Holly Knott - Finger Lakes Art

Sunsets, birds and wood stoves

2011-12-16T18:02:00.001-05:00

Last night's sunset before the intense winds hit. So glad the roof didn't blow off. The clouds remind me of a Max Parrish painting.

Wood stove safety - our indoor/outdoor cat, Oje, decided after having been with us for a couple winters now, that he needed to jump on the lit wood stove last Saturday night. ~SIGH~ Fortunately his wounds did not seem bad afterwards. I did the best I could to place his pads on a blue ice pack (tho later read that water is better). His pads are normally pinked and still looked pink, not red, no skin missing, so we kept our eye on him. Next day he started holding up alternate paws and walking gingerly.

I probably checked his pads every few hours and they still looked ok til a few days later when some pads turned white, and yesterday a few blisters appeared. He's no longer holding up any paws and is walking less gingerly, so I am ready with the Neosporin to prevent infection once the blisters burst, which surprisingly despite him walking, they are not doing. Poor guy. Cannot imagine what got into him.

I LOVE chickadees! They are so chatter-y and cute.

Taken a few weekends ago, here are some reflections of the woods in melting frost droplets. LOVE. Right click and click on "view image" to see larger. Blogger now has a slideshow feature if you just single-click on the images and it doesn't display them at full uploaded size. (EDITED TO ADD: What happened? I just tried that and Blogger resized my ~800x600 originals down to a thumbnail entirely - grrrr! So much for showing detail.)

Here's a reflection of its own branch.

The woods are twinkling.

Late November nature photos

2011-11-27T16:33:00.002-05:00

Hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Took a walk around the property the day after Thanksgiving and enjoyed the unseasonally warm temperature (tho I do think snow would have been more appropriate for the holiday weekend!). Enjoy these shots. Fall colors have pretty much left us and for the next several months, the grays and browns will take over... but if you look closely there is still color and pretty texture and pattern in many things!

Lichen on an old apple tree

Black squirrel - do you have any where you live? They look like little bear cubs, to me, with boofy tails.

Buckthorn Bark

Cedar Waxwing on the Burning Bush (I took this a few weeks ago)

Goldenrod

Dried grasses by the pond

Leaf glowing in the sun

Oje exploring

A "shed" snake skin

Old tree stump

Another old tree stump - if you enlarge this, I love how you can virtually see every cell

These "wild white onions" materialized in one of our perennial beds. This shot was taken in September. Check out the photos below taken 2 days ago. Love the pods and the crisp, black seeds!

Had to throw in this pic, even tho it's not very good. Last week or so, about a billion blackbirds and cowbirds flew over and landed in every tree, and all over the yard. Oje was in his glory, all hunkered down (invisible, of course) in the dining room window, wondering what he'd do if he caught them all! ;-)

kitchen details

2011-11-27T16:20:00.000-05:00

If you can stand more photos, I thought I'd post a collage of before and after shots, and some closeups that might help folks out who are contemplating whether or not to get certain kinds of cabinet features.

In the shot above, the garbage and recycling that were previously out in the open to left of stove are now neatly tucked inside a cabinet to the right of the stove!

Here's a closeup of one of those trash/recycling pullouts. They're ideal. The recycling sits right behind the garbage and I discovered that an unused rubbermaid lid fits perfectly over the garbage container. You can even buy these inserts for existing cabinets.

Hubby is thrilled that he has 2 large drawers now for spices (and some overflow into another cabinet as well!). Bean cat seems to think catnip must be in there...

Drawers are great, and if you're redoing your kitchen, consider replacing a standard base unit with 3 large (deep in height) drawers.

They do cost more... but for things like hand mixers, baking pans, kitchen towels, even boxes of tea and things that are otherwise difficult to reach in wall cabinets. (To answer Martha's question last night, yes, I will be cooking more now, and enjoying it better!)

Here's that little angled nook we left open and then finished off. Great for having easy access to cutting boards! The "leg" is a turned leg you can buy at Lowes or Home Depot. That area of the peninsula needed some sort of furniture-like leg to finish it off visually.

This is one of the 2 corner "super lazy susan" units. So worth it. We now have access to the 24" x 24" space that was previously blocked off. Large pots fit well, they turn well, and other than the nightmare I blogged about earlier about getting these things INTO the house, all ended well!

