Menards was not the most put together, but by 3:30 we were blowing cellulose into the kitchen walls.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that it is messy dusty work. But it is.

Troy had drilled holes in our fresh new drywall about half way up and at the top of the wall. We went around and did the lower ones, then we had to compact the insulation and fill them again (and again).

The holes were just large enough for me to
get my arms in just about up to my shoulders!
When the walls are 12" thick, you need to reach a long ways!

By the time we were done, we had compacted the insulation many times and Troy was hoping that we won't have to top off the insulation again later. I have my doubts. (Being more of a "math" person I knew that we would never be able to compact and completely fill each cavity. Troy, being a "physics" person, thinks that it will be close enough to count. We'll see.)

It was a long day that went pretty well in retrospect, but that didn't make me feel any better when the hose got clogged, it started raining and the bags of insulation still outside got wet or when the compacting and refilling just.wouldn't.stop. The only thing sustaining me the last hour was the thought that I was going to go out and get McDonalds as soon as I could. (I was pretty hungry and cranky by then.)

I think it was about 9 before the blowing was done. Then cleanup (sweeping, sweeping and more sweeping plus reloading everything into the truck for Troy to bring back tomorrow at 7 am and not a minute later) and then a blessed shower. By 10 I was on the way to MickeyD's for a Big Mac meal. I think this may be the first time I have ever gone out and gotten McD's to take back home to eat. Isn't that strange? Anyway, Troy got some McRib sandwiches and joined me in a meal I had to have to ~~get over being a whiny baby~~ celebrate possibly being done with insulation.

There's no small group tomorrow night so this morning I was thinking I could use the evening to prime the drywall. Now I'm not so sure I'm up for it. (Plus the lower holes would all have to be closed, taped and I think mudded.) On the other hand, you know what happens after the priming's done? Cabinets.

Cabinets. Not faked ones this time either. Real ones. Screwed in place.

Fake Kitchen Progress

2011-10-28T20:38:00.000-07:00

Troy really wanted to unpack all the cabinets and make sure they fit and weren't damaged, even though that would mean setting them up in the kitchen and then taking them all out again. I could see his point, but even more I could see the tedium of it all.

Tonight we got started on the base cabinets:

Does that look like a fake kitchen to you? We're getting closer (to a real one, I mean).

I am not overjoyed with the look of the finish. I find it shallow and pale, but I'm choosing not to let it bother me. (Can't you tell?) I worried that drawers to match the doors would be too busy, but now they look so very plain. Pulls would help so I just have to wait for final judgment. Troy has relented a little on the pulls and so we may return the 50 we got and get the other style that I preferred. (They really do look smashing on the cabinets!)

So far the cabinets themselves look great. Troy is happy with the quality and we haven't banged one up yet. We had a great opportunity to do so as we worked the corner cabinet in--we had to remove the front door to get it in and it was a very close one!

I also gave Troy and myself a good scare as I was laying things out on the west wall. I told him we were 3.5 inches short of fitting the stove in. He was very concerned; I just figured we'd ditch the 6" spice cabinet. (I'd miss it, but the stuff has to fit.) Then I realized I was confused and was trying to fit in a 36" stove. We bought a 30" one. All was good again. (Although I'm not sure Troy has forgiven me for scaring him like that yet.)

Time for some sleep now. We put in 4 hours on this tonight and we don't even have half of them in. (Or back out again...) [ETA: When I wrote this, I was thinking we spent the whole night on cabinets, but actually half the time was spent putting up some more drywall on the north wall so it's not as bad as I thought.]

Up next: Troy really thinks we will be blowing insulation on Sunday. We'll see...

Servitude Sunday: Over time

2011-10-23T18:21:00.000-07:00

More drywall done today.

The first piece we cut had seven cutouts: three outlets, the exhaust fan box, gas pipe, water pipe and a power cord.

We thought once that was in, all the hard ones were done. Turns out that wasn't quite right, but we carried on.

Most of the dryall is being dropped in the gap between the new floor and the studs:

The vapour barrier is wrapped from behind the drywall, down under the drywall and then back up. Some silicone has been put between the plastic and the floor to make a good seal.

It didn't go quite as quick as we had hoped, but by the start of Sunday night football, we had all the drywall up:

All the drywall we had purchased that is. (Gotcha.)

Although it's nice to have the floor clear again (even if it's covered in drywall dust), it would have been nicer to have enough drywall to finish.

We need two more sheets of 8-foot and two more of 10-foot. The pieces that are left do not have many cutouts so hopefully they will go pretty quickly.

Wednesday's Work (Without Words)

2011-10-19T16:56:00.000-07:00

And Twice on Sunday...

2011-10-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

My first task when I got started on my term of servitude today was to fill this awful segmented wall with rigid foam insulation.

I started by cutting off the screws that were poking through from the outside with the angle grinder. Then I vacuumed and cleaned everything out, cut out the excess (canned) foam insulation and wondered how I was going to fill in these awkward cubbies:

There are recesses at the bottom and top and since foam doesn't bend, I can't fill both! But I decided not to worry about it and to start with what I could do and go from there.

Turns out that's all I got done today anyway:

Each of those sections got filled with 5.5 inches of foam. All the smaller ones on that wall will have to be done too. blah, not fun... (By the way, this section has already been insulated from the outside so the total will still be 12 inches. Never fear!)

I was interrupted at some point by Troy who said he had to know where the overhead lights where going. How am I supposed to know? I've got no walls, no cupboards and have never done this before!!

But I got an idea...

I put some of Troy's many flashlights to good use and used them as stand ins for the lights. Come on, now--that's pretty clever right? They look just like pot lights (not that we're getting pot lights).

And don't you worry, I didn't just eyeball it; I used some careful measurements (you know, give or take a couple inches) and then we evaluated. One thing Troy decided is that he needs three lights in that half of the kitchen instead of the two I was counting on. I'm not convinced, but I guess it'll be easier to put in three lower watt bulbs than to live with two high watt bulbs that still aren't bright enough. I guess.

Between planning for light placement and some rechecking we had to do on the fridge location, I spent almost four hours working on the kitchen today instead of my usual two--Troy got a twofer. He told me to take next week off, but he didn't mean it.

A much more exciting part of the day (to me) was when we purchased our sinks, faucets and cabinet hardware. I had picked them out a few weeks ago and have been watching the Menards sales fliers. Last night I got the one I was waiting for--sale on kitchen and bath!

Troy hadn't previously seen the sinks or faucets, but approved them quickly. We went with cast iron with white porcelain. I am very excited about the sinks; very happy they're not stainless. (You can see the specific models on my Pinterest board--see link in the left sidebar.)

Then we went looking at pulls. I had already fell in love with one and had bought a sample to bring home to show Troy:

It is gorgeous. Sleek. Sexy.

Troy did not agree. He wanted something much plainer, with a bulge for fat fingers and frankly, ugly. (What can I say, it's true!)

I was worried we were going to have a fight in Menards because we were both pretty set in our own opinion. Plus time was short so there was some pressure there. I did not think we would purchase anything.

But as we were going over all the choices with a refrain of one of us suggesting a style and the other saying, "No," I saw this style:

It has the bulge that Troy wanted, but has a similar style to the one I wanted (the ends are wider than the middle--it's a little more subtle on this one but still there). Plus it's a little shorter which I think is good in our kitchen. I know all the magazines show 8 and 10 inch pulls (or longer!), but I'm not going there. (I'm not spending $80 on a matching appliance pull either. Surprised?)

So we found one we both liked and just went with it. Picked up almost 50 of them. (Oh my...I just realized that is 100 holes to drill!) That was a relief and I am happy with them.

All for now. Good night!

My organic, open polinated, heirloom corn. versus Genetically Modified Corn

2011-10-04T19:59:00.000-07:00

I grow corn to make corn meal. Corn meal can be used for all kinds of things, like tortillas, corn bread, stuffing, and so on. I mostly use it to make a hot breakfast cereal. It is not unlike cream of wheat. It is made of 1/3 corn meal, 1/3 wheat meal, and 1/3 rice meal. The rice I purchase at Sam's club. The wheat I buy in 25# sacks from a local store that doesn't charge me shipping. Organic and non-GMO of course. It's pretty cheap.

The corn I grow myself. It's a variety called Reid's Yellow Dent corn. This variety was famous more than a hundred years ago. Here's a quote from the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (a very nice place to buy seed by the way.)

" [Dates back to the 1840's, when it originated as a cross between 'Gordon Hopkins', a late, light red variety, and an early yellow flint variety.] The cross was accidental: Robert Reid had a poor stand of 'Gordon Hopkins' one year and replanted the missing hills with the early yellow flint corn. He grew the hybrid until it stab�lized. 'Reid's Yellow Dent' is one of the most productive, hardy corns ever developed, and was a prize winner at the 1893 World's Fair and progenitor of a number of yellow dent lines. This old-timer is well known in the Mid-Atlantic region, where it is revered for its adaptability and dependability in southern heat and soils. Stalks to 7' with 9 in. double ears well filled with 16 rows of deep, close-set, moderately flat seed. Average analysis is 9.9% protein and 0.31% lysine."

For some reason, me and corn get along real good. This variety is reported to have stalks up to seven feet tall and well filled 9" ears. In my garden, the stalks grow in excess of 12' and the ears routinely exceed 10", a few reaching a full foot long. Here's me grinning like an idiot holding one of mine, and one of my corn farmer/neighbor's GMO Frankencorn:

Here's another picture of several of my ears, and two of his typical ears of corn. There's a beer bottle in there for scale:

I don't use herbicides, pesticides, synthetic fertilizer, or any of that other gook. He does. I win.

Of course, we're sort of comparing apples to oranges here. His might be designed to maximize the yield of high fructose corn syrup per acre, and so long as it does that, his probably beats mine. His can be sprayed with Roundup weed killer, which would kill mine. This minimized his fuel and labor costs, and reduces soil compaction since the big tractors don't have drive over the same ground multiple time manually cultivating the weeds out. The size of the ears doesn't necessarily indicate the yield per acre. Maybe he can cram more plants in per acre than I can. Maybe his needs less nitrogen per pound of corn produced. I have the luxury of piling on the rich compost. He doesn't.

His probably isn't even designed to be eaten by humans directly. It's designed to be processed into something else first.

Despite all the backpedaling and fine print and disclaimers, I would still like to claim victory for my corn. Genetically modified food is not a good thing. I say this as a trained scientist who did trans species recombinant DNA in lab exercises. I know what it is capable of.

There are now many verified, repeatable examples where, given the choice, cows pigs and other animals won't eat the GMO Frankencorn if they have "real" corn as an option. What do they know that we don't?

Cows prefer real vs GMO

There are now disturbing independent studies that link the use of GMO corn and soy with organ failure in mammals:

Organ Failure

Monsanto has such a huge influence on agriculture in the US, they have almost literally crammed this frankencorn stuff down our throats. If you had corn chips this week, you probably ate some corn that had a little bacterial DNA slipped in there for extra measure. Some of the "new" corn has genetic material from a fish. There are indications that the resultant corn makes novel proteins that may trigger allergy problems in the end user, you.

Monsanto did tests that prove this is all safe. The FDA accepted those tests without further investigation. The testing went on for a whole 90 days. If there were any differences in outcomes based on the gender of the lab animals, that was discounted or thrown out. So, if a statistically significant number of female rats got kidney failure, or liver failure, but the boys didn't, we can just ignore that. Really, I'm not making this up. And really, 90 whole days?!? What about long term problems in humans? How did we test for that? Oh yeah, we didn't.

The relationship between the FDA and Monsanto would charitably be described as "close". Incestuous might be a more accurate description.

People, you have to take your food chain back. Don't you be eatin' that stuff. That ain't natural.

Finest regards,

troy

Servitude Sunday: Electrifying

2011-10-02T18:27:00.000-07:00

Troy put me to work as electrician's apprentice today. He had a lot of the wiring done but we had more to do. Plus he had done wiring inside the room but needed my help to run it down to the panel in the basement.

We ran five lines down to the basement and did a thorough review of all our electric needs. We think we got them all.

Before we got started today, we did a little shopping at Menards. I had to show Troy the fan switch I wanted (it's a dimmer/toggle combination) and convince him to get the flat rectangle light switches. (I did.) Then when we got home we had a sudden fear that we couldn't get a cover plate for a rectangle switch and regular duplex outlet combination. Never fear, they do sell them. (Otherwise poor Troy would have to redo his outlet!) What a lot of details in building a house--why didn't any one tell me? ha ha.

The other thing we got at Menards is taking up all the room in my newly floored kitchen:

That's right--drywall!! Troy was very optimistic and thought we might get the wiring done and vapour barrier up so we could start drywall. (We really are that close!) I did say that I would work more than two hours if it meant getting even one piece of drywall up but ended up not having to deliver on that promise.

And not to sound too Pollyanna but having a pile of drywall in the middle of your kitchen not only helps stave off Alzheimer's, it also gives me a stair master machine I have to use so I "automatically" get exercise!

Oh, and one genuine source of happiness: I just discovered that we have wild grapes growing on the property. I absolutely love them and don't remember having them since grade school.

Popping the first one in my mouth brought back all those memories of recesses spent eating ourselves [almost] sick on grapes. (They were very sour as I recall and we would dare each other with how many we would eat at one time.)

A Floor and a Flourish

2011-09-28T18:31:00.000-07:00

I finished the last post saying you couldn't piece together a floor but after considering buying a whole new piece of grade A plywood, Troy decided he could.

