A couple of months back, we bought a new corner unit and sink from Ikea. That's what initiated the whole kitchen remodel insanity that is still ongoing.

We used to have a double-bowl stainless jobbie, which was very poorly positioned in the only location capable of receiving a dishwasher. 3 years without a dishwasher. The horror!

Our new sink is a huge single-bowl porcelain affair, set into a natural oil-finished wood counter top. As with all things old house, changing one thing has a knock-on effect until the next thing you know you're demolishing half the kitchen.

Dishwasher -> relocate sink -> relocate stove -> remove half the bloody cabinets in the kitchen.

It's a good thing we knew we had to do all that before we actually did it, or the surprise would have killed us both.

We plumbed the new sink and dishwasher with pex (cross-linked polyethylene tubing). We've got a few rooms to do over the next couple of years, so we bought a crimper ($100!!) Pex goes together so easily and so cleanly, I'm going to replace the whole plumbing system with it!!

Since the Ikea cabinets are floating furniture, I decided that I should do something special with the drain pipe in case we ever need to move the cabinets. The basement pipe comes up through the floor, and a rubber coupler connects the sink pipe to it. The pex tubing also is connected to a couple of disconnects, so we can very easily yank the sink out in case we need to get back there (and we will, when the new flooring goes in)

Also, around this time, we got our first zuchinni of the summer! It was MASSIVE. There's a photo of my giant zuchinni down here...

V V V

If you've ever seen our garage on a typical day, you might have thought a bomb went off. A hopeless-projects bomb.
We have a canoe hanging from the rafters, under which is an upside down 18 foot sailboat, under that is another 8 foot sailboat sitting on pallets. There's a stack of wood lath 4 feet high and 6 feet wide, automotive fluids and parts of all manner, a trike, 3 bikes, garden pots, fertilizer, rakes, shovels, and the like, a stack of extra car wheels/tires, boxes and totes filled with books... And that's just the RIGHT half.

The left half actually has a car in it (our classic MG), a workshop of sorts (mostly just a pile of tools and junk), lawnmower, snowblower, etc, etc, etc.

That's not to mention the rafters... How about a 25 foot sailboat mast, and about 1000 linear feet of trim and siding. *rolls eyes*

Well, after stuffing things willy-nilly in there all summer long, I decided today it was time to clean things up. The weather is getting cold, and I'll soon need to carve out a small workshop space in the back that I can keep warm.

I pulled the car out, then spent some time trying to lift the bikes into the rafters before finally giving up on the idea.
Instead of bikes, I decided that most of the summer camping stuff could be hidden up there. I nailed some 3/4 inch plywood across two rafters, and collected the various summer bits. The new storage actually sits above the garage door when it's open - an area that went underutilized until this point.

I'm notoriously bad at putting things back in their places, so the whole time I was collecting things from the floor and all other surfaces to be put back into their respective toolboxes, or making new places for them.

Once I had shifted all the crap out of the way, I swept the floor and rolled the car back into it's home.
Did I mention that I love that little car? I don't even have to start it to move it in and out of the garage - just a little heave in one direction or the other and it gently rolls until I apply an opposite force!

Anyway, time for bed?

For the past two Halloweens, we have had no front porch light. Instead of a porch light, we had to run an extension cord out the window or out the door to power a floor lamp.

Why no porch light? Well, when the house was first wired, there were three switches in the living room.

On one wall:
* One switch for the living room light
On the other wall:
* One switch for the DINING room ceiling light
* Another switch for the PORCH light.

It was just a bit odd to work the switches in one room to control the lights in another room. I also was tired of having to walk all the way across the living room to get to the single switch.

So one day, I decided to give the living room two switches, the dining room it's own switch IN the dining room, and also move the front porch switch next to the front door.