I think I will paint the upper crown moulding trim the cream color that is the new cabinet color, to tie the white cabinets into the new "biscotti" colored ones. And the computer nook has remained untouched but I will paint those base cabinets as well ... one day when my energy returns!

x

The kitchen is done! (sort of...)

2011-11-26T17:26:00.000-05:00

The major aspects are finished. We still have finishing touches that'll probably linger for months, but it's lovely and functional. Here are some photos from last month; sorry to be so late posting them.

They had to do some cutting in the truck...

Here is Inspector Bean Clousseau examing the newly inserted undermount sink...

A little notching around the window trim...

They only had to seam 2 places and you can't even see the seams, as they use this taupe colored epoxy to fill the gaps.

Clips under the sink, ready to attach the sink.

Front of sink...

Another seam will go here.

Sink under opening, ready to be attached.

Simple tools - caulk to adhere counters to base cabinets.

The view from the sink side.

Their truck. Great work, guys!

Sink in place - faucet was installed next day by hubby!

It's hard to photograph the faucet. It's tall so large pans can fit underneath, and has a single handle, and pullout end which is really handy.

I searched for hours and could not find a small dish drainer to fit IN the second sink, so wound up getting this stainless steel version at Bed Bath and Beyond that slips over the edge of the sink, which menas dishes pile up visually as it doesn't reach the bottom of the sink. The sinks' interiors are too rounded so while the smallest Rubbermaid should fit, it doesn't. Oh well.

EASY chicken broth from scratch

2011-11-01T20:07:00.005-04:00

(Yes, it's been a month and a day since I last blogged. I am so sorry. No excuses, just BIZZY.)

Now for the recipe. This is so easy you cannot NOT make this. Your family will thank you. Your cold will thank you. Your house will smell awesome. YOU CANNOT MESS THIS UP.

It's literally a "grab the stuff and dump it in a pot and boil" recipe. Really.

Buy an inexpensive small whole chicken (usually under $5). OR use the leftovers from one you already baked. Doesn't matter how much meat is left on the bones. The bones are apparently where the flavor is.

Grab the largest stock pot you have (like the one you boil spaghetti in - 4 quarts or larger).

Here's the good part (one of them). Get some nasty large carrots, the kind that taste nasty "sharp" raw. Leave the ends on. Get some big onions. And celery. Wash them, but just cut them into some large chunks. Leave the leaves on the celery, the ends on the carrots, supposedly even the onion skins just make the broth darker (the dye...). ALL OF THIS WILL GET STRAINED OUT so you don't have to meticulously dice it. The goal is to add flavor from the ingredients but nothing will be left in the final product but the broth. Dump it in the pot with the leftover chicken "carcass" (hate that word) or the new chicken fryer. Big chunks, leaves, skins, who cares- throw it ALL in.

I used a previously roasted chicken and cut off excess good meat to reserve to put back into the stock at a later date.

Cover it all with cold water. Bring it to a boil and then simmer with the lid off for at least 4 hours.

You'll want to add salt or it will have no flavor. Pepper, thyme, bay leaf, whatever else you want to add is good. But salt is a must.

After 4 hours or more, the meat will have fallen off the chicken bones and everything will be nice and soft and simmering. Done! I pour it through a colander into another huge pan to separate out the large pieces of bone and vegetables that get tossed. Then pour it though a finer strainer to get out any tiny pieces of bone or vegetables. Let it cool a bit. Any fat will form a skin you can skim off easily. Ladle portions into Ziploc bags to freeze. I SWEAR that last year a dose of this and raw garlic cured my bronchitis!

AND... if you don't add onions to the stock, you can give your cats or dogs the leftover meat that has fallen off the bones if you carefully fish it out making sure no small bones are attached. (They can't digest onions, so it's not good to give them the broth with the onions in it already.) It's a great way to use a chicken on the bone that you've already roasted. No waste.

Enjoy!

Pat Winter's creative blog - like crazy quilting?

2011-09-30T11:21:00.000-04:00

Artist Pat Winter just did something really nice for me and I'd like to pay it forward (pay it back?). If you love artsy crafty creative energy and hand embroidered crazy quilting, DO check out her blog - Pat Winter Gatherings. Pat also publishes a lovely magazine called "Crazy Quilt Gatherings" that is in full color, laid out so creatively and has amazing photos in it of all sorts of embroidered crazy quilt goodies... available in digital or print format for a really inexpensive price.