The last section we had to do was about 2x5' and is going to be directly under one of the booths. So with some extra care, extra screws and extra adhesive, Troy went ahead and installed a couple of patches and got the floor done.

We have a single solid surface for a floor. Woo hoo.

Here it is looking to the north west:

And here looking south/southwest:

That's a lot of good looking floor, right?

Now for the flourish. I wanted a pair of corbels to go under the counter on the side of the island where it hangs over 12 inches. I priced some when I ordered the cabinets and while one style was about $220, the other was $350. EACH! The way the sales person reacted when she saw that, I don't think she would have let me buy them even if I begged. But I didn't.

When I got home, I did a little ebay search and came up with a very nice option. Two days later I had won a nice pair of mismatched corbels (~$150 if you're curious) and they arrived yesterday:

Aren't they gorgeous!? They have a nice heft to them (let's guess 7 lbs) and the finish was much nicer than I expected from the pictures. My plan was to paint them up, but now I'm not sure I can let myself! We'll see...

I love how they match but aren't the same. I presume they were handmade as they aren't the same size and the carving isn't identical from one to the other.

The grapes fit in with the little fruit theme that seems to be happening too.

Servitude Sunday: Not Enough Flooring

2011-09-25T18:15:00.000-07:00

No pictures of today; sorry, I'm too tired. And I'm a little disappointed with our progress. We did get some flooring down, but I was pretty determined to get it all done. I was even willing to work more than two hours. I was even willing to miss the kick off of the Colts game. Three pieces of plywood would do it.

We only had two.

And flooring really isn't something you want to piece together from scraps.

So we're not done, but the good news is that the only piece left is in the south east corner and we never walk there. (That's where the table will end up.) So for daily life we can walk on flooring all the way across the kitchen. It will be so nice.

If that's the good news, the great news is that we brought the flooring over the 4" gap in in the floor between the kitchen and the dining room. This one:

So that is covered and hopefully soon to be forgotten.

I think that's all I've got. Have a good night, all!

Servitude Sunday: Floors and Cupboard Hangers

2011-09-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

Another Sunday, another work session. Once thing we did was continue the flooring. Progress was halted by a big drain pipe being in the way. It was running along the left side of the chimney in the picture below:

If you look carefully (or if you click on it for a larger version), you can see where it was by finding the hole in the floor where the electric is coming through. As a side note, Troy was about to disconnect that box today to get the floor in but realized that a wire continues to the second level. We thought we might lose something important (like lights in the bathroom, or ???) A second look determined that we could work around the box so it ended up not being a problem.

Back to the matter at hand, Troy took out the pipe that was in the way and replaced it with this one:

that runs just on the other side of the wall. This will end up inside a closet/storage area and definitely not in the way. It is also part of the solution to the terrible plumbing situation discussed in a recent post. Troy doesn't quite have all the "uphill" drains out yet but he hopes to soon.

Currently we are without a drain to the downstairs sink. Troy assured me the shower was fine to use, but after my shower this morning he found half of the basement wet. [Can you relate to that, Yvonne??] Apparently the drainpipe just fell off again. He is hoping to still have both fixed tonight. (I said, "Please have it done...I want to shower in the morning." Troy replied, "Oh, I will. I want to shower tonight!") As he fixes the plumbing, the old parts seem to get jealous for attention and start to give us trouble!

Anyway, all this is to say that the pipe is out of the way and we could put down some more of the subfloor. I measured the funny shaped pieces, Troy cut them,

we laid them in place and then screwed them down.

Look at all that floor! We can now walk from the foyer to the back completely on a flat floor. The south end including the hallway to the dining room needs to be done yet.

Before I got to the floor, however, I was working on the filler wood we're going to use to hang the upper cabinets. You can see three of them here (the horizontal bits):

They vary in height because this is where the cabinet heights change to get around the beam. I measured and cut them, and then Troy came in with the pneumatic nail gun.

That is one step done to prepare for the cabinets because they are coming....I ordered them on Saturday. I was so excited. Everything went well, double checked the layout and really liked the woman I worked with. She had some good ideas which saved us some money (turns out it's cheaper to add a toe-kick to a wall cabinet than to order a narrow depth base unit) and seemed to "get" what I was doing. She also encouraged the suped-up sink cabinet with shelves and door storage which I hadn't even considered. We got in on a free sink cabinet deal and they don't care if it's simple or delux, so we went delux! (In return I taught her about the option of ordering a "handicap" toe kick because we're considering having the island at a higher height.)

Cabinets should be at the store by about October 9. We won't be ready for them by then, but we have a place to store them and decided it was better to have them than to be caught waiting for them. The thought right now is that we may have them in by Christmas. That means we would also have walls (drywall I mean) and insulation. Also counters and a kitchen sink. Oh, to have a kitchen sink again!!

An interesting comment, and a response, from the gun facts post...

2011-09-13T06:38:00.000-07:00

We received a thoughtful response from our Gun Facts post a few days ago. I thought the comment was really worthwhile and warranted a post with a full response. David is responding to the first three points, which I will reproduce here. You could click the link and read the whole enchilada if you want.

1. A woman who carries a gun is 4 times less likely to be murdered than one who does not. (25% of the risk)

2. A woman who carries a gun is 10 times less likely to be raped than one who does not. (10% of the risk)

3. 20 years ago, 12 million women owned/used/carried guns for self protection. Today, the number is 17 million. This is not an isolated or rare event. In fact, it might be a useful intellectual exercise to describe why you (if you're female) do not carry a gun, given the risk reduction. Or why, if you are male, do not encourage, support and facilitate the woman in your life to get a gun and learn how to use it. The book that makes an excellent case for the use of firearms by women for self protection is "Armed and Female, taking control" by Paxton Quigley:

http://www.paxtonquigley.com/

Then follows David's comment:

Troy - these "facts" are misleading (I'm referring especially to points 1-3). People who choose to carry guns make lots of other choices and do other things that may change their chances of being the victim of a crime. I'm not saying people should or should not have the freedom to choose to carry a gun (though I'll show my hand and say that in general I don't think it's a good idea), but that is one of many choices that might influence crime rates. I'd be interested to hear how carrying pepper spray or a baseball bat affects those odds.

Also in reference to points 1-3, are you suggesting that females ought to carry firearms but not males, or just that they have more to gain?

I appreciate your perspective, as always.

And my (hopefully just as thoughtful) response:

While it is true that nothing happens in a vacuum, and it is helpful if not essential to know how statistical "evidence" is gathered and massaged, I feel confident that these facts withstand closer scrutiny. I also wanted to present them as counterpoint to the gross amounts of misinformation that one encounters in the mainstream media concerning firearms. Here is a negative example from the Arthur Kellerman study, which is now recognized as very poor science,

"but research has shown that a gun kept in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household, or a friend, than an intruder."

That particular example has been proven to be junk science, and produced in the worst sort of way, statistically.

But let us consider the main thrust of your comment, that it's not just the guns, it's all the other actions and choices that reduce the rape rate.

In Florida, prior to the "shall issue" legislation, which made it easy for ordinary citizens to carry a gun for self protection, it was very difficult to legally carry a firearm for self protection, and the vast majority of the population, men and women, did not.

Let's say there were 100,000 women in Florida who really wanted to carry a gun for self protection, but could not legally do so. Don't you think this group of women would have taken every other risk reduction strategy possible, short of carrying the gun? What exactly would the physical possession of a firearm cause them to do differently?

Here is a better example. In Orlando Florida in 1966-67, the media highly publicized a safety course which taught Orlando women how to use guns. The result: Orlando's rape rate dropped 88% in 1967, whereas the rape rate remained constant in the rest of Florida and the nation.

In the above example, a tiny percentage of the women in Orlando took that safety course. Do you think the behavior of most or all women in Orlando changed that significantly, to cause an 88% reduction in rapes? Or (as I think) the mere presence of some armed and trained women in that community caused the potential rapists to count the risk and the cost as too high. One of the many advantages of allowing concealed carry for all law abiding citizens is, the bad guys don't know who has a gun, and who does not. Even those who chose not to carry a gun are safer because of those who do. Polls of prison inmates suggest that, "57% of felons polled agreed that criminal are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police."

Contrast that with the propaganda and misinformation presented by the anti-gun folks who tried to stop the "shall issue" legislation in Florida. They predicted that violent crime would skyrocket if any ordinary citizen could carry a gun. Here is an example of the propaganda in the form of signs and billboards when the Brady Campaign tried to defeat the new gun law in Florid.

Billboard

Obviously, the big spike in violent crime, or gun crime, never materialized.

Consider Kennesaw, Georgia:

"In 1982, this suburb of Atlanta passed a law requiring heads ofhouseholds to keep at least one firearm in the house. The residential burglary rate subsequently dropped 89% in Kennesaw, compared to the modest 10.4% drop in Georgia as a whole.

The people living in town, were suddenly required to have a gun in their house. This would include some people who had no interest in guns. Did the physical presence of a gun in house change the choices and behavior of the homeowners? And if so, how would the burglars even know of this changed behavior? I think it is the mere presence of the guns, and the risk that represents to the burlars. They don't want to get shot and they go elsewhere.

And finally, I think this is the most telling example is from data gathered by the Carter Justice Dept.

"Nationwide, In 1979, the Carter Justice Department found that of more than 32,000 attempted rapes,, 32% were actually commited. But when a woman was armed with a gun or knife, only 3% of the attempted rapes were actually successful."

Since these statistics deal only with actual attempted rapes, it seems obvious that none of these women had changed any of their other behavior or choices in such a way as to prevent the attack in the first place. This, to me, directly suggests that it was the presence of the weapon (gun or knife) that made the difference.

And no, I am not suggesting that only women carry guns for self protection, but only that they have the most to gain. Nor am I against less lethal means of self defense like pepper spray. Baseball bats are not so practical or effective against a physically stronger attacker.

Why do you think that carrying a gun is not a good idea?

Finest regards,

troy

Servitude Sunday: More Insulation

2011-09-11T19:05:00.000-07:00

Today's "to do" list included putting some more foam insulation on the floor to keep the cellulose insulation from sitting directly on the concrete. I did the first section back in March.

Here is the base of an external wall:

The yellow arrow points to the area I've already done. (There is white foam under all that sawdust.)
The black arrow points to the area I had to do today and is the area between the exterior wall and the new interior part of the wall.
The red arrow points to a little crack between the wall and the floor. That is where we're going to terminate the vapour barrier with a U-turn. The drywall might going down there to finish it off, but I'm not sure about that part.

So here is the same section after I was done:

Need that again? Before:

After:

That didn't quite take two hours, so I did some clean up as well. Prepared more wood scraps to go in the garbage, brought some stuff out to the shop, etc.

Yesterday I went to Lowe's again to finalize the cabinet plans. We had a final measurement on the walls (now that they're in), and I had a few changes and questions. Another couple hours and I had some revised plans. I dropped the pantry shelves (~$1,000 ea) and still ended up with the same total as before. Their prices have gone up and I got a couple extras like a spice rack and an additional lazy susan corner cupboard, and maybe more...but nothing too fancy. That was a little disheartening.

Then Troy insisted that we get a quote from Menards. I'm not crazy about Menards, but I didn't have a good argument not to. So I made a list of all the cabinets and we went today. I wasn't about to spend another few hours while the guy drew out a layout so I convinced him to just put together the order with the cabinets I specified. (He was pretty new, and with my experience at Lowes with the same program I was walking him through some of it!) By the time we were done we had a quote that was about $2,000 cheaper than the Lowe's one. Not much of a decision there, is it!?

He also mentioned that their special right now is a free sink cabinet with every 10 cabinets. Our order included 19. So we might order a base cabinet for the walk-thru pantry and throw that in while we're at it. We'll see. In any case, it's very exciting to be this close to ordering real cabinets.

P.S.While I was writing this, we put down two more pieces of subfloor. wOOt!

Happy Anniversary

2011-09-10T19:59:00.000-07:00

Last Monday Troy put down the first sheet of plywood on the floor. He proposed putting one sheet down each night and I think we did that once during the week. (Missed Tuesday, one down Wednesday, missed Thursday.)

So when it came up at work on Friday that it was my anniversary, they all asked if we were going out to dinner. "No," I said. "I betcha to celebrate we'll put down two sheets of plywood tonight." Sure enough, that's what we did!

The last two covered up the big gaping gash we've had in the floor for months now between the two halves of the floor. I will enjoy how quickly having a solid continuous floor will make me forget that even exists.

It's been a wonder walking across the room on the plywood. I'm not aware of the old floor bouncing or moving, but the plywood is rock solid. My feet don't know what to make of it!

All for now. I don't know what we'll be up to tomorrow for Servitude Sunday, but I'm sure I'll let you know!

Servitude Monday (Holidays Count)

2011-09-06T19:19:00.000-07:00

It wasn't a Sunday, but I thought since I wasn't putting in my 10 hours at my job on Monday, I could probably "give" two of them to Troy. It wasn't sexy, but I did get all the old paneling and other wood scraps cut up and into the garbage bins. And then I even had time to vacuum up the mess from the hand saw. The floor was looking pretty spiffy.

(Troy and I had this discussion a few weeks ago--do I need to clean up the floor before we put down the subfloor? My theory is that it is only going to get dirty anyway and um, it's not like you are ever going to see it. Troy didn't like the thought of it one bit. For the record, I only vacuumed in this case because I didn't want to live in the mess, not because I decided Troy was right.)

Troy got a few more exciting things done. Like cut the hole for the exhaust fan

and then get it covered.