In the first operation, I successfully double-switched the living room. It involved a lot of contortion and grunting in the basement to get the wires where I wanted them, but it was successful. The next step was to get the dining room switched in the dining room. That also took some time, and involved a 20 foot long drill bit I constructed from threaded rod. :o
But the lowly front porch light never got wired up, because it has a very convoluted wiring path, and my frustration limit for electrical work is about 10 hours a year. :P

So last night, I finally started on that damned porch light.
I punched a few exploratory holes into the wall above the switch and the front door, trying to find a suitable path to the existing fixture in the porch ceiling. After all that messy plaster destruction, I gave up and managed to install a new WALL-MOUNTED porch light, directly above the light switch! It's in the same stud bay, so no need to drill through studs!

When I hooked up the dining light almost two years ago, power came up from the basement to the switch, then down to the basement again where it then ran off to some nether region of the house and snaked it's way to above the dining room. This worked fine when there was a single switch in the box, but with two switches, I was left without a dedicated neutral wire! If I had wired it up on the existing cable, BOTH switches would have switched the dining room light, but one of them would turn on both lights! Oddly convenient, but unacceptable.

What I did is to use the old 2-conductor wire as a fish tape to pull a new 3-conductor wire with a dedicated hot and neutral, and a red wire for the dining room switched hot. Wheew! Nothing like a bit of problem solving.

Now, what to do about those big holes in the wall?

On Saturday, Oct 17th, we drove to Schaumberg, IL to get the last base cabinet unit for our kitchen project!

In order to get the unit into the kitchen, we had to move the long Ikea 3 drawer console unit we had in it's place.

In order to move the long console, we had to move the fridge and remove our old pantry/broom closet cupboard units.

In order to move the fridge, we had to take down two upper cabinets on the other side of the room!!

So the day proceeded as such:
* Remove 2 upper cabinets on north side
* Clean off and move long console into living room
* Move fridge to opposite side of room
* Demolish cabinets surrounding old fridge location
* Move all old cabinets out onto the deck
* Clean up 1940-era flooring that was under the cabinets, sort out floor vent and cover with 3/4 inch plywood, then install sticky-back white tiles over the plywood (this is temporary, until a new floor is installed)
* Move long console table to it's new home
* Clean up the horrible mess we created

Then, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday:
* Patch plaster (repeatedly) many small and 3 large holes in the walls
* Paint two colors, 2-3 coats of latex (a creamy yellow and burnt orange)
* Move everything back against the walls

(Below):
South wall BEFORE.
South wall AFTER.
North wall BEFORE.
North wall AFTER.
Our little fold-down breakfast table (mostly used as a drop spot for junk)
The dishwasher, sink, oven, and the new Ikea 3 drawer unit.

Monday night, I sanded and puttied a bit more on the wall, and replaced the old, loose metal electrical box that was behind the fridge.

Wiring is one job that always makes me feel good about. You're replacing potentially hazardous old equipment with fresh new stuff.
Now I just have to replace the old cloth-wrapped romex that feeds the shiny new outlet... *rolls eyes*

Thursday night, we finally "finished" this project. We still have a bit to put away, a few spots to finish painting and puttying, but everything is in it's new location and we were able to cook dinner again with our new layout.
With all the demolition, patching, puttying, sanding, painting and tripping over everything on the floor that lost it's home, it was quite a long journey, but the kitchen is slowly transforming into Zoe's clean, modern vision.

It's a 1969 MG Midget with a factory removable hard top.
For a 40 year old car, it doesn't look a day over 15. :D

I've wanted an MG at least since I was in high school, but could never afford a nice one, and never really looked for a nice one. Yesterday, we spotted the perfect MG - California car, garage kept most of it's life, low miles for a car this old (95k), and recently painted. Not the greatest paint job in the world, but it keeps the rust off! It looks great unless you're 2 feet away and picky.

It's going to be a real blast to fix this baby up. Most of the work is already done, but it needs little things here and there.

Since we cut the grass and created 4 new garden beds, we've only managed to get mulch onto the largest bed next to the road. The other three beds were in various states of disrepair.
I put black landscape fabric down over most of the one closest to the house, but the other two were bare dirt.

On Saturday, we cleared up the weeds that had grown up in two of the beds. One of them is still bare dirt, but the other, we put a layer of rosin paper down as a weed block, and mulched over the paper.