Also, I was happy to stumble across one of my mother's paintings on a greeting card at Wegmans yesterday! Leanin' Tree is the publisher. So cute. Love the glitter on the front.

Seeing red! (Anger and fall colors!)

2011-09-28T17:53:00.000-04:00

So angry that these email problems are out of my control. Do not like being out of control! So today I spotted a bright orange-red sumac branch of fall colored leaves from the kitchen window and braved the - ahem - knee-high grass (um, we've been a little busy with the kitchen...) that was icky damp and took some photos of red/peach/orange items in the garden. Enjoy!

Sumac

Maple tree leaf

Shrub Rose

Indian Blanket Flower

Nasturtiums (they grew like crazy, reaching our 2nd story deck!!!)

Burning Bush in its lovely dark purply-red shade

Our orange guy Oje and his black Halloween cat brother, Mops (orange kitties are also called "red" cats, and "ginger" cats!)

Email problems

2011-09-27T14:19:00.000-04:00

I'm having email problems -

If you are trying to reach me and are having problems, apparently my IP address has been "blacklisted" via one of the many companies who do such things. I am working to get it "whitelisted" again which may take a few days, but in the meantime I am unable to send mail from either of my 3 accounts to certain customers. Please contact me via phone or Facebook email and I apologize for the inconvenience. These things are utterly frustrating because they are entirely out of our control and caused by demons who send s-p-a-m and such things. Argh.

Facebook is NOT the best medium for marketing a business

2011-09-25T18:48:00.009-04:00

Why Facebook can be "bad" for business

I've been wanting to post this for quite some time, and after a wonderful local bookstore/coffeeshop announced she was moving away from her ConstantContact-based email newsletter (which charges the business based on number of recipients and number of monthly mailings, so I could understand her reasoning to move to FB, which is currently free) to an entirely Facebook-based series of announcements, I was compelled to write to the owner and beg her not to do so!

Facebook is not entirely "wrong" for businesses, but it isn't *the* answer, either. Please use it as ONE forum but do not use it as your sole forum.

I'm a website designer, graphic artist, semi-computer-geek. I'm online *all the time*. I listen to my website customers and realize that even though this is 2011, not everyone is a computer geek or even comfortable on computers. I am actually often shocked at how difficult they find computers to be to use, and how many cannot do more than the basics. My customers range from some folks whom I think surpass my level of computer skills to many who can just barely communicate via email, and many are somewhere in-between, trying as they might, getting by, but often frustrated by the plethora of operating systems, gadgets, software, and now social media sites and rules and security settings and so on - THEY ARE OVERWHELMED. They get slammed on lists because they joined LinkedIn and LinkedIn sent out a "join me on LinkedIn!" msg to their addressbook and that went to 2000 members on a list, and the list members get into an uproar because their auto notice clogged the list. I honestly know these people meant no harm and had no idea what would happen. It is WAY too hard to keep up on all these rules and stipulations and figure out what is kosher or not. I hear on a daily basis a variety of comments from 0 to 10 on the computer scale, ranging from a 10, "I am addicted to Facebook and need to get off and get back to reality" to a 5 "I joined Facebook and enjoyed reconnecting with old high school contacts and like, on occasion, reading posts from friends and family, but I CANNOT KEEP UP. I just have no time. And Twitter? Forget it!" to a 1, "I have no time or desire to join FB or Twitter." Most people tend to fall into the middle category, like me.

To me Facebook is like a blog, or even a hobby. I go in spurts with blogs. I have my favorites but often I will not read any posts for weeks. Then I'll try to catch up, and I'll read my fav blogs for days. Then I'll get back into a mode where I check a few each day but really I have no more than maybe 30 min of free time each day so I fall behind again.

The advertising/marketing world is changing. It's not enough to advertise your business with a website alone. So we website-ers began blogging which we were told helped keep your audience attuned to what you do by giving them new "meat" to read daily or at least weekly. Suddenly that became not good enough any longer, and Facebook came along, which was not designed for businesses to market their wares, but as a social media sorta thang, but people started wrestling it into shape to use for their businesses, and then Facebook started adapting a little bit to offer fan pages for businesses and so on. But now it seems you need a website and a blog and Facebook and Twitter and who the heck knows how LinkedIn really works, and so on. It is utterly overwhelming to MOST people I communicate with.