He also got the hot water line run and capped so he could test it. We now technically have hot and cold water in the kitchen.

And then, to win a bet he had with me, he screwed down the first piece of the subfloor.

As I type, he is trying to cram in little styrofoam pellets to insulate that section in and around the pipes. I suggested he should pour the pellets in before he screwed down the plywood, but he couldn't wait. He thought it would work better to push them in from the side. (I remain unconvinced.)

But that is the start of a real floor, people! When's the next holiday celebrating labour?

Servitude Sunday: More Destruction

2011-09-04T20:01:00.000-07:00

As promised, I delivered Troy two more hours today. He decided to tear down the paneling from the southeast corner. We needed to get it out to be able to work on the subfloor. While he was pulling it down, I was smashing nails flat, cutting up the wood and paneling to a disposable size, and bagging it.

Here's the southwest corner now:

The top was painted, but it looks like the bottom section may have had wainscoting on it at some point. I'm going to miss the red paneling; it really was a great colour. I'm thinking of keeping a sample so I can get it matched if I want to paint a room red. That would be neat, I think. There were two layers of paneling, by the way. We are ripping out a lot of layers of this house!

I also found this little bit of history. This outlet was buried behind the paneling. You can see some early wallpaper.

It looks like a papered outlet cover, but there's no cover. It's just the ends of the different pieces. I'm sure it's been long enough that it would look charming again. I guess this also tells us that when they decided to paint over the wallpaper, they didn't bother to take off the cover. :sigh: But wait...there's more.

While I was serving my time, Troy needed help in the basement putting in the new water line. While we were working on that, he wiggled one of the drain pipes. Water gushed out. "Holy crap," he said. "That joint isn't glued." We just keeping finding issues with the drains. (The bathtub's leaking again, by the way.)

Not two minutes later, Troy moved a different pipe and water poured out of that one. Another joint that wasn't glued!!! Troy was able to glue that one once we got rid of the rest of the water and he cleaned it. The first joint we noticed didn't take. Troy thinks they used the wrong glue in the first place and now the right glue won't stick either. So for now it's just a "friction fit" like it's been since we moved here.

Some illustration:

Troy said he was going to give me his most disgusted look.

Here's a diagram of our wonderful drain pipes:

The green lines represent the direction of the drain. The yellow lines show the direction of gravity. They should be going the same way!!

One more:

This is a third joint Troy noticed that was "sealed" with electrical tape. (And you can really see how much the white pipe in his left hand is going down hill to the left. It's supposed to be draining to the right. :big sigh:, right?)

On another note, Troy has finished the cold water plumbing and was able to test it today by turning on the water. No leaks, no drips! He will be happy to tell you we now have water in the kitchen. I will tell you we technically have water in the kitchen. I will save the long story of the pot filler for another day...

Fun gun facts for the week.

2011-09-01T09:50:00.000-07:00

As I was listening to a podcast about gun legislation issues from the last 4 decades, a few interesting statistical facts jumped out at me and I thought I would share them. There has been so much mis-information and dis-information presented about guns and gun ownership. It was refreshing to hear actual facts from real data.

1. A woman who carries a gun is 4 times less likely to be murdered than one who does not. (25% of the risk)

2. A woman who carries a gun is 10 times less likely to be raped than one who does not. (10% of the risk)

3. 20 years ago, 12 million women owned/used/carried guns for self protection. Today, the number is 17 million. This is not an isolated or rare event. In fact, it might be a useful intellectual exercise to describe why you (if you're female) do not carry a gun, given the risk reduction. Or why, if you are male, do not encourage, support and facilitate the woman in your life to get a gun and learn how to use it. The book that makes an excellent case for the use of firearms by women for self protection is "Armed and Female, taking control" by Paxton Quigley:

http://www.paxtonquigley.com/

4. In every state that has made it easier for its residents to carry a gun for self protection, the violent crime rate has gone down (often suddenly and dramatically) or stayed the same. Anti-gun groups predicted that there would be an increase in violent crime, and often used terms like, "...blood running in the streets."

The seminal academic work on how gun ownership affects crime rates was written by John Lott Jr. It's not a thriller, it's a sociological examination of the data over 18 years. So, a bit dense and dry, but very convincing if you care about facts at all:

More Guns, Less Crime

5. When England and Australia made it virtually impossible to have or use a pistol for self defense, and significantly limited the use of long guns, the violent crime rate went up, dramatically, and stayed up.

6. The Clinton era "assault" weapons ban did not reduce the amount of crime committed with these types of weapons. Of course, the amount of crime committed with these types of weapons was very very low before the ban. When the "assault" weapons ban went away, the number of crimes committed with these types of weapons did not go up. Of course, it was still very very low, just like before the ban.

It is interesting to note that there is no functional difference between an "assault rifle" and a hunting rifle, with the possible exception that the assault rifle "looks scary". For example, an "assault rifle" might have a bayonet lug, while a hunting rifle generally would not. When is the last time you heard of a bayonet used in the commission of a crime? The assault rifle may have a ventilated heat shield around the barrel, while the hunting rifle would not. The presence of a heat shield does not appear to cause people to commit more crime though.

The "assault" rifle can use a "high capacity" magazine. Well, so can a hunting rifle. Hunters just generally don't, since they don't need to shoot a deer 30 times. But outlawing the sale of high capacity magazines during the "assault" weapons ban, did not suddenly cause the millions and millions of existing "full capacity" magazines (the proper term) to suddenly cease to exist. In fact, owning one, was not against the law, just buying a new one. The law did nothing (and could do nothing) to prevent an evil person from acquiring and using one to commit a mass shooting.

But what possible legitimate use could a private citizen have for full capacity magazines that hold 20 or 30 or more rounds of ammunition?

Ask the Korean shop owners who had SKS "assault" rifles with full capacity magazines during the Rodney King LA riots. The death toll, and general destruction, were markedly lower in those neighborhoods. The mere presence and sight of these firearms prevented additional violence and bloodshed.

In fact current estimates suggest that the mere display of a firearm when someone is about to commit a crime against you, stops the event somewhere between 1 and 2 million times per year in the United States. Not that the gun is fired, not that the bad guy is shot, or even shot at, just the mere display of the firearm.

The 2nd amendment is not about hunting ducks. It is about the God given right to defend yourself and your family, with lethal force if necessary, which the government recognized and is sworn to protect and uphold.

These and many other facts are available here:

Gunfacts.info

Finest regards,

troy

Servitude Sunday: Pipe Dreams

2011-08-28T18:21:00.000-07:00

Troy has become quite motivated to work on the kitchen as he has felt the push of autumn. It started with all the work he directed Isaac to do, and now that he is gone Troy has been doing his own work.

I thought maybe I should do my part. I told Troy this week that I was his to direct for two hours each Sunday. Fully recognizing it's not a lot, it's also a lot more than I have been doing so we would start there. Troy immediately got a focused look in his eyes and I could tell he was envisioning all the stuff he could have me help with.

This week in particular it came down to putting down some subfloor or taking out some pipes in the basement. We split it down the middle by buying the plywood for the subfloor but actually working on the pipes.

Troy has been roughing in the plumbing drain and propane line for the kitchen and the old pipes in the basement were in his way. So I spent my first Sunday of servitude holding pipes above my head while Troy cut them apart with angle grinder. Then I would carry them out to the scrap metal pile. There were quite a few pipes and I carried out figuratively tonnes of brass, steel and copper pipe.

We finally had enough of the pipes lining the ceiling out that we could tackle this mess:

Those are some big pipes in a rat's nest configuration right above the boiler. Troy started the first cut and then the water came gushing out. We put a bucket under it and waited. We emptied it several times and then went and ate supper while it continued to drain.

Troy ended up cutting this apart without me and I think he got tired of waiting and just let some water run onto the floor because it was pretty wet when I went back down. By that time, Troy had the boiler disconnected from the electric as well and was ready to haul it out. He was so excited to get it out of there!

We managed to drag it up the stairs and have kicked it to the curb (so to speak).

Troy is planning to take it and the rest of the scrap to the scrap metal place this week and maybe we can get some "money money money" from all that crap!! Even if we don't, we have quite a bit more room to move in the basement and Troy can continuing running the plumbing lines. Both are good things.

Blood Red Moon and Other Bad Omens

2011-08-17T20:16:00.000-07:00

While driving home late-ish tonight, I was astounded by a huge blood red moon hanging in the sky. I think that is in part an effect of the moon being close to the horizon so I was hurrying home so I could try catch it in a photograph.

I dashed in the house, put on a jacket (because the nights are surprisingly cool again!), grabbed the camera and ran outside. Fortunately for me I had a little flashlight on. (Back story: I usually prefer to make my way in the dark--I know my own house and own property enough to get around. Troy prefers a flashlight, anytime, every time. We go back and forth on this, but tonight I had a flashlight.)

As I was about to cross some weeds to climb onto a stump in the fence row to get a clear view of the moon, my flashlight flashed across something and I stopped. Fortunately in time.

This little spider (not so little actually) was hanging in the air on its little (not so little actually) web.

The main part of the web was not quite two feet across and the spider was hanging above the height of my belly button.

I almost walked into that! Bleah....it gives me the heeby jeebies!

But, fortunately I stopped in time. The web was not damaged. The spider was not disturbed. I was not heeby jeebied.

As a side note, the spider did not seem to object to being the centre of attention. Perhaps it knew that if anything, the light would draw a bigger dinner. And fortunately a couple of the pictures turned out because none of the moon pictures came out at all.

Sweet dreams!

Empowerment of the regular folks through the blogosphere.

2011-08-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

I was listening to one of my regular podcasts (the Survival Podcast), and Jack the host revisited a topic that surfaced last June. A nice couple in Oak Park, Michigan had to replace their sewer pipe going out to the street. Since the yard was torn up anyway, they decided to put in 5 raised beds and grow some nice veggies instead of boring old grass again. They even called the code enforcement dept and asked if it was ok. They hired somebody to build them some nice raised beds. Look at the pictures, there's nothing unattractive about this. They spent significant time, effort and money to make it look nice and be in compliance.

When she called code enforcement, the response was basically, "I'm not sure. The code doesn't say anything about vegetables, just that it has to be "suitable plants and vegetation" or something to that effect. Their thoughts were, "Hey, tomatoes and basil and other nice looking herbs and so on, should be plenty suitable." The city thought otherwise, and eventually issued them a citation and then took them to court.

As a Libertarian, I would like to allow my neighbors to grow anything they want, anywhere on their property, so long as they don't hurt me or my property value. So, done nicely, some raised beds with fresh organic veggies would make me happy. And, I have a whole orchard and garden in my front and side yard, so this is not just a theoretical discussion for me.

The prosecuting attorney told them in no uncertain terms, that they were definitely going to be prosecuted and, made an example of. The couple elected to have a jury trial, thinking it would be hard to find 12 people who would find tomato plants and basil and oregano, to be heinous and against the law.

Before the trial could happen, the city of Oak Park got their telecom and computer network melted to the ground by the tens of thousands of calls and emails, virtually all of which were opposed to the city's actions. They backed down, and dropped all the petty and vindictive strategies they were pursuing against this family.

Which brings me to my point. If you love freedom, and you love liberty, and you think we still have private property and the rights that go along with that, and you become aware of some other example of a town, city, village, Homeowner's Association, etc, trying to ram some ridiculous and out of date standard down somebody's throat for growing some veggies in the front yard...

WE HAVE A PLAN.

The internet, and especially the blogosphere, has created a highly aware, and highly responsive community of people who just don't tolerate abusive and petty government. If you run across an example of inappropriate government at any level, telling people they can't grow food (nicely) in their own yard, front OR back, send an email to jack@thesurvivalpodcast.com and put something like this in the subject line:

government interfering with gardeners again in _________________

He will put the word out, and then we will put the word out. It turns out that small government at least, is responsive when tens of thousands of people start shouting at them and publicizing their petty tyrannical ways.

Hopefully, we will never have to do that again, but I am somewhat cynical about that.

Power to the People!

Go plant some sweet corn in your front yard as an act of protest. Well, wait till next spring.

Finest regards,

troy

Process update and an example of how not to run your state...

2011-08-15T13:12:00.000-07:00

Welcome visitors!

Hopefully your late summer has been just as great as ours. The oppressive heat is gone for now, humidity levels dropped a bit. The garden is looking great (13+ foot tall corn, seriously...), ripe tomatoes. The new kiwi vines are looking very vigorous.

We are making headway on the kitchen again. We had a string of things that virtually stopped progress for a while, all good things mind you, but stopped nevertheless.

Now that we have that out of the way again, progress picks up with renewed vigor and determination. We just about have the old kitchen floor leveled out. Prior to our ministrations, there was a 3" difference in elevation between the high spot and the low spot. It felt like walking on a ship's deck that was pitching and rolling.

I also have all the supplies to rough in the propane line and the plumbing drain and supply lines. Then comes 6 mil polyethylene vapor barrier, 5/8" drywall, wads and gobs of blown in cellulose insulation, cabinetry and appliances. I am very hopeful to have the drywall and insulation done before it gets seriously cold out. It will be odd, considering the floor was too cold to stand on last winter, and this winter should be toasty warm.

I ran across two compelling things today, about how not to run your state government. The first is a blog from a small business person, who has finally had it with Kalifornia and is moving to a state that isn't trying to punish the entrepeneur with punitive taxes and regulations. She figures she will keep 10% more of her income in her pocket by moving to Texas, which will allow her to hire another person and maybe even cut her hours a little.

