New acquisitions

It's birthday season, which means new stuff. Plus we've had some successful trips to the antique store circuit. Here's an update on what's new, mostly kitchen but some elsewhere.

First, an unexpected purchase - we had wanted a proper arts & crafts style sideboard for the dining room, but it seemed a pipe dream because even the 'needing lots of work' ones were out of our miniscule price range. Then one day, at a local favorite shop - there it was. The perfect buffet. Good style, nice size, great finish, almost all original - so the price was right. Someone had already stripped the paint and re-finished it to the dark oak it probably was, so no paint stripping (always a plus). They also replace a small piece of the door that must have been damaged? Sadly also removing one of the old locks, but oh well. The worst thing they did was to put all new, totally inappropriate hardware on, including screwing new overlay hinges right to the faces of the doors. Argh - nasty! These little imperfections increased our bartering power, and we got it for a song. The mirror - all original to the piece - is stamped 1908 on the back, and beveled, and in great shape. It has a neat label on the back noting that they used some patented toilet hinges (!) to keep the top fastened to the base. Very cool. And we promptly ordered proper hardware from Lee Valley and an ebay seller making reproductions. What a difference hardware makes, once again. Love it!

Then as a gift we received the awesome 2007 edition Teco vase on top of the sideboard - they're making them again! Check it out at: http://www.prairie-arts.com/teco.html. Perfect on the buffet. I'm working on embroidering a runner, since I couldnt' find one I liked. Good winter project.

Then, on a birthday road trip, I headed out to our favorite salvage place, which we always seem to miss before they close for winter. Amazingly, they had oak cabinet doors in just the size we need for the over-microwave cabinet. We just needed one, and at $16, I didn't even haggle. They also had a vase for $2 that turns out to be a Jonathan Adler "Abacus" (in Jade), it has a chip but who cares - it looks great on our high kitchen shelf. Amazingly, I remembered the name from an American Bungalow article pointing out someone's interesting pottery grouping. Always a sucker for midcentury modern, I must have committed it to memory. Score!

(I love how the photo below says 'DONE' on the wall. I didn't even notice till I just downloaded the pictures. I don't remember what we were noting - maybe electrical? Now that wall is definitely NOT done and needs beadboard. Also, note to self, we realized NEVER EVER to use sharpie to write notes on walls. Silly us. Takes extra paint to cover sharpie.)

Our downtown antique shop (the one with coffee and pastries!) had their anniversary sale, so we took the easy road and bought (as opposed to built) a corner shelf for the desk area. Its victorian/possible Eastlake, but simple and handmade for those styles, and it looks fab.

And finally - poppies. Went to Mainely Pottery and browsed for a while, and found this great tile which pretty much finished out the desk area in the kitchen. Love it, and it's locally made.

That's it for acquisitions - the budget is gone and birthdays are over. Now we're back to painting trim and finishing out the kitchen details.

Kitchen shelves: check!

We finished the kitchen shelves & put our dishes & other kitchen stuff away today. The dining room is officially free of kitchen stuff! Here's a shot of the shelf brackets (see post below about the shelf design):

... and here are the finished shelves, almost full of stuff. There's now an additional basket on the left, bottom to hold the travel mugs, which there's just no rational way to store. Basket seems to work great so far.

What a difference having everything back within arm's reach. And the dishes - oh, how we missed eating off real plates!

Friday find: the comforting sound of silence

OK, we're trying out two things here - first, this Friday Find thing that's a Houseblogger initiative. Read about it here.



Second, our first attempt to upload a video. You tube, here we come! (just kidding, we have our hands full as it is).



So, here's the story of this clock in the video.



We found it at a local antique store (I know, not in the house but we've blogged plenty about house finds). They were using it in the coffee shop part of the store, and I guess it was time to sell it. It was right up front, staring at us as if it needed a new home, and it was only $18 (that's oddly the price we've paid for a lot of items. Seems to be a lucky number). And they said it worked because they'd been using it. It had me at 'hello' anyways - it's red! Our kitchen remodel plans were just waiting for a cool clock like this to take center stage.



Two cool things about the old clock (which appears to be from the 50s, and all original).