So why do I feel Facebook is "bad" for business?

Here's my scenario.

I link to about 375 people on Facebook as of today. This list of contacts is comprised of family members, close friends, not-as-close friends, acquaintances, business contacts, customers, fellow artists I've never met but "know of" via other online lists, old high school acquaintances, some old friends, and many strangers who have asked to link to me because we are in the same field. AND I have become a fan of countless businesses - some local mom&pop type, and some major businesses.

Each time any of them posts something and their post arrives in my Facebook "feed", it appears on my Facebook "wall." And as you probably know, your "wall" scrolls and scrolls, with the newest posts bumping down the next slightly older post.

For awhile I had my Firefox browser homepage set to a customized Google homepage showing my Facebook feed. Each time a new post flew in, it would appear on my Google homepage. But while I am often online all day because of what I do for a living, I cannot check that Google feed every 5 minutes, let alone log into Facebook every 5 minutes. That Google feed was outdated in 5 minutes and if I checked it every 2 hours, I'd still miss about 100 posts unless I scrolled down.

Sometimes life takes over, and I go DAYS without checking Facebook. Friends ask me, "Didn't you see my post on FB?" Um, no, I'm sorry to say. Sometimes yes, if I check it every few hours! But I never really have time to go to Facebook and check every single one of those 375 people's pages to see what I missed and then check the 100+ business pages I've linked to! Not gonna happen.

Because I am linked to about 375 people and countless businesses, even if each one of them just posts once a day, can you see how many posts I have to scroll through? I can never scroll through more than about 10 pages of posts without just giving up. I just don't have the time. If I'm really interested in getting a local restaurant's coupons, if they post once a week but I happen to check FB 36 hours later, I AM NEVER GOING TO SEE THEIR POST.

Recently I wondered why a local restaurant I became a Facebook "fan" of hadn't posted any coupons or specials lately. I then logged into Facebook and went directly to their page. Sure enough, they had posted several items of interest in the past few months, but because there is no way I could be attached to Facebook every 5 minutes of every day, I missed every single one of their posts.

If they had sent me an email newsletter or offer instead, I GUARANTEE I would have at least seen it in my Inbox, clicked on it and skimmed it because it would have appeared in my email Inbox which I cannot ignore. Whether or not I would have saved it or read it in depth is another story, but it would have caught my attention for a few seconds, and I could have easily saved it or flagged it for later.

Facebook marketing, to me, might be another way to get the word out about your business because we now seem to have to be connected to all of these methods if we want to succeed, but when I hear of businesses stopping their paper-based or email-based newsletters and moving entirely to Facebook notices, or Twitter (which to me is worse than Facebook as far as keeping up!), I cringe!

I want this post to be an example of how I WILL MOST LIKELY MISS YOUR MARKETING NOTICES, at least 75% of them if not more, because I cannot keep up with FB posts, and this is what I hear from most of my website design customers as well. Use FB as you need to but please do not think it is THE answer - it's ONE new way to get the word out but will not ever reach everyone for the reasons mentioned above!

If I am curious about a business's possible coupons or sales, the first thing I still do is go to their website. If I find nothing there, I might check out their blog or Facebook link. But it NEVER occurs to me to go right to a business's FB page as to me, FB is not a business marketing tool because it's hard to show a business in entirety in a creative and visual format, and maybe that's just me, but you can show much more in more creative detail on a website or blog!

And related to the bookstore/coffee shop scenario referenced above, I loved her email newsletter. It highlighted new books in the store, upcoming music events, cafe specials, coupons and more. How does one convey that in Facebook in an all-at-once newsletter? I don't think you can in a short, character- and image-limited post.. I'm happy that it seems like that business owner opted NOT to can her email newsletter after all as I am still receiving it and I can still bookmark it and look at it later on, but if she had "gone all Facebook on me" guaranteed I'd most likely never, or rarely see ANY of her notices again, and I consider myself to be someone who tries to keep up, but who can really be plugged in ever 5 min of every of our 24 hrs a day???

So please just be careful with FB - please don't use it as your ONLY marketing medium. Of course some of your fans will see your posts, but not all, and of course the ones who are not on Facebook will never see those posts! And I know MANY people, many computer literate people, who scoff at Facebook for a huge variety of reasons! If you think "everyone is on Facebook," they are not!!!