On Memorial weekend we decided to move our bedroom downstairs until my foot gets better (I have achilles tendonitis and it's flared up again, this time more painful then ever before). We have a small bedroom downstairs which we have used for storage and it had become a large dumping ground for 'STUFF'. So before we could move in we had to clear everything out. We spent Sunday morning organizing (purchased several large totes for the job) and disposing of items. We have not done anything to the room since we moved in about 3 years ago, except for taking down the curtains. The walls were still a 'lovely' shade of pink... I had to do something about that, so we had some leftover cream paint from when we painted the living room, so we painted 3 walls cream and have an accent wall ( of which we have painted, but I'm not sure of the colour so it will probably change.. again).
Steve then moved the bedframe, mattress and boxspring down (the bed just fits with a enough space to maneuver around it). We also had stored our old mattress in the 'pink room' and as Steve moved it out and up, Muesli (one of our cats), decided that she wanted to go for a ride, during the whole time, including going up the stairs, she just hung on. Steve even took her off before he pushed the mattress up the stairs, and she jumped right back on! It was so funny to watch!
So now we have our bedroom downstairs, which is good for now.. until the bathroom upstairs gets completed.. which I think won't get worked on till the leaves start to fall again.. ;)

Today was mulch day.
It was going to rain today and in case it rained hard, we wanted to prevent any erosion before the city delivered our free mulch.
We drove to Madison and bought 15 bags of mulch (30 cubic feet - just over one cubic yard). We spread the mulch next to the street so that any washed-away dirt would stay in the yard and not enter the sewer. Construction sites are required to control their runoff and I guess we probably qualified - we certainly would have seen a lot of runoff in a big rain storm with all that exposed clay topsoil.

Even with about 300 pounds of mulch, we had just enough to do the outside edges (street and sidewalk) of the large bed.

Then, Zoe wanted to plant something, but we were now out of mulch again, so we went off to the local garden center (instead of our usual Madison shop) to inquire about the price of their mulch. We took the pickup to the garden center and checked the prices - quite a bit more than in Madison for bagged mulch, but they had a huge pile of the stuff out back. We went in and got a very reasonable price for a cubic yard. Back home, with the truck bed mounded over with our mulch, we set about spreading it on the large bed. Once we had it all spread out, we realized we hadn't planted anything - the whole point of getting more mulch - and were too exhausted to start.

We went inside to rest for a bit and finally steeled ourselves to out again to plant Zoe's new Primroses. Suddenly, I got the idea that I should go get ANOTHER truckload of mulch. I'm still not certain why - maybe the intoxicating smell of triple-shredded hardwood got to me. We scrounged up $30 and I set off back to the garden center for more. The bobcat operator deposited his two heaping shovel-fulls into the truck bed and I drove carefully home. I parked the brimming-over pickup in the driveway and helped Zoe pull apart the mulch we had already spread and dig a few holes for Primroses.

After planting one and nearly planting another, Zoe looked at the tag - Partial shade! We had picked the single sunniest, driest spot in the yard! Well this just wouldn't do. We had to find another low-growing plant to put in the holes we had dug. I suggested we split one of the old ground phlox, so I dug up wizened old phlox from the front walk, flipped it over in the wheelbarrow and split it into several chunks with a shovel. Alas, one of the bits hadn't any root. We settled for the two remaining pieces and put them on opposite sides of the bed, next to the sidewalk. If they both take off, they'll spread nicely to fill the corners. We had also split our granddaddy of a lambs ear and placed a few of the bits up and down next to the main path. Some should grow, some will definitely not. The splitting was rather brutal.

At this point, Zoe went in because she was getting pretty chilled. I said I would finish spreading the second yard of mulch to take the weight off the poor truck's springs.

I pulled the truck out into the street and started shoveling mulch into the wheelbarrow. Zoe called out from the porch to ask if I had the rake. I replied that I did not and wondered why she would ask if she was going in. But then, she retrieved the rake from the garage and came out to help! Even as tired as she was, she couldn't let me finish the job alone! :)

A few of our neighbors, having watched us try to kill ourselves with work all weekend, each stopped for a moment to congratulate us or offer their good comments on our determination.
So thus ended our long Easter weekend. Two nutty gardeners, 18 hours of muscle straining labor, and a boring weedy lawn transformed into the beginnings of a beautiful garden.