1. If the power goes out, it has a mechanical device in it that causes a red piece of paper (?) to spin around and so when you get home and think the times looks screwy, you know there was a power outage because there's a red dot at the top of the face. Way cool. Who needs little red light bulbs, anyways?



2. The clock makes an amazingly comforting chugging sound when it's plugged in. You can hear the gears working - nice, steady, and even. Sometimes it seems louder, sometimes softer, but if you get home from work early, all the windows are shut because it just got a bit of fall chill in the air, and it's dead silent at home, you can hear the comforting 'i think i can' of the clock from anywhere in the kitchen (or adjacent rooms). Also, when you first come downstairs for the weekend coffee and few minutes before you start doing things, there's the clock, chugging away in the silence, making just enough white noise to keep your brain quiet for a few minutes. We love this clock!



If you sit quietly, I hope you can hear it in the video.

Building open shelving for the kitchen

Long time, no blog. Suffice to say, we've been busy. But we're back in action & still plugging away at the kitchen shelves. Which led us to recall that when we started planning the shelves, we couldn't find any info telling us how to do it. I'm sure pro carpenters know, be we didn't. We deduced how it might be done from the many photos we have of open shelves in bungalows. A key component of our design is that we wanted the brackets to be spaced evenly, not at the sometimes random places where studs are. So the following illustration shows our design, that works with that constraint. Enjoy! Comments welcome...

1. After cutting and sanding everything, you need to notch the brackets to fit the cleat.


2. Pilot drill and screw the brackets onto the cleat. Note – things are upside down and backwards at this point.

3. At this point, we painted the bracket-cleat assemblies and the shelves.

4. Here’s where this starts making sense: because the brackets are acting as braces against the wall, they don’t necessarily have to be screwed to the wall. So you didn’t have to make sure you were spacing them out to match existing studs – you could space them evenly.

So now you need to attach the cleat part of the assembly to the studs at the height you want – you have to be sure to hit studs if you want the shelves to stay attached! You can also screw through the brackets into the wall if you think you need to.

5. Last step: screw the shelf down to the cleat-bracket assembly. Then just fill all your screw holes, touch up with paint, and you’re done.

Patina...in all the wrong places

Who was it that said that patina is just dirt in all the right places? Well, we've got patina everywhere here. Yes, when you're working on one room and have limited time, you tend to forget about the rest of the house a bit. So when I had a few stolen hours the other day and decided it was time to pay attention to the whole house & give it a thorough cleaning, there were some shockers. I will say, a bungalow is great because the compact plan and linked rooms make cleaning pretty simple...but we have a dog and two cats, which make plenty of mess.

OK, mom, close your eyes a sec - I'd like to introduce to you all our new pet bunny. (Note: flip flop for scale). This was from the far corners of the living room, which we could now reach because the radiator is out of there - re-installed in the kitchen (awesomely re-done by Ken). Wow, that's all I'm sayin' about that.

Oh, and the shelves on the radiator wall are done! Just have to fill the attachment holes and touch up the paint, but we're calling them done! And they're looking fab with my collection of green pottery, an antique casserole dish my mom bought me at an antique store we visited in Arizona and then I gingerly hauled back on the plane (mission design, perfect colors, worth the pain in the butt that was), and Ken's woodturnings.

Before...

After...

Now that we like the design of the shelves and have the attachments totally figured out, maybe we'll attack the rest of the shelving next. Then we can finally unpack the dishes! Our 'disposable' bamboo plates are starting to get pretty worn out, after all.

And finally, here's an interesting/creepy find: Ken found this guy stuck in the fins of the radiator when he was cleaning it. Eeew...

This kitchen is almost done (is there such a thing?)

I feel like there's not nearly enough on the blog to describe what's up in the kitchen. Let me just start by saying - for all those of you who keep asking - yes, the kitchen is fully functional. Houston, we have liftoff. We made these lovely little quiches a couple of weeks ago (thanks again to the neighbors for their excess tomatoes!) Prepped on our countertop - well, cutting board - and cooked in our oven. And eaten at the table, no less!