You could read her interesting story here: Leaving California

It turns out, she is not alone. Droves of businesses are fleeing the state due to high taxes and regulations. Little friendly reminder to all you governors and state legislators who read my blog, if you tax us enough, and make life difficult enough through ever more legislation, we will leave your state and go somewhere that is more business friendly. Small businesses (as defined by less than 500 employees) provide roughly 2/3 of all the jobs in this country.

This site claims Kalifornia has lost 25% of all its manufacturing jobs from 2000 to 2007. Kalifornia claims to not track this data, but I find that shockingly improbable.

Read all the details here: Sending businesses packing from California

This is the unavoidable consequence of spending too much money at the state level. I am once again, and still, a proponent of small government.

I know this seems like advanced rocket science to state legislators, based on the number of states that are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, but the math really does work out better in the end if you spend less than you make, all the time.

Finest regards,

troy

Very First Fruit

2011-08-14T17:24:00.000-07:00

After several years of carefully tending his fruit trees, Troy has gotten his very first edible fruit:

Although he offered it to me, I gave him the honor of eating it:

He said it was "average." Not exactly glowing praise. I noticed, however, that it was a free stone peach and that makes it very good for canning (which is our primary interest)...and you can always add more sugar. ;)

One of the peach trees is just loaded with fruit:

These are Harken Peaches.

The other peach tree with fruit is the Frost Peach:

They are much less red (as you can see) and do not have that irresistible sun-kissed look about them.

One apple tree (Empire) has a couple apples, but they are small and bug-spotted and don't look very appealing. I don't think we'll get any apples this year.

As for the rest of the garden, the only thing blooming now that the glads are done are the hibiscus bushes.

The pink blooms are gorgeous and huge. (Larger than my niece's face, as I told her.) This one bush has both pink blooms and white ones with a dark red center. Is that normal?

They both are putting out a incredible number of buds. You may not be able to make them all out, but this bloom, for example,

has seven more buds waiting right behind it. It's a good thing, because they don't last much more than a day once they're open.

Is Remodeling Your House the Key to Not Developing Alzheimer's?

2011-08-12T18:19:00.000-07:00

So now that we have cleared the kitchen floor, it's time to build on top of it again. When he's not melting lead, Isaac has been learning how to make sure your floor is level.

The first thing to do is to tie a piece of string tight across the floor at one side, making it the height you want the subfloor to sit on. In our case, this is the same height as the floor joists Troy put in on the newly poured concrete on the west side.

Here is the string on the south end of the kitchen:

Barely above the floorboards.

Here it is on the north end:

About 1.5" above the floor. This is right in front of the bathroom door. I only had to trip on it twice before it was mapped in my brain and I started automatically stepping over it. It's occurred to me that having your house in constantly new arrangements of disarray is very good for your brain. You're repeatedly being presented with new challenges and having to relearn things you thought you knew. I think this is even better than crossword puzzles (or dare I say, even knitting?!) for staving off Alzheimer's. Troy and I should do well in old age...

Anyway, back to the kitchen. After you have the master string in place, you put up new pieces of string perpendicular to the first over each floor joist in turn and fill in the gap with an appropriately sized shim.

Make sure you have a lot of shims in various heights.

Isaac made many shims from 1/16" to 1-1/4" by 1/16" increments.

They are then glued into place on top of the floor joists (which are under the floor boards, of course).

When the subfloor goes in, it will sit on the shims, still be supported by the floor joists, but be level.

Isaac has been getting quite a number of them done during the days and Troy does one or two in the evening.

It will be so exciting to have the subfloor down and have one continuous floor surface. It almost boggles my mind that that may happen soon. Small steps and milestones...I relish them all!

What We Do on Sunny Sunday Afternoons

2011-08-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

Troy and Isaac recently realized they could get a very big fresnel lens from an old rear-projection TV. (You know, the kind that nobody wants any more, especially if they're broken. The guy they got this one from said his wife wouldn't even let him keep it in the garage anymore; they had to go somewhere else to pick it up.)

And they realized they could use this lens to focus the power of the sun and burn just about anything...

Before application of concentrated solar power:

(These are lead wheel weights--fingers included for scale.)

After:

The first video nicely shows the set up of the lens. Isaac built the frame for it. I will warn you that the end of the video is blurred and you may quit watching anytime it's not worth it to you. (Besides the set up, it also records the breaking of a bottle, the instantaneous scorching of lumber and the melting of an aluminum lid.)

This next video shows the melting of the lead shown in the pics above. I would encourage you to watch past the first part--I finally figure out that I need to focus the video while it's shooting. (It gets better, I promise.)

Here is the brick after it's had lead melted on it. The circle in the middle is melted brick, a/k/a glass.

For reference:
Lead melts at 400-500^C
Aluminum at 660^C
Bricks melt at 1,000^C

The Kitchen's Torn Apart...Time to Make a Plan

2011-08-01T04:54:00.000-07:00

We had a good trip to Missouri last week visiting with family. (You can see I played around with the panoramic feature on my camera. If you look close (click pic to embiggen) you can see how it's stitched together from separate pictures.)

On the way home, I put on my construction hat and got Troy to list off everything we need to yet do in the kitchen so we could get a little organized and I would know what was going on. It was a long list.

Before winter sets in, we would like to:
1. rough in plumbing for sink, tap over stove, and island sink
2. put in propane line for stove
3. remove pipes from old boiler heat
4. level floor
5. put in subfloor
6. rough in wiring, including power for island (some of this is done)
7. install or at least rough in stove vent
8. put up vapour barrier
9. put up drywall
10. blow insulation into walls
11. put foam insulation on ceiling
12. drywall on ceiling
13. install tile on floor where the oil stove will go
14. install oil stove and new oil storage tank

After that we can (listed in no particular order):
15. final measure and order cabinets
16. install cabinets
17. install cabinet lights
18. remove paneling from wall
19. install counters (including island)
20. install broom closet behind fridge
21. build bench for booth
22. tile back splash
23. install wood flooring
24. install ceiling lights
25. trim window
26. run telephone wire

That will get us a functional kitchen with counters, floors, ceiling on one half, and lights. And it will include all the normal appliances in the kitchen--how exciting! We expect to live in a kitchen with unfinished interior walls and half a ceiling for a while. This will give Troy the access he'll need to wire and plumb the upstairs. We also are moving the door to the bathroom and probably won't finish the kitchen walls until we move the door (which won't be at least until we get the upstairs bathroom fully functional).

Troy is planning to build the bench seating for the booth so that may not get done for a while either as we can use our table and chairs in the corner without any loss of convenience.

That's the plan. (Let me know what we forgot!)

Someone's in the Kitchen...

2011-07-17T18:36:00.000-07:00

Isaac has been making himself useful by taking up the last of the linoleum off the kitchen floor this week. (He's also been sweeping up after himself--my floors haven't been this clean since last August when we started tearing it up!)

Troy's been cutting up the waste wood products and those have been getting bagged and hauled out to the curb.

What? Does this mean we're ready for some subfloor?? Dare I dream?

Things are starting to clear out and the room is looking spacious again. Sometimes I regret how much more "full" it's going to feel with counters, an island and table and chairs. Then I realize how crazy that is.

What's in the Garden?

2011-07-12T18:04:00.000-07:00

You may recall that Troy cut back in the garden this year. His corn was doing very well, but we got some mighty severe winds yesterday:

We were spared the extended power outage that a lot of others are dealing with, but a lot of the corn looks like elephants when through it. Ok, not elephants, but cows at least.

We have some fruit that has made it this far. The peach trees dropped a lot of fruit and the squirrels took almost all of the apples. The ones that are left are this....

...big.

I also found a red dragonfly in the garden. I'm not sure I've seen one before.

Possibly an Autumn Meadowhawk?

I also found lots of these beetles:

~~I don't know what they are,~~ These Detroit Japanese beetles are doing lots and lots of damage to the grape vines and apple trees. Not good.

Apparently they eat anything and everything in the garden and as an added bonus the larvae kill/damage your lawn. If curious, read this article for a program to reduce local populations.

Troy assures me that they also are not resistant to squashing.

Getting to the Bottom of It

2011-07-07T18:48:00.000-07:00

Troy wrote about tearing out the floor already, but I'll share a few more details.

Looking into the southeast corner before we started:

And after we were done:

(We didn't quite get the last layer of linoleum up in that corner. The lovely brown colour was painted on top of the original floral pattern.)

And looking into the north east corner:

We got this area down to the plank floor. From here we just build up.

There was one piece of flooring that didn't quite get pulled up (yet) in the corner.

It's amazing how high that step feels. (It's probably about 1.5".) We all laughed on Wednesday that the ceiling got quite a bit higher. There were a lot of layers on that floor, including a section of paneling. Yes, paneling on the floor. The house really needs a rescuing from its previous renovations.

Troy and David also found a wide gap between the kitchen and hallway to the dining room:

It's almost 4" wide, goes straight down to the basement. It was covered with a piece of trim. You know, why make something solid when trim will put it out of sight? Yup, this renovation project is a rescue mission.

All the layers of linoleum were somewhat interesting. Obviously there was an aqua and white check pattern at some point:

It was painted with at least two different colours.

The back of one of the layers had this basket weave pattern:

Was there ever a time when they sold two-sided linoleum? Stores could stock half as much inventory with that system.

It's a big pain in the butt and a lot of time and work, but it does feel good to rip out all this crap and start "fresh" and right. (Yes, Troy feels very strongly about how you do and do not fix/remodel a house. It is a moral issue as far as he is concerned.)

We will be busy for the next while bagging the trash (thankfully today is trash day) and cutting stuff up into manageable pieces. And ripping up that last bit of diarrhea brown painted linoleum. Why would anyone ever?

Why?

We triumph over the kitchen floor.

2011-07-06T20:02:00.000-07:00

I have been slowly chipping away at the kitchen. A lot of old crap had to be removed before the new not-crap could be installed. But the old flooring had just about defeated me. Depending on where you looked, it had 6-8 layers of vinyl and plywood and waferboard, and other assorted crap. The various colors and designs ranged from lurid to emetic. Of course, there were multiple sets of fasteners driven through all those many layers. We counted them. There were a jillion and six.

That's where I got stumped and discouraged on my own. Even with my biggest pry bar, it would literally tear a slot in the plywood sandwich rather than come loose from the floor. I just couldn't contemplate individually pulling a jillion and six nails and staples.

Flying in to the rescue came....DAVID AND WENDY! After feasting on some amazing Kulesia Burgers, we set to work.

With two or three of us prying simultaneously, we got it to come up in big 4' x 4' sheets, the bottom of which looked like a porcupine. Here's Wendy pounding 8,941 of those nails and staples flat so they could be further cut up and disposed of:

We christened the new game, WHACK-A-NAIL.

It will take a few days to hack up and dispose of all the resultant debris, but there's nothing specially difficult about that part. I feel like the project can carry on at its regular almost brisk pace now. Ok, steady. Ok, slow. Slow but steady.

So, once again, intentional Christian community solves intractable depressing problem.

You should try it if you haven't.

Finest regards,

troy

It's Midnight; Let's Talk Stoves

2011-07-05T21:21:00.000-07:00

I've been shopping for a stove, a range, a cooking appliance. We'd like to know what we're getting, and probably even order it before we finalize the cabinets. (Plus we may even hook it up and cook with it.)

I got stuck on the idea of a 36" hoping for more cooking space, especially when I have two big pots going for canning. I found two models that seemed to be available in my price range:

1. From Premier

The SLK249W model has five burners and that little side storage for the griddle plate. It didn't have great reviews, but most users concluded that you got your money's worth. Considering this is in the range that we want to pay for a stove, can we ask for anything more?

2. From Summit

It's the WLM4307 model, their basic 36". They have a similar model but with clock, timer, window and interior light for about $150 more. We don't want the clock or timer, are neutral on the window and would like the interior light. But spending $150 for a light doesn't seem worth it to me. I think it has an "old timey" look to it, however, that may fit the house.

The oven is a lot smaller than the first model I showed, only about 2.5 cuft. As long as it's big enough to cook a turkey, I think I'm good with that. I don't cook that much and I certainly don't make dinners for 20+ people, ever.

I couldn't find any reviews on the Summit ranges and that kind of worries me. If you know anything about them (or the Premier), please do tell!

Then Troy suggested looking at some Viking ranges because a friend likes them. First off, you can't find the price online so I know it is out of my league. But I did a little drooling. They also are available in about 20 colours (another indicator that I can't afford them). Despite having a beautiful red and striking orange, I decided on the cobalt blue. I think it would be stunning! This is the 36" model, VGCC5364QCBLP:

with 4 burners and center grill. And this is the 30" model, DCCG13014BCBLP:

with four buners under a continuous grill.

I went ahead and requested a quote, but I'll be surprised if they aren't double what we want to spend. Oh well. White is good.

ETA: I just got an email with an estimated quote. $7,950 for the 36" Viking and $4,400 for the 30". So I was not being overly pessimistic about the price.

I guess it'll be white...unless I go crazy with some enamel paint.

A Skirt a Day...

2011-06-30T18:52:00.000-07:00

For those of you who haven't been following it on Facebook, I have been participating in a challenge to wear a skirt (dress) every day in the month of June.

You should be able to see the complete album by clicking here.

What a month!!

I will be grateful to wear jeans, sneakers and a tshirt to work tomorrow!!

Birthday Present

2011-06-05T18:35:00.000-07:00

This is a top plate.

It has a matching bottom plate.

Troy is working on building me a kitchen wall right now.

Yay!