I could get at up at 2:30am...

2011-09-25T17:58:00.001-04:00

...when I often DO wake up, unable to get back to sleep, and start to work on "stuff" if I weren't so tired then, and still would not be able to get it all done! We got a really early start and then we totally pooped out right after lunch. Today we finished the beadboard to left of stove, anchored down the last 2 peninsula cabinets to the oak floor, made our little shelf unit in the "angled nook", filled holes, sanded, primed, and started to paint the peninsula. Oh, and we did some baseboard moulding in a few other areas of the room and living room that needed it desperately. Much better now! Seems like what we did should have taken 2 hours, but alas, it took longer, but it's lookin' good. Here are some photos.

Pictured above is the open space we have on the stove side of the peninsula because we decided to angle the 7.5' run of base cabinets to give it some interest and to open up the stove area a bit. Good decision. And as noted in prev blog post, I thought we could take advantage of that 7" wide triangular space but we'd have to be clever with a base/shelf and toekick area. Great space for tall cutting boards!

I took some 18" x 24" drawing paper and laid it on the top of the angled space, and from underneath with a fat black marker, traced the opening and cut out the triangular shape. Then we lowered it down to make sure it would fit toward the bottom. It didn't exactly, so hubby used the template to cut a piece of plywood for the shelf unit but planed it down a bit narrower to fit. And we didn't extend the plywood into the "pointy tip" as that never would have fit, so we cut a good portion of that back tip off.

I measured up just above the toe kick height and drew a level line on each side of the open area. We nailed 1" x 1" horizontal supports to each side of the base cabinets to support the new angled shelf.

Here's the shelf in place, primed. The daylight shining through vertically in the back will be enclosed with some moulding. That's from a slight gap where the 2 sections of peninsula are meeting. And as you can see to the right of the angled nook, we've finished the beadboard and framed it out so hopefully it looks almost like a door panel, whereas it's really the back of the other cabinets.

After filling nail holes and sanding, I primed the beadboard on the peninsula and we sanded it again. We were curious to see if the Biscotti-matched paint would clash horribly with the Kraftmaid Biscotti cabinets since we color matched the chip they went us, which was a bit more yellow. So far so good! I just painted the "framework" on the back of the peninsula as shown above and it's lookin' good and the Valspar paint is going on nice and smooth.

Here's the end that you'll see when you walk in our front door through the dining room. SO HAPPY with this. So grateful that hubby and I work so well together and that he has the strength to pull off some of my ideas that I could not physically do myself. We had to lift those 2 end units shown above, that had already been anchored together and were incredibly heavy with the drawers (so the drawers had to get removed *again*), and screw a 12" section of 2" x 4" to the floor just inside the cabinet's floor area, so we could screw the cabinet horizontally to that 2 x 4 so the peninsula won't move if someone bumps against it. Not difficult but not easy for one not-very-strong person to do.

The view from the stove looking toward dining room.

Tomorrow am the countertop guys that Lowes set us up with come out to measure and then on Oct 14, so they say, the counters and undermount sink-already-attached will be here and we can get rid of the contact paper-covered-plywood countertops!

More beadboard progress

2011-09-24T18:37:00.002-04:00

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel! We can even see the cool Diane Knott pumpkin lamp on the peninsula!

We had the hardest time finding wide enough-but-not-very-thick wood strips to frame out the beadboard. I didn't want anything fancy as I felt any routed edge would compete with the beadboard, and I like the farmhouse look of plain, square-edged lattice on a beadboard peninsula. It's easy to find 1.75" strips but I wanted something along the lines of 2.25" - 3" because I felt the "framework" needed to be wider than the beadboard slats themselves, which are narrow. After perusing the moulding aisle in Home Depot for about 30 minutes and finding nothing wider than 1.75", at first I figured I could buy baseboard moulding and have hubby plane off the top portion that looks like cove moulding because that would leave about 3". But at over $1.00/linear foot, it would be pricey. Fortunately I stumbled across HD's beadboard aisle. They have a wider selection than Lowes, where we bought ours, and they just happened to have 4" wide pine slats, with a tongue on one edge, groove on the other, and only 5/16" thick. YEAH! Perfect.

So hubby got to work with the table saw and cut us some 2.5" wide pieces, cutting off the tongues and grooves, that are perfect. I've patched the holes from the nail gun and we need to get sandpaper and sand the patches, then I'll prime and paint it to match the Biscotti colored cabinets.