So what else is done? Well, the pantry went in a while ago. Basically, when we framed & walled in a closet for the fridge, there was a convenient little shallow closet just to the left, where the chimney bump-out was - and it just so happened that it was exactly the right width to accept some free oak doors the neighbor gave us (same neighbor with the tomatoes - they're so sweet!).

Rewind - did we blog about the doors? I love the doors. Ken loves the doors. We all love the doors. (and the Doors too). They were in the attic of her garage, and they were having a new garage put up, and cleaning out the old one. Ken was checking it out, and reported back - they have some doors they want us to look at. Doors? I said. We have all the original doors in the house, plus an extra. What the heck do we need more doors for? I don't need any stinking doors. No, he said, you should see these doors. Off to the icky old garage. They're cabinet doors, from a built-in something that I betcha was probably in between their dining and living room, in a classic bungalow colonnade-type thing, now long gone. Oh man, I bet whatever-it-was was awesome. Bummer it's gone, but at least we could rescue the doors. We don't have a before picture, but they just looked a bit bedraggled - not even that terrible!

Took 'em completely apart, stripped off the old badly deteriorated varnish, removed some giant non-appropriate hinges that were attached with a framing nail (what the hell were they doing there? Using the doors as a barricade or something? I have no clue). Glued them back up and refinished and then I designed the trim for the pantry closet to fit them perfectly, et voila! Fantabulous pantry. We outfitted it simply, with just wood cleats and woodgrain melamine shelves (yes, we cheated - it was just easy and they are so easy to clean.). And spice racks on the door, thanks to a Crate & Barrel sale. Do you see that grain on the oak? Geez...

There's so much storage we're gratuitously storing giant popcorn bowls in there, and cloth shopping bags. It's ridiculous.

Things we learned while doing the pantry:

1. You can hang doors with a nice even space around them if you use finish nails taped to the casing as spacers. Then there's no balancing, etc. while you try to adjust the spacing & shim casing. Hey, that rhymes!

2. There are not that many cool choices for cabinet catches. We found some that work great, are pretty forgiving, and not totally cheap looking from Lee Valley (of course) - they're ball catches. They are on every door in the kitchen now & working great.

3. Even cheapo-generic beans look good in a fancy new pantry!

Some of the best kitchen design tips come from the Susanka books - she's so good at thinking about design principles that work in small spaces, efficiently.

What's next? Tomorrow we're all set up to put in the trim around the cellar & living room doors, and start installing shelving, beadboard, and put the ol' radiator back in. It's getting cold, after all...

This one's for Carrie Ann

Got your email today, and even though everyone thinks we have sooo much energy, I don't have enough energy to both write back AND blog, so here's a blog on a 90 degree day. It's a story that I know will make you laugh :)

We're at that stage with the kitchen remodel - you know, when the to-do list switches over from exciting, big items like "tear out cabinets" and "lay new floor" and "install countertops" to miniscule, picayune details like "don't forget to create a custom shim for the spot where we cut the kick too short" and "fill that last nail hole up under the right side of the green cabinet" and "make new bits of trim around the dining room door where someone cut them too short".

Basically, a bunch of annoying, endless tasks with very little reward - nobody will even notice these things, dammit!

So last weekend, we did the last 'big' thing for a while - put together and installed the last cabinet and shelves where the doggie and kitties will eat. Of course they still need umpteen little bits of trim and finish details (and some beadboard on one side), but the thing is functional!

So here's the story - we were working on the countertop, which we made from two scraps of the main countertop (not being near IKEA and having no cash anyways). We got it together OK, but since there is an unsupported overhang where you can pull up a stool, we wanted it to be a bit more substantial than our peg joint was, so I asked Ken to stop at the hardware store on his way home (from errands) and grab a few steel mending plates to install underneath. Soon after, he drove in the driveway and got out of the car with an odd look on his face. I responded with a probably equally odd look - and he said, "I totally forgot to stop...Foreigner was on and I was grooving in the car and I totally forgot". Of course the most important thing to find out was what song? Happily, it wasn't "Eye of the Tiger" (which would have been unforgivable), but it was "Dirty White Boy" (Maybe that's worse?). I was just bummed that it wasn't Journey. Don't stop believin', Care.