Breaking News

2011-05-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

The latest news at Maple Leaf Gardens is that we worked on the kitchen tonight. We poured cement to fill in the voids left after we cut out the old cement pad.

Earlier this week, Troy had finished putting in all the floor joists and foam insulation (on top of the new pad we poured).

For work tonight we threw some plywood down so we could walk around, dragged in the cement mixer and got to it.

Here you can see the gap we were filling:

The red at the top of the picture is the old slab (it still runs around the outside of the room). The bottom part of the picture is the plywood over the floor joists (so where the underfloor will be laid). In this part of the room there was roughly a 1" gap between the two. Most of the room was pretty close to that except the north wall which had a lot more of the floor crumble away.

To keep the concrete from getting all over everywhere we rigged up a shield which worked pretty well.

Troy would mix the concrete,

and pour it into the tub pictured at the top. Then we would dump it into/on the crack and I would work it in:

It all was fairly slick. Troy estimated we could finish by 11:00. I took that to mean 2:00 a.m. when plans hit the real world. Actually we were done by 10:00! Hooray. I think part of why we finished so quickly is that there were jobs we both could do and we didn't have a lot of time wasted because only one person [Troy] could do any of the work that needed to be done.

Our estimates jumped between needing three and four batches for the job. After mixing and spreading three loads, we finished with two half batches since 3.5 just wasn't enough! (That added a little time, but I took a little nap right there while Troy mixed the last half batch so not all was wasted. I have been soo tired this week.)

This is the area that took so much concrete:

The gap was much wider than elsewhere in the room and actually quicker to fill because of it. But it took a lot more concrete. It also had to actually be filled right up to the level of the old slab because Troy is going to need to lay the baseplate for the wall on top of it.

When we were finished, all the empty area under the old slab and between it and the new floor was filled.

The base is done; from here, everything is built up. And first up are the new interior walls...

Visitor

2011-05-26T19:11:00.000-07:00

I came home to a visitor yesterday. When I came out of the shop, he was really trucking along. I don't know where he thought he was going because he was headed away from any water that might be close. (Do all turtles like to leave near water?) The turtle wasn't huge, but a pretty good size. I'd say the shell was probably 6" x 8".

But once I slammed the door and started watching him, he stopped, plunked himself on the ground and tucked his head away. Can you see that his right eye is closed? He had the indignity of having to put up with an ant crawling on his face as he waited me out.

See the ant now?

I waited and waited, sitting very still, but the turtle out-waited me and eventually I went in the house to eat (and stop my legs from tingling). I went back out a few minutes later, sneaking around the garage, to see if I could catch him, but he was gone. Vanished. Off like a bandit.

(I hadn't known before how truly ugly turtle's tails are.)

Free and Clear

2011-05-17T18:05:00.000-07:00

As of 9:09 a.m. this morning, we own our house free and clear! It took us four years and 10 months. Woo hoo! We made extra payments any month we could and when it was low enough we just couldn't stand waiting 10 more months of regular payments, we paid the last of it off. Plus we started with a full 20% down payment on the house in the first place.

We both went to the bank. (I was not going to trust them to do it by mail because payments by mail had not worked very well in the past.) We had a discussion about whether we both had to go in person. It ended like this:

One of us: "Whether it's necessary or not, I am going to the bank to pay this off."
And the other responding: "Well, whether I need to or not, I am going to be there too!"

So we went this morning when Troy is off and I told them at work that I would be late. (They agreed that paying off the mortgage was a good reason to miss an hour or two.) It turns out I may as well as not have been there...

We're sitting in the waiting area and Mr Financial Adviser comes up saying, "So Troy, you're going to pay off your mortgage" or something like that with his hand out to shake Troy's hand. And I was apparently invisible. Completely not there (while strangely sitting right next to Troy). Troy noticed this rather odd behaviour and after giving me a look, smoothly said, "Yes, and this is my wife, Christina" clearly indicating the invisible woman beside him. Mr Financial Adviser then suddenly saw me and deigned to shake my hand.

We made it through the payment process where he did things like ask only for Troy's ID and information and not direct any questions to me. I was the one with the payment (since, you know, society has allowed women to do banking for a number of decades by now) but I'm surprised he didn't have Troy look at it first to make sure I did it right.

Paying off the mortgage is reason enough to celebrate, but we were also very much looking forward to kicking Bank of America in particular to the kerb. There have been unpleasant issues over the life of the loan, but I have to say they ended with a particular flourish today.

The part they were correct about was that it really did only take about 10 minutes. In and out. Then we went to McDonald's for breakfast to celebrate, and as if they knew, MickeyD's gave me the supersize Coke instead of the kiddie size you usually get with breakfast. Super, indeed!

We have no other plans for celebration. We didn't really know what to do. I guess a mortgage burning is traditional. Maybe we'll have a barbeque/mortgage burning later this summer when we get the deed. I'll think about that...stay tuned.

P.S. The picture is of the north side of the house, taken when we first moved in. (One of the first things Troy did was put that door back in. It's the one that we use most often as we go to and from the shop.) I'll add a note to David who recently asked if we were planning a sitting area anywhere and I incorrectly answered no. Actually I have had in mind to put a deck off the back door there and wrap it around the west side into the "corner" of the house where Troy hasn't quite expanded the garden. Let me know what you think of that idea.

A Taste of Spring

2011-05-14T04:56:00.000-07:00

So first of all, nothing going on with the kitchen. After saying last fall that he was absolutely not doing a garden this year...except tomatoes and corn of course because saying you're not having a garden can't possibly mean that you do without home-grown tomatoes and corn...Troy has been working like a dog on the garden. (And I don't know about you, but I didn't believe it when he said it anyway. I mean, really.)

He resisted past his usual start time, but in the end couldn't resist adding other edibles. I can't really complain because the first thing he put in was beets which is my "because saying you're not having a garden can't possibly mean that you do without home-grown beets...they're so easy." The only problem with that is that I can't possibly eat that many beets fresh and I have no kitchen in which to can them. Houston, we have a problem. Anyone know off the top of their head if you can freeze beets? I have begun to think that I will have to do a lot more freezing this year. I'm not excited about that.

Anyway, the reason I really decided to go ahead and post something today is that some of our fruit trees are blooming. And who can resist apple and peach blossoms?

We might actually get fruit this year on four of our eight trees in the front orchard. Hmm...that will mean more canning.

Now, about that kitchen....

A Story w/o Words

2011-05-07T20:01:00.000-07:00

I got to visit with my mom at my sister's today. We went shopping (of course) and out for lunch.

Here is the story of a girl who was tickled and made to laugh:

Happy mother's day, all!

Water, trailers, firewood, earthmoving, and a plan to save the world, but not kitchen remodeling.

2011-04-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

We were making rapid progress on the kitchen, and then life intervened again. I find that being alive and engaged does keep one's dance card rather full. I am mystified (and frankly saddened) by those who seem to do little else besides work and television. Something smells rotten in the kingdom of stewardship if you ask me. But enough of potshots against wasting your life. Ooops. Did it again...sorry. As another aside, our church small group is reading a book titled, "Jesus, Mean and Wild". It illustrates with many examples how Jesus was not a very nice man and ran around getting up into peoples' business and making them uncomfortable. The author suggests that if you're just trying to be "nice" to people, and not offend them, ever, you're probably doing it wrong. So, if I have offended you slothfull TV addicts out there, well hey, that's what Jesus would do.

OK, I really am coming to the point now.

I have not been laying around watching my soaps while the kitchen goes undone. I got a load of firewood, which I have been hacking to pieces and stacking. Steady progress there. The frost is definitely out of the ground, so I used the front end loader on the tractor to spread some more fill around the east end of the shop to level things out. I replaced the wimpy, sucky, broken axle on my little trailer. It developed a bad wheel bearing--again! It was the kiss of death.

I don't mind fixing something once, but two failures in a short period usually means a big upgrade. I went to my favorite junk yard and bought a big manly rear axle from an old minivan. I feel like I have graduated to "big boy" tires instead of the rinky dinky 12" tires/wheels that the trailer came with. It does make the little rinky dinky fenders look silly, since they really don't do much to cover the big sedan sized tires.

And most celebratorily, I got the water hooked up to the mad scientist lair, um, I mean the shop. Part of the biodiesel process involves literally washing the raw contaminated new biodiesel with water. I have traditionally used hot water because it works faster than cold water. And I have hauled that water in five gallon buckets, because I had no running water in the shop. I make a batch every week or two. Each batch needs 5 wash cycles. Each wash cycle needs (4) five gallon buckets, so 20 buckets a week almost. So, for four years, that's 4,000 buckets hauled by hand. Whew! Makes me tired just thinking about it.

Two weeks ago, something snapped in my brain, and I determined that I had hauled my last bucket of water by hand. Years ago, before the shop foundation was poured, I dug a trench and "roughed in" all the utilities, electric, water and sewer. But there was always something just a little bit more important on the list of things to accomplish, so the final hookup for water just never happened.

Once I had "HAD IT" with hauling water in all sorts of inclement weather, the actual process of finishing the hookup only took three or four hours. I was like an eight year old kid who just got his first bicycle, watching with glee as the water gushed out of the garden hose. Now that I had pressurized running water in the shop, I could afford to switch to cold water washing of the biodiesel. While somewhat less efficient than hot water, WHO CARES, I don't have to haul it by hand. So now I have to do one or two more "wash cycles" on each batch, but my energy costs for electricity crashed through the floor, as noted by our last post. Stewardship ROCKS!

And finally, I have been working on a plan to save the world (in my spare time). As a species, we face several of the greatest challenges ever to our survival as a civilized group. Here is a short (incomplete) list if you want to google them all and go get depressed:

Peak oil
Peak water
Peak soil
Peak coal
Peak uranium
Peak natural gas

Peak phosphorus
Peak copper
Peak iron ore
Peak food
Peak rare earth metals
World overpopulation

I have pretty much worked out how to solve this, but it will take a month or two to write a really convincing summary with all the supporting documentation. Solving all the world's resource problems turns out to be a bit knottier problem than I originally imagined.

I am totally unconvinced that the government of any country, or any group of countries, will do anything meaningful to solve any of these problems. So that pretty much leaves it up to us. I hope to give you the tools and information so that when you consider every meaningful consumption event in your life, you will understand how to do it in such a way as to avert or at least mitigate the oncoming tragedies. Food, housing, transportation and conservation will be the big categories.

If you really really can't wait to save the planet and your fellow humans, I'll give you a little teaser where you could get some significant hints:

Paul Wheaton

The biggest permaculture forum on the web

permaculture meets inner city, aka the urbanfarmingguys

permaculture podcast and interviews

Greening the desert by Geoff Lawton

or do a youtube search for Geoff Lawton and watch everything he has done.

How to heat your house for free, forever, almost anywhere

transportation stuff

Stay tuned...

troy

Cool It!

2011-04-02T08:35:00.000-07:00

Troy had been nagging me for almost two months about whether the power [electric] bill had arrived, and if I noticed "anything." He hinted that he had done something that he thought was going to make a "big difference" but wouldn't tell me what.

He was so excited when I showed him the envelope last week: the power bill was here! He ripped it open and was very jubilant. Compared to the same month last year, the usage had dropped from 1150 kwh to 212--about a sixth!!

So I asked him what had made this big difference. It's not like he was turning off all the power when we were gone (I would have noticed that when I got home) and I didn't notice any other changes.

No, he said, he had stopped using hot water in the cleaning cycle of the biodiesel process. Holy cow! that must have been a lot of water!

I've now caught him washing dishes in cold water too. (He washes them right away; I think that helps.)

He did claim, however, to still use warm water to shower.

NOW IN 3-D!!!

2011-03-20T13:53:00.000-07:00

During our vacation, Troy experimented (and had me experiment) with taking "3-D pictures." Most people are not aware that one can produce "stereo pairs" of photographs with ordinary cameras, film or digital. Further, most folks are not aware that they can be viewed with no special equipment right here on your computer screen.

Taking them is easy, so long as the subject is holding very still. Method: take a picture. Move the camera 6 cm (2.3") to the right. Take another picture. Pow, you just took a stereo pair. Sure, there are fancier ways, like mounting two cameras side by side (6 cm apart) and triggering them simultaneously, but the results are the same, if the subject will hold still.

Viewing them (without equipment) takes some funny skills that are easy for some, and difficult for others. It's basically the same skill as viewing "The Magic Eye" posters. (These pictures should be a easier than the "Magic Eye" because your brain already knows how to see regular things in 3-D. You don't have to look for the mystery picture.) It is also the same "skill" you used as a kid while looking through the "ViewMaster" to see ultra-3D images of Disney characters and the Grand Canyon.

The stripped down version is to look at the left picture with your left eye, and the right picture with your right eye. Then relax and stop thinking about it and let your brain do its three-D trick. There are many websites dedicated to teaching you how to do this. This Wiki article is fairly exhaustive in the many possible methods to simulate 3-D.

For a nuts and bolts discussion of HOW to accomplish this without equipment, click here.

Now that you've read up on the theory, and practised up on the dots, you can try these scenes:

In the woods on Asbury campus:

Also on part of the Asbury campus:

Tree roots consuming a rock at Natural Bridge State Park:

A twisted off tree trunk at a rest stop in along I-65 in Indiana:

I hope you've got the trick now, and have had some fun! Troy and Isaac can do this very quickly now and find it very amusing. I am much more challenged in this area, and can only manage it with the dots. I haven't gotten any of the pictures to work...yet.