Who stole all our grass??

We did.

Yesterday, Saturday, we drove to our local hardware store in the morning and picked up a gas powered sod cutter.

We had marked out with little white flags where we wanted to take up the grass. Just before we started, Barry stopped by to help for a little bit. Steve cut the sod in long strips up and down the yard, and Zoe cut the long strips into shorter pieces, which she then rolled up into "sod sushi". The sushi rolls were loaded onto either a hand dolly or the back of the pickup truck, then transported to the neighbor's yard.

Thankfully, we have two great neighbors that both needed lots of sod. One neighbor had a new addition added to their house and their yard was all torn up. The neighbor on the other side has a low spot that floods during heavy rains. The sod was cut very thick, so it easily filled up the low spot. Where one layer wasn't quite enough, two layers of sod built up the spot nicely.

The largest 'swath' is along the south side, following the street. The second cut extended the bed under the cedar tree, which Steve has always wanted a bit bigger. The third was cut in between two existing beds to make one large oval-shaped bed. The last cut is triangular with one edge up against the sidewalk. This bed brings our Japanese maple and our newly planted lilac into one bed, and splits one of our two main paths, providing a bit of interest (and hopefully a bit of fragrance) at the end of the path.

Saturday we managed to make all the cuts, and roll up and move most of the large "swath".
Sunday, we cleaned up the last bits of the large cut, and rolled the sod from the other three cuts.
Zoe cleaned up all the edges next to the sidewalk and curb, while Barry helped Steve to roll and move the sod. When all the sod was removed, Barry and Steve cleaned up with rakes and shovels, all the remaining grass roots. Zoe kept everyone going strong with a lunch of turkey and veggie burgers with all the fixins, cole slaw and salad.

After 12 hours of hard work over two days, we are all thoroughly shattered. It'll take some time to re-coop. Our muscles are sore, our legs and arms feel like spaghetti, and Steve is nursing a bad sunburn on the back of his neck.

Once we get some compost and mulch down, and start watching things grow, it will all be worth it!

Here are some photos when demo first began

While reading through the shower tray installation instructions, it mentioned having enough support for attaching shower doors. Humm.. so I guess we need more framing on the two sides of the shower stall where the doors would go. So this past weekend Steve added MORE framing to this area, while I sat bundled up on a chair and was trying to keep him company (wasn't very well that day). He also put up the first piece of vapour barrier in the shower stall. Fingers and toes crossed we are done with framing!

Late Saturday afternoon, we decided we could install the cement board in the shower stall. We unrolled a huge sheet of plastic vapor barrier, stapled it up to the wall, and then realized, to our dismay that the cement board would need much more support than just the existing studs. It needs to be screwed around the edges and into the studs every 8 inches. We had no support around the edges of the panels at all! Frustrated, we gave up for the night, retreating to the local video store and chinese take-out.

Over the weekend we finished the shower seat. LOTS of measurements and calculations! Even when complete, Steve thought we may have gotten the measurements incorrect. We went back to my little diagram and figured it was right in the end, except that the seat is 1/2 inch too tall - an extra sheet of plywood under the shower will fix the height and add extra strength under the shower. The seat framing is done and tested for a comfortable height.

I wanted to post a bit about some previous projects on the house.

A couple of summers ago, we started a cedar arbor/trellis over the front walkway. I say started, because it's not done yet. The first summer, we put 4 posts in the ground and added some custom trellis on each side. The second summer, we added a "roof". There's still some more work to be done on it, but at least it looks more like an arbor now

Today, I spent an hour or so wiring three ground-fault circuit interruptor outlets (GFCIs) in the bathroom. It's all 12 gauge wire in there so it's quite difficult to bend it and stuff it all back into the boxes. Still, I think I did a pretty good job.

Progress on a Monday night, woo-hoo! Thank you, mindless TV for scaring me out of the living room!