Spring Startups

2011-03-19T15:43:00.000-07:00

Troy and Isaac did some work yesterday on the wood that was dropped off a week or two ago. (Slab wood--I don't know if I've told the story here, but I'm not going to right now. If you're curious, ask Troy about it.)

Of course, to pull the trailer of split wood around, they needed the lawn tractor to be running. First up was to replace the dead battery. Then it started up but didn't sound right to Troy. He stopped the engine and looked under the hood. And found this:

A very impressive mouse nest in the cooling fan housing.

The mouse bolting out of the tractor when he started it was another clue that this might be a problem.

They managed to clean this out and get the tractor running smoothly.

After this experience, they checked the splitter before starting it. Sure enough, an even bigger nest in its engine housing. It was much less accessible and harder to clean out than the lawn tractor, but they got it done.

Between yesterday and today, Isaac got half of one of racks stacked with wood. Great! Now it'll be my turn to finish what he started...

Yay, Spring!

2011-03-18T19:18:00.000-07:00

It felt so warm (outside) when we got home yesterday that I went out and looked specifically and carefully through all the front gardens for signs of tulips and daffodils. Nothing.

This afternoon when I went outside, I saw our first crocus. I love crocuses.

I looked at the gardens again: the tulips and dafs are about one inch high. Yay, spring!

Under Kentucky

2011-03-17T19:47:00.000-07:00

We made our way over to Mammoth Cave and did the "New Entrance" tour on Wednesday. Mammoth is the longest known cave but it doesn't have a lot else going for it. There are not many formations in the cave to see, but we got a few sights:

Lots of flat ceilings and tumbled down rocks:

The famous "Frozen Niagara Falls"

(This is just the very top; they "flow" down for quite a ways.)

Troy caught a cave cricket in his flashlight:

And just at the exit we finally got some traditional stalagmites/stalactites:

When down there it's hard to imagine that you are 250 feet below the surface and even harder to imagine being one of the first to go down with a lantern and no knowledge of what you might find. (Creepy!)

After the tour, we met Tammy, a friend who moved from South Bend a few years ago and now finds herself in Bowling Green. We had a great visit which included walking around the downtown square.

Someone had decorated the statue of "Flora" with daffodils that were blooming:

I caught a bird on top of this statue, which I thought might be Fauna, but was not.

I got five family pictures on this trip which has to be a record. (I've gone a whole summer without getting one!) This, however, was one of them, taken by a stranger in the cave:

This is why you have to take five! Fortunately, the other ones are a little better.

And now we are home. A couple more days off work for me (one more for Troy) and then back to what we call normal. Maybe by then I'll be ready to eat--I am so stuffed after this week of eating, eating, eating!!

Kentucky: rain and shine

2011-03-14T13:35:00.000-07:00

We've been having a good time in Kentucky. We've done a lot of hiking.

First with David and Lisa and family on part of the Asbury campus

and today at Natural Bridge State Park. The rain didn't get worse until our way back.

Journey of a Thousand Paper Cuts

2011-03-11T15:53:00.000-08:00

Oh wait, that's not how that goes, is it?

In any case, we continue to take steps to getting the kitchen done. Troy is this far on the floor joists and insulation:

Less than half way. The third one is lower because that is where the plumbing for the sink will go.

One thing that I helped with last weekend was putting one-inch foam in the bays of the outside walls.

Troy doesn't want the cellulose insulation sitting directly on the concrete floors because IF the concrete ever gets wet it will transfer to the cellulose and do bad things. With the foam insulation, the dampness won't be able to get to the insulation.

I did a very good job, I must say! ;-)

A final "big picture" view:

Simple Update

2011-03-05T17:25:00.000-08:00

Troy was very happy to have the level bubble float right between the lines when he checked the first half of the slab.

But we're not surprised, are we? We know Troy does good work.

The week I was gone, Troy poured the first half. He said it went quite well by himself.

The next week, he did the second half with only minimal help from me:

Here's our picture proving he used rebar, in case we should ever have to prove such a thing. You can see he mixed the concrete right in the kitchen. He dumped each batch into the purple tub you see in the background and then poured that in the form.

It was a lot closer than he expected on the gravel; there wasn't much left by the time the slab was done. But all we really needed was enough and we had it.

We cleaned up the tools and cement mixer by 10:00 that night (and it was a cold and rainy night, too) and the slab was finished!!

This week we have had pressure treated 2x8s stacked in the kitchen drying out. When Troy bought them, he wondered if they would be stored outside and wet. He was so happy to be directed to the covered storage area to load them up. Well, apparently they had just been moved there because they were wet and frozen. (He had a horrible time tying them into the truck because they were so slippery!)

A week with fans on them has fixed them right up.

Troy has the first floor joists in and one bay filled with foam insulation. Go, Troy, go!

Turning a Corner

2011-02-15T19:33:00.000-08:00

If I were still in math classes, I'd say that the slope of the function of our kitchen progress just turned from negative to positive. We have switched directions. In plainer English, we have exchanged demolition for new construction.

Wait? You didn't hear me? NEW CONSTRUCTION!

It wasn't the most exciting new construction, but I'm not going to let that dampen my mood. It was the first.

The two of us dug out half of the gravel in the kitchen. Once the grunt work was done, I left the fine leveling and raking to Troy.

I also left him to himself as he was figuring and calculating and muttering while trying to figure exactly how far down he had to go to make the slab thick enough and make the subfloor line up with the eastern half of the floor. (Or whatever part of that he decided to pick as "the" height. It's not like it is very level.)

There is a 3 inch drop from the level of the floor in the main part of the kitchen to the western edge of the porch. That was good when it was a porch and rain needed to drain away from the house. It's not so good when you want to make it into a kitchen floor. Unlike the people who did the original remodel, we plan to deal with this slope and have a kitchen floor that doesn't make you feel like you're sailing the high seas.

Troy was hoping to have the concrete ready to pour with me this weekend. Bad news? I am gone this weekend. :( So that may be a bit of a delay. In the meantime he got exactly one stake in the floor for the forms.

Kitchen Gravel Pit

2011-02-06T17:34:00.000-08:00

Yup, the "strip mining"'s done and the gravel pit's been completely revealed. All of the concrete slab is removed.

Troy's been working hard and without any help from me. I got a cold soon after the one work night I did put in and it rendered me quite useless.

I did put in my time on Saturday, however, when I spend two hours at Lowe's putting together a cabinet package. I now have an idea of what the cabinets are going to cost and some nice printouts of what it could look like. (My graph paper drawings were gratifyingly accurate, but the new printouts have actual door styles drawn in, etc.)

I also have something new to obsess about. I finally fell asleep going over every detail of our conversation/plan. And I woke up this morning still thinking about it. Little details to add; things he put in that I don't think we need. The fact that I made no provision of where to put outlets in the island. You know, things like that.

We are still a long ways from cabinets, but that hasn't sunk in. In a day or two I will crash on that realization. In the meantime I am happily obsessed with the idea of actually having cabinets in the kitchen. Wow. That will be amazing.

While I'm writing, why don't I share a few pictures from the "Blizzard of 2011," as it was so quickly dubbed.

We had snow blown in the cracks of two doors and a window. Here's the front door:

We knew this door was bad, but this was the first time we had anything like this. It was a very strong wind. And very small pellet-y snow.

I don't think we got huge amounts of snow from the storm, but we did get very large drifts.

One day I ploughed my way through a drift in the driveway when I came home but by the time Troy came home a couple hours later, he couldn't make it through. It had to be over the hood of his car.

Thank you, snow blower. (I had to shovel a path to get wood before he got home--that was some heavy snow!)

All for now. Half time's over and I'm going to get back to the game...

Sledgehammer vs Concrete

2011-01-26T19:35:00.000-08:00

The hole in our floor is getting bigger! We're about half way with the concrete, I think.

Tonight I hauled buckets while Troy whacked apart the concrete with a sledgehammer. He's discovered that the sledgehammer is faster than the jackhammer. More work, but faster. So out with the jackhammer!

This was the first time I helped him with this job. I carried out two buckets to dump by the shop driveway while Troy whacked off more concrete pieces.

For some reason I had the idea that I would be waiting for Troy--that I would be able to haul and dump the buckets faster than he could fill them. That was wrong.

As I realized this, I didn't think I was going to be able to keep up the pace. The buckets were already a little heavier than I could manage to do all night, and if I didn't fill them as much, there was no way I could keep up with Troy.

Then I walked into the kitchen and saw Troy leaning on his sledgehammer breathing hard, and he said, "I don't think I can keep up with you, honey." Ha ha ha. We weren't competing, but obviously we were pushing each other all the same!!

We both managed to keep going and put in an hour or so. A couple more nights like that and the concrete should be out.

Wow. It seems so easy when you write about it.

A Word on Cold

2011-01-23T12:28:00.000-08:00

Last week we ran out of biodiesel. We've been using more than Troy's been able to produce. (That would be a pretty common way to run out of something.)

This meant that the oil stove in the kitchen couldn't run for a day or two. And it didn't happen during a peculiar January warm snap. So things got cold.

The living room was 44^ when we would get home from work. Cold.

To deal with the problem
  1. we wore more clothes,
  2. I tended the woodstove even more diligently, and
  3. Troy stole some biodiesel from the shop stove. (Now the shop isn't being heated, but I don't feel bad about that at the moment.)
We're back in business, the living room is usually in the low 50s when we get home and Troy is making more fuel as quick as he can.

I made a posting on Facebook at some point about the cold and got a number of responses. (44^ being colder than your average home temperature.)

But it got me to thinking and comparing to last year. Last year Troy couldn't make more biodiesel because he wasn't set up in the shop yet--it was strictly a warm weather activity. So he stored up as much as he could and we rationed.

Last year we only ran the oil stove overnight. That way the house was a little warm when we woke up. (And even more key is that the shower is off of the kitchen and the bathroom wouldn't be frigid.) We turned it off during the day letting the house cool until we got home when we could heat it back up with the wood stove. During cold weather, the living room was regularly 42-44^ when I got home. It was a cold winter.

And it also go me to thinking about how it was when I was growing up. We used wood to heat and Dad would stoke it up every night before going to sleep. But I can still remember many nights when the air was so cold in my bedroom that my nose would feel numb. I would lie awake trying to choose between a frozen nose or breezing stale air under the covers. Neither was very appealing!

Anyway, I guess my point is that even though we got ourselves in a pinch for a bit, things are still improving. We've had the luxury this year of running the oil stove pretty much full time and it has made a big difference.

I still look forward to the day when this house is insulated and I can come home to 65^ and raise it to 75 with the wood stove!! :)

Tearing it Up

2011-01-22T12:26:00.000-08:00

Troy has been working in the kitchen again (still). He has the south support done for the beam:

The north one is started but needs a little more work.

You can see the nice solid base he made for them. Underneath the 2x6 is a lineup of 2x4s pieces all secured in place to fill in the gap above the foundation wall in between the floor joists.

We have also cut out the concrete of the kitchen floor. Troy traced a line,

and we followed it with the saw and a vacuum.

He did some on his own, but it really is a two-person job. Troy handled the skilsaw and I went right along side with the vacuum. We went through one blade and had to clean the vacuum filter twice. As expected, it was dusty.

And just like colouring and puzzles, now that the outlines have been established, the interior can be worked on. Troy's been running the jackhammer and hauling material out.

He is planning to reuse the gravel in the reconstruction and is hauling the large pieces out to the shop driveway to fill in a slope.

The plan is to do one half at a time so we can pile the gravel on the half of the floor we're not working on.

Which means, in addition to everything else it's been, my kitchen has become a gravel pit.

The turning point on the kitchen, and, how cement sucks as an insulator.

2011-01-11T07:14:00.000-08:00

As noted by my lovely wife, destruction has commenced on the old cement floor of the kitchen addition (the old porch). When we moved in, the kitchen was basically unlivable in the winter time. It would have made a great textbook illustration of all the things to do wrong on a house in the North Cold Country to make it unheatable. Here's a short list: crappy insulation job, and many spots with no insulation at all. Cement floor, with the cement being exposed on the outside. (r-1 per FOOT, I think of the wood framing as crappy insulation because it's r-1 per inch.). The cement floor functioned as a giant ice block four months of the year. Big crappy windows with aluminum frames, poorly sealed. No vapor barrier, no tyvek/house wrap, no caulking of joints or cracks. We're going to fix all that. The outside sealing has nearly been done. The crappy windows are gone, replaced by one small efficient triple glazed, double Low-E vinyl framed window.

In order to isolate the cement floor/slab from the living space, I have to "lower" the surface of the cement about eight inches. Then I can put 2 x 8's in there, with room for foam insulation board, and room for plumbing drains and whatnot. My first exploratory hole revealed the best possible news, a thin hard 3" shell of good quality cement, over good gravel fill. I was concerned that maybe they had poured one gigantic block of solid concrete, which would have been tedious in the extreme to "lower" eight inches.

So, I have to make a defining cut around the perimeter, leaving my solid hard old concrete for the new inner wall to stand on. We do this with a diamond edged cement blade in our cheapo Harbor Freight circular saw, cutting about an inch deep. Don't use your nice Makita saw for this, since it will be inhaling abrasive dust into the motor the whole time. Ideally, you have somebody standing right there with a shop vac, with the nozzle sucking up 90% of the dust since it makes copious clouds of it. And use a respirator/mask, since you don't want silicosis.

Once we make that defining cut, then we break out the cement inside, and also dig out the gravel until we have a nice flat base to pour our new concrete on. This will be precisely leveled using a water level, the best thing since sliced bread.

Or you can make one by buying 25 feet of 3/8" vinyl clear tubing, and affixing it to a plastic quart jar some how, but the vinyl tubing alone was about half the cost of the whole finished product, so I just bought it. Great precision, only needs one person to operate. Works around corners (which laser levels can't). Setup time is about a minute. Slick product and pretty cheap.

We will reuse the gravel to make the new cement. Once we pour the new recessed or sunken floor at the precise correct height, we add our new floor framing. This will beautifully line up with the height of the main floor, removing the 2 1/2" tilt we had in the old floor. We will redeem this old house in every way that we can. As usual, redemption is an expensive and time consuming process. And worth every bit of it.

Excuse me while I go make a mess...

Two Things of Note

2011-01-09T17:30:00.000-08:00

First I should say that Troy and I finished up the support beam this week by adding the 2x10s to each side. He has worked on making a place for the upright supports to rest on. (You're not surprised to hear that what was there was completely inadequate, right?)

While he was cleaning up the beam, this happened:

Troy, 1; hammer, 0. Fortunately, nothing actually went flying and Troy was not hurt.

THE OTHER THING OF NOTE IS THAT TROY STARED ON THE FLOOR TONIGHT. Oh sorry, I don't have to yell when I'm typing, do I?

It's been a little loud, but well worth it.

I'm going to let Troy give you all the details so look for a post from him soon.

Christmas Kitchen

2010-12-26T18:31:00.000-08:00

Were you expecting more pictures of decorations? Nope, this is more of a state-of-the-kitchen-at-Christmas update.

Troy has begun reinforcing/building up the support beam across the ceiling. It was mentioned in the very first kitchen post. Here is the best picture I could find of it:

It sagged a lot. And it had no support at all on the north end. And it wasn't strong enough.

Troy started by filling in all the openings between each of the wall studs from the second floor. That stopped a lot of cold drafts from falling into the kitchen. He also had to trim off all the studs that were sticking out the bottom and cut the bottom of the boards level.

Once that was done, he could begin to rebuild it. He has started to apply 2x6s to the bottom of the beam with glue and nails. After each layer, the beam is jacked up to a slight arch shape.

I am so glad Isaac is around to help Troy! It would be quite a chore to do this on his own, which of course would mean that I would be helping him (ever the reluctant helper). They have to wait 24 hours between layers so they are progressing at the rate of one board per day.

Having the jacks up where the old wall was has given an insight into just how small and narrow the kitchen was before the addition onto the porch. I actually wonder if the foyer was part of the kitchen at that time because it's hard to believe a farmhouse kitchen would be that small. I sure would be interested in knowing the history of additions and modifications to this house.

Although Troy had already seen that there had been a fire in the kitchen at some point, this work has revealed just how much damage had been done. He thinks they're lucky the whole house didn't go. And it's made him wonder if that was when they decided to build out onto the porch. (If you have to replace part of the wall anyway...)

Who knows!?

Christmas Has Come

2010-12-23T17:41:00.000-08:00

Christmas has arrived!! Thanks again to Peggy who provided me with my first artificial tree. (My first tree in years.)

I managed to pick up Isaac from O'Hare today and Tom and Clures arrived yesterday.

And I have a five day weekend. (That's how to manage your work week!)

Remember the star I knit last year? It's found a place to "shine."

The tree is the most overloaded I've ever had. Tom thinks it needs a few more.

I had a lot of fun hanging each ornament with a comment starting with, "Remember this one..."

Old house archeology

2010-12-18T10:47:00.000-08:00

When working on an old house, it is not uncommon to find clues about how old it is. Old house archeology if you will. Based on the types and thicknesses of lumber, and the kind of nails and so on, we already know the house was built in several stages.

We think the most recent stage was the kitchen addition, where the kitchen swallowed the porch. Since I ran across waferboard, that told me it had to be in the 70's or later. I'm so old, I remember vividly when wafterboard (aspenite, chipboard, etc) came out.

While tearing up the floor, I ran across two artifacts. One was a religious tract dated in the early 70's, titled, "WILL MANKIND DESTROY ITSELF?" This was a product of the Watchtower publishing house, an arm of the Jehovah's Witnesses. This, together with the six-pack rings were used to shim up part of the floor. I found the juxtaposition of a beer product and a cult religious pamphlet to be amusing.

As an interesting side note, the Witnesses have predicted several times about when the last great battle will occur (Armageddon), when Jesus will return, and the resurrection of the dead. To date, they have been 100% wrong, which looks bad when you are a self proclaimed prophetic organization. Like many cults, the followers do not seem to be overly alarmed by their abysmal batting average.

Ultimately, they will probably get it "right" by accident. If you predict the end of the world long enough...

I prefer my nice conservative orthodox Christian Reformed denomination.

At any rate, we should all be ready to meet our maker, since we will all end up face to face as it were, in the next hundred years.

Finest regards,

troy

Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T10:48:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving! We miss our family today. Although, frankly, mine is not having a big dinner etc, because they did that weeks ago in Canada on their own day. We will be having dinner tonight with a group of friends and as-yet-unknown people. Troy is working on the ham and I am setting to Cook's Country's garlic mashed potatoes later today.

Meanwhile, things I am thankful for:

The little things
-My car door has a handle again (Thank you, Troy) and that the mechanic was able to fix the fan squeak I've lived with for more than a year.
-Yarn, wool, string, tarn, Goodwill sweaters to unravel and sticks to put them all to good use.
-Football
-Thrift and second hand stores filled with surprises and "treasures."

The good things
-The fire roaring beside me.
-The improvements made to the house and the potential for so much more.
-A new job with new challenges, in a whole new field, and so close to home!

The great things
-A husband who wants only the best for me.
-Family and friends who meet me where I'm at. (They know me and love me anyway!)
-Christ who died for the cosmos (including me) and still intercedes on our/my behalf.
-A church which provides a home for me, opportunities to grow and is filled with so many passionate people.

Of course, each list is very incomplete; there are so many things! Despite having a Day of Thanksgiving, we can't possibly contain it or limit to one day. Live a thankful life. I try.

Siding Success

2010-11-07T18:41:00.000-08:00

Troy promised we would get done the siding today, and we did. (Feel free to cheer--I did.)

As we were beginning:

Half way there:

We decided to fudge on the lower boards so that they line up with the ones on the west wall. (The north wall is vertical while the west wall has a slope, so they would not match up if we just did the usual 8 inches on each board.) The result is that the lower ones are slightly closer together, but even if you can find it on the picture, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find it in "real life."

We worked until after sunset, (but not after dark) and were back inside in time for me to watch the second half of the [pathetic] Colts game. (Could we have any more starters out injured?)

Troy measuring for the last piece

(Don't let this picture fool you. It was almost dark here, but my steady hand and a half second exposure makes it look like noon!)

So there you have it. Siding on the kitchen done. My part, anyway. Troy has been working on trim and flashing:

But soon we'll be moving to inside work on the kitchen.

We had a little inch worm to help us measure: (Any Anne Murray fans out there?)

For Halloween, I Dressed up as...

2010-10-31T19:54:00.000-07:00

...a construction worker!! Steel-toed boots? Check! Tool belt? Check! Head lamp for working in the dark? Check!

Oh wait. That's my real life.

Troy was pretty serious about getting the siding done this weekend. To make that as likely as possible, we started work on Friday night. Worked a couple hours and got three courses run along the west wall.

Saturday we worked another couple hours in the evening and got the siding up to the window.

This afternoon Troy put the flashing and J mold the window and we got going again.

By 9:00 we had the west side finished and called it a day.

Sadly, we did not get to the north side. (Working until 2:30 in the morning probably would have gotten that done, but we didn't want to do that again.)

Despite not meeting Troy's lofty goal, we did show a good effort and have everything done that is visible from the road. That is a good milestone to reach in any case.

More on Siding

2010-10-23T20:07:00.000-07:00

Yes, work did continue on the following Sunday. (I'm talking about the 10th, a while ago, I know.) We started with it looking like this:

We had spent the night getting the plywood up. Now it was time to put the siding on top of it.

By the end of the day:

we had this much siding up; not quite done the tall section.

Work then abated for a weekend or two. But as my luck would have it, I got a Tuesday off. Tuesdays are days that Troy is home for half the day. He made big plans. Then he got lucky...he had only one or two checks scheduled and no exams. So he had the great plan of rescheduling the checks and working with me all day. Lucky me.

So 13 hours later we finished the siding up the tall stretch and some of the siding on the bump out:

(The new stuff is on the lower angled part on the right; not the longer wall that still has windows.)

But that's not all. (13 hours for that much siding would make us very slow indeed.) Troy took out the rest of the windows and then my task was to clean up most of the glass.

We had a very lovely open view of the woods with their fall colours:

Until we were done covering it up with plywood anyway...

That's about where we're at. You can make out the framed opening for the new window.Yes, it's quite a bit less window than what we had. But 1. it'll be warmer (and that seems more and more important as the temperatures drop!) and 2. it'll make more room for cupboards (and that seems more and more important as I have my kitchen "stored" in at least three different rooms).

Tomorrow we may put in the window. Or maybe it'll be more siding. I certainly don't know the plan. Whatever it is, I've been notified I'm on call.

One other job Troy's been working on is to fill the gaping cracks between the walls and the concrete floor. In this pic you can see the sunshine shining through the gap:

He's using foam and sections of 2x4s to seal up the openings and stabilize the wall. The angled studs were flapping in the breeze, so to speak, and the wall literally bounced as Troy tried to screw the plywood and siding to it.

It's not done yet, but it is starting to feel like the kitchen is getting sealed up.

A Hard Day's Night

2010-10-10T02:24:00.000-07:00

Troy and I put in a good day's work today. The problem is that we didn't start until 6:30 or so.

Troy was actually home earlier than usual--they closed early because of the ND game. But I was off visiting my sister. (Really, I was picking up another oil stove for Troy, but it was only 30 minutes from my sister, so I was visiting her "on the side." That was when I put in a 2 mile walk to warm up my calves for standing on a ladder most of the night.)

So late start = late finish. 2:30 a.m., if I may get specific. Troy didn't want to stop, however, until the wall looked white again. Our own special shade of "invisible white." At least that's what he's hoping...

Oh, what were we doing? I guess I haven't said, have I.

We were filling in the gap on the outside of the house beside the kitchen with four layers of foam insulation (7 inches) and covering it up with plywood.

Here you can see the insulation is done, and I took the pic while waiting for Troy to cut the first piece of plywood:

The bit on the left is the kitchen. The siding there's been covered with plywood and is ready for new siding. The lines you see there are actually chalk, Troy's attempt to make the plywood look like siding so it won't look different from the road. Yes, we're paranoid.

We did manage to get all the plywood up. Kept the deer from eating on the garden too. We could hear them pacing around in the woods but they didn't dare come out.

But finally it was done (that piece of it) and I proved once again that I can be in bed before Troy's finished saying, "You're done, honey. Thanks for your help."

I don't want to think about it, but tomorrow we put up the siding itself...

One thing I keep reminding myself of is how cold and wet it was last year doing the shop roof at this time of year. Today's hot and sunny weather is quite different!! and makes for a much better experience.

Don't Say I'm Not Responsive to my Readers!

2010-10-06T18:31:00.000-07:00

So I had a request from a reader, who shall not remain unnamed--that would be Wendy--for some kitchen pictures. I don't really think there's much to show, but in this case, my opinion doesn't matter!

Let's start by putting our "worst foot" forward:

You can see the walls are all down to the studs. You can't see the work on the floor but it's is as far as I described in the previous post.

Here's a view in the other direction:

It's slightly neater on that side of the room. I've outlined the window that was replaced, in case it wasn't completely obvious. (Unfortunately, the outline isn't completely obvious, but anyway...)

Here's the hallway and the place where Troy took out the first window:

The kitchen is pretty chilly these days. Besides the removal of any insulation that was in the walls and the exposure of the cold concrete slab, we also have actual air flow:

See all that sunshine filtering in under the walls? At some point, Troy will be cutting 2x4s to fit between all those angled studs and gluing/sealing them with some foam. Right now the "braces" are actually pinned to the floor at all and flex at any provocation.

No pictures of the work outside, yet...apparently this weekend will be full steam forward on siding. (Julie and Joel, this would be your cue to confirm dinner and save me on Saturday night!! ;-)

Didn't I say it would be a kitchen saga?

2010-10-03T12:04:00.000-07:00

Work has been happening even if we haven't written about it. The interior of the kitchen is pretty much down to the bare studs. Half of the floor has been removed to the concrete slab below.

Two windows have been replaced. Replaced with plywood that is. Last weekend Troy took out the one that was in the little hallway between the kitchen and dining room. That was the first day I lit the woodstove. A 3'x6' hole is quite gaping when the weather has turned to nippy fall. He managed to get the window, sill, trim, etc, out and the hole framed and patched with plywood in one day. That's not the sort of thing you can leave for another day, though.

Last night he took out the south facing window in the kitchen. This was a little more work but he managed it. I spend part of my evening smashing glass and bagging it "safely" for the garbage man. Smashing glass sounds like it should be more fun than it was. It was also a lot tougher to do than I would have guessed. Even with a hammer.

Now the outside of that part of the kitchen is covered with plywood. The cement board siding has been ordered and picked up and is laid out in the shop ready to be pre-painted. Then it will go up over the plywood. That's the plan as far as I know it. I have to say this is going a lot faster than I would have guessed. (For hours worked, that is; it's still slow since most of the work only happens on weekends.) But perhaps this is a mis-perception on my part since Troy is doing most of the work.

I think it's also influenced by the expectations built up from building the shop. It's going to be a lot faster to do a piece of wall that's maybe 5' x 12' than to do a wall that's 14' x 70' (north/south walls) or 21' x 30' (east/west walls). That might have a little to do with it...

Work continues...stay tuned.

Canning Summary for 2010

2010-09-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

Summary entry for my own records

2010 Canning Records:

Sep 19: 12 c frozen tomatoes,
1/2 peck dried apples (Jonathans)
dried peppers
1/4 bushel dried peaches
dried onions
dried potatoes

Aug 22: 7 qt, 6 pt tomatoes
Aug 14: 14 qt peaches
Aug 7: 14 qt peaches
Aug 7: 7 quarts pickles

Jul 24: 14 qt pickles
Jul 5: 5 qt pickles
Jul 5: 2 qt pickled beets

By product:

Apples: 1/2 peck dried
Onions, dried
Peaches: 28 qt, 1/4 bushel dried
Peppers, dried
Pickled beets: 2qt
Pickles: 26 qt
Potatoes, dried
Tomatoes: 7 qt, 6 pt, 12 c frozen

The king has no clothes, or the Keynesians are about to be proved wickedly wrong.

2010-09-13T11:21:00.000-07:00

The Keynesians are running scared, chief among them, President Barak Obama. The economy is not turning around like it should be.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, Keynesian Economic theory has been the backbone of the government’s plan to “make things better” in the economy for about a hundred years. The problem is, the theory has never been especially accurate, or useful at predicting what’s going to happen in the next few years in the economy. Neither has it been especially useful at designing public policy to “stimulate” the economy when things slow down into a recession or depression.

In fact, if we look with cold, dispassionate logic, it’s been a horrendous failure. In the past, the Keynesians have explained this away with much hand waving and loud protestations that, we just didn’t spend quite enough tax money to REALLY stimulate the economy “properly”. Of course, this time, our fearless leaders have spent more money than anyone has ever spent in the history of the universe to "stimulate" the economy. If it doesn’t work this time, the theory is just wrong. Here’s a link that shows just how much we have spent in the last 19 months:

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/72404

By the way, Bush wasn't much better, so don't think I'm just bashing Mr. Obama.

For our purposes, the Keynesians think that if private sector spending goes down for whatever reason, the government can compensate for that by spending tax money or borrowed money, and get the economic engines churning again.

But what if they are just plain old wrong? Is there some other economic model that does a better job of predicting what the economy will do in the next few years? Is there some other theory that would give us and our government leaders a more effective toolbox to shorten recessions and stave off depressions?

I’m glad you asked. There is such a theory. It is called the Austrian School of Economics, as championed by the Mises Institute. The genesis of the Austrian School of Economics reads like a thriller novel, including stolen academic papers, hidden by the Nazis because they were so unfavorable to socialism. Here’s a small quote about two of the founders, Hayek and Mises:

“In the late 1930s, after suffering from the worldwide depression, Austria was threatened by a Nazi takeover. Hayek had already left for London in 1931 at Mises's urging, and in 1934, Mises himself moved to Geneva to teach and write at the International Institute for Graduate Studies, later emigrating to the United States. Knowing Mises as the sworn enemy of national socialism, the Nazis confiscated Mises's papers from his apartment and hid them for the duration of the war. Ironically, it was Mises's ideas, filtered through the work of Roepke and the statesmanship of Ludwig Erhard, that led to Germany's postwar economic reforms and rebuilt the country. Then, in 1992, Austrian archivists discovered Mises's stolen Vienna papers in a reopened archive in Moscow.”

Here’s the link to the full story about how this alternate school of economic theory got its start, with a strong foundation in the followers of St. Thomas Aquinas.

http://mises.org/etexts/austrian.asp

Now fast forward 80 years. Barak Obama is a dyed-in-the-wool Keynesian. He has decided to borrow and spend our way out of this recession, no matter what. He is going to do it like no Keynesian has ever done it before. Unfortunately, he is dreadfully wrong and will cause almost measureless pain and suffering because of his flawed ideology. This will affect you and your kids and grandkids, and badly. Unless you are on the short list of people getting truckloads of free money from the government. I just thought you’d like to know who is responsible.

Despite being actively suppressed, ignored for decades and scoffed at by the mainstream media, Austrian Economics is making a big come back. You may even hear about them on the TV box. But remember, you heard it here first.

If you want to get more educated about how the economy actually works, the Mises Institute has a lot of resources:

http://mises.org/

I would encourage everyone to become educated in these matters to minimize the future economic hardships in their own households.

Finest regards,

troy

Happy Anniversary

2010-09-09T19:48:00.000-07:00

Wedding day, Sep 9, 2000

I have to say it feels like just yesterday I was posting about the big 9 years on 9-9 of 09, but already it's been another year! I just reread that post, and even though that was a pretty low-key anniversary, I think today's may have hit an all-time low of least romantic. (I'm sorry, I dare say even beating Julie and Joel who celebrated their last one at a small group meeting.)

First, I scheduled a knitting class tonight without realizing the significance of the date. And Troy worked til 8. So that already was not a promising beginning.

When I got done my knitting class, I went out and discovered my car battery was completely dead. I hadn't left anything on and that about exhausted my diagnostic skills so I just called Troy at work and waited. (Of course, having just come from knitting class, I had not one, and not two, but three projects to work on while waiting!)

Troy came about 50 minutes later and diagnosed a dead battery. Like not drained, but completely useless dead. We boosted it twice but it wouldn't support the lights. So we abandoned the car, went and bought a new battery and then came back so Troy could change it out right there in the parking lot. He figures it was the factory battery and the car's a '98. So I guess I shouldn't feel bad about getting 12 years' use out of a factory battery.

We were home by 10:30 and now I'm writing a blog post.

Didn't I tell you it was a romantic anniversary? Hmm...I meant that sarcastically, but read a different way, this is the story of a knight in shining armour rescuing his damsel in distress. Very romantic, actually!

We'll celebrate in a more traditional manner on Saturday with dinner at my favourite restaurant.

Hope your honey takes care of you at least half as well as mine takes care of me!

Moods of my Sunflowers

2010-09-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

Sad and crying

Dangerous

and dancing

It's been fun watching them change as fall is coming on.

Second Floor Layout

2010-09-02T05:16:00.000-07:00

Ready yourself for some information overload. If you don't have a lot of time, come back when you do!

I've got four layouts to show you of the second floor. This is the sort of thing that's been clamouring for attention and not letting me sleep at night. And I subscribe to the theory that you may as well start this early because you never get it right the first time. Things take time to percolate and build on each other.

What I'm doing: trying to design a layout for the second floor that includes a master bedroom (sorry for the term, but it's the one going right now), 2 spare bedrooms for guests (by the time we do this even Isaac will be a visitor) and at least one bathroom.

I first wanted a separate half bath for the guests to use, but really couldn’t get that to work out. So as a second option, I’d like the guests to have access to the master bath from a public area. (There’s no need to be walking through my bedroom! And no need to make guests walk all the way downstairs.)

For the bathroom, I'm planning on 2 separate [stock] vanities (his and hers--and I think it’s cheaper than getting a special custom long vanity), and a tub separate from the shower.

In all the plans you will notice that there has been 12" marked off from the outside walls. This is to allow for the extra thick walls that Troy will be putting up. The one exception is along the stairway/hallway where that is impossible. The 12” there will have to be added to the outside (somehow).

How it is now:

Clockwise from the top left, we have the bathroom (with closet), Isaac's room (with 2 closets), master bedroom (with closet) and spare room (with closet) and a small closet accessible from the hall way. The stairs are an L shape with a small hallway area giving access to all rooms.

The north two windows will have to be removed because they're only 3 inches from the wall and won't allow for that 12" of insulation. Good-bye windows! There are more windows in the bottom two rooms but I didn't mark them for some odd reason. I think we will be keeping all of them except the central window on the south wall.

I also failed to mark two chimneys along the central wall which will become significant in a Support walls are highly over-rated.minute. I was thinking I just needed a rough draft of the layout, but of course you always need all the information. Silly me. Good thing I live here and can measure it whenever I want and find the time.

Troy will have to do some exploratory demolition before we know for sure which walls can be eliminated, but for now I am assuming at least the walls which appear to only separate a room from a closet can be taken out. I have a strong belief that those were not original, thinking that this house probably didn’t have closets originally. I think this is a pretty safe assumption; Troy says, “We’ll see.”

(Of course from what we’ve seen so far, 2 of 2 structural elements have been doing nothing to hold up the house for quite some time, and we still seem to be standing. So perhaps support walls are highly over-rated.)

Key to pros and cons list:

* noteworthy but not important

** important

*** very important

Ok, here's plan 1:

Go ahead: take some time. Absorb it.

It’s the most similar to what we have now. Master bedroom is the same; the north bedroom and washroom have swapped.

(Note: one of the chimneys is in the way of the door at A so it would swap with the shower. So the picture's not quite right, but it’s in the ball park.)

Pro:
gain a lot of closet space ***
bathroom access for one spare room **
minimal rearranging of walls *
I like the privacy half-wall to screen the view of the toilet * (We’ll make it with storage for toilet paper and so-called feminine products and nice sliding doors—how come I’ve never seen this? It’s what every bathroom needs.)

Con:
Our bedroom is still on the south side of the house next to the noisy road **
Second spare room doesn't have direct access to the bathroom *

And now plan 2:

Now we’ve got the master bedroom in the north half of the house.

Pro:
master bedroom gains closet space (not quite as much) **
bathroom has public access **
privacy half-wall toilet screen *
master bdrm in back where it's quieter **
security: two exits from bedroom give you a possible escape route from intruders *

Con:
master bdrm is quite small *** we may not have room for our bed and our desks in there. We don’t really want our desks in a spare room.
spare room 2 is quite large—too large? *
It also needs a closet—perhaps somehow in conjunction with a surround for the stove pipe.
You can see I have a wall right into a window in the closet, so we may have to lose that window too? *

Plan 3:

I just noticed there's an error on the design: there should not be an extra door by the shower. (The bathroom already has a door.) It would just be open from the tub area to the rest of the bathroom. Sorry, that's a little confusing.

Pro:
public access to bathroom **
plenty of closet space for master bdrm **
office space is separate from bedroom *
there's room for an office **
master bedroom in back where it's quieter **
security: two exits from bedroom give you an escape route from intruders *

Con:
messy door area by the spare bedrooms and bathroom *
very small master bedroom (will our bed even fit?) *

Then I realized that the master bedroom was so small in the last few plans because the stairway eats up the north part of the house. Why not flip the stairs? Troy wasn't so eager at first because that is some major reconstruction, but it turns out it solves his insulation problem. Flipping the stairs to the south puts them into the front part of the house which is wider. Voila! Room for insulation!

So I give you Plan 4:

We're not sure if the wall at A (running through the middle of the master bedroom can be removed. If not, the south portion would probably become a separate office off of the bedroom. That would make it a "feature" not a drawback. ;-)

Pro:
public access to bathroom **
security: you can hear people come up the stairs, but are the very farthest from them. It gives you time to react or flee *
bigger master bedroom than previous 2 plans * (even if it is long and skinny)
large master bdrm closet area **
linen closet right in the bathroom (instead of in the hall) *

Con:
very small spare room 1 *
very long trip around to master bedroom * (unless a door is put in at B)
small master bedroom ** but after putting the office and clothes storage into other rooms, maybe it's all we need.
security: if no door at B you can be trapped by intruders *

Then Troy had a thought of a Modified Plan 4: he wondered if there would be an advantage to take out the wall separating Room 1 from the Hallway. This would make that room more like a loft. I thought I could hang a curtain across the room for guest privacy, but when we have no guests (which is like 350 days out of 365 at least) we could have it open. We're still thinking about whether that would offer a lot of advantage or not.

Please let us know what you think about this issue and all the other plans. Some say adversity makes you stronger, and I say opposing opinions can do the same with plans and designs. So fire away! (You can let us know what you like too though.)

PS: Troy is really fired up about the kitchen. Every day I come home to a big change. Last night was the floors being taken out (Goodbye horrible nasty linoleum tiles!) and we carried out the counter top. This morning he's taking the lower cabinets to the shop. They are horribly water damaged on the bottom (as was a good portion of the under floor). Troy had figured fixing them up would be cheaper and quicker than buying new ones for the shop. (And we all know that even cheap cabinets are $$$.) Oh no...he just came up and told me they are falling apart. So much for reusing...

Revealing all that nastiness has really let a repulsive odor into the kitchen. It's amazing the house in general didn't smell worse than it did. It's nasty work but it sure is satisfying to take that grossness out!! Thank you, garbage man!

Troy Hurt His Back on the Weekend

2010-08-31T18:57:00.000-07:00

So this is what he did today.

I came home expecting to have to clean debris off the kitchen floor from last week's demolition and instead found that Troy had not only done that, but had removed all the upper cupboards as well. He also was stuck with taking a lot of crap off the walls, like a shelf over the stove, towel rack, mandolin, etc. that I hadn't got to. (It turns out it was rather handy to have tools stored in the living room. I find myself reaching for them quite often. When I remember they're in the shop, more often than not the job doesn't get done!)

The counter's loose too so we can haul that off whenever we're ready.

When I questioned him about his back, he said it must be his youthful healing abilities. I think it might have been the use of the nice drugs I had left over from when my back was injured in February. Or maybe it was the prayers of our small group last night.

In any case, work continues.