We continued attaching the beadboard, and the outer wider framework strips. Pictured above is the view from the eating area - looking good, if I do say so myself! The countertop will cover the raw edge of the top "frame" and if it doesn't, we'll add some tiny quarter round moulding.

We now have a cool "angled nook" on the stove side that, rather than covering over, we are going to try to fenagle into a usable spot. It is ideal for large cutting boards. It'll be a challenge as the 2 base cabinets to its left have a toe kick and the 2 to its right do not. So we think we'll extend the toe kick under this nook and make the bottom shelf be just above the toe kick height. Must do this tomorrow and then we need to anchor down the peninsula end, as the countertop measuring guys are coming Monday am! We anchored down half of the peninsula by the wall but I forgot to take pics. Will take pics tomorrow as it is easy to do. You basically lay a small section of a 2x4 on the floor just inside the cabinet base, screw it to the floor, then screw the cabinet to the 2x4 horizontally.

Beadboard beginnings

2011-09-18T17:42:00.002-04:00

So tired! Both of us! When I worked fulltime in the corporate world, I used to joke that after a long weekend of home remodeling work, it was good to go back to work to rest (i.e., sit on b_tt all day).

But we're making good progress. Today we went to Lowes and purchased unfinished pine beadboard planks, liquid nails, some thin (1/4") plywood and a few other items, and continued work on the peninsula.

First hubby anchored 2 of the cabinets together by screwing horizontally into the face frames as you're supposed to do, so that they can be moved as one unit. Then, because the backs of the cabinets were not completely flat "on one plane," we purchased a few inexpensive 24" x 24" x 1/4" plywood sheets and cut them into strips, and tacked them horizontally across the backs of the cabinets to give us a flat surface to adhere the beadboard to. The arrows above show the areas on the backs of the cabinets that stick out just a wee bit more than that MDF board on the entire back.

The liquid nails didn't behave and we wound up tacking those strips into the back of the cabinets, which aren't very thick, but you won't see the tips of the nails on the inside behind the drawers. Not sure why; we used Loctite PLConstruction Adhesive which we've used before and you have to be careful not to glue your hand instantly to the object, but it seemed as tacky as scotch tape.

Adding the beadboard is super easy. Each piece comes in 8' lengths and each cabinet is 34.5" high, so we cut the planks about 34" high. There will be 2' of waste from each plank but that will be incorporated into a beadboard backsplash behind the computer nook, where we were not able to smooth out the wall very well where the old backsplash had been glued to the sheetrock. And it'll look great as it will tie the wall visually to the peninsula. We may also add the beadboard behind the other cabinets as well.

Now to fill the nail gun holes, prime, and paint to match the Biscotti base cabinets!

We will also add 2.5" wide trim over the beadboard to frame it out. I'm not crazy about a large run of beadboard without this framework. I think the wide trim makes it look more like finished door panels. See example here on the Sailing Simply blog!

Peninsula modifications

2011-09-17T19:15:00.002-04:00

Thank goodness it all worked out. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I realized the oven door would not open fully because it would hit the knobs (once installed) on one of the 18" base drawer units to the left of it. We knew the peninsula had to be moved a few inches to the left of the stove to accommodate the oven door handle, but did not take into account the depth of the drawer fronts themselves or knobs! Fortunately we have a few extra inches to work with before hitting the window trim, but even so, the oven door would still hit the knobs.

Hubby figured out we could swap the order of a few of the cabinets. Here's what we had initially laid out:

The 24" base cabinet on bottom left would open toward the pantry (not pictured here, in bottom left area) and the other 3 cabinets would open toward the sink. We wound up swapping the 15" base with no door, open shelves, with the 18" spice cabinet drawer base. So now the order is 24" and 15" shelf unit facing pantry, and 18" spice drawer and 24" base 3 drawer facing sink. And we wound up angling the peninsula as we initially thought we might and it's going to be awesome. Looks more "creative" and interesting and inviting. A straight run would have been fine, too, but this opens up the work area a bit and also leads the eye from the rest of the room into the work area.

And this gets confusing but we opted initially to have toe kicks installed on all peninsula cabinets on the reverse side (pictured above) because of both sides being seen and stood up against, then decided against it because I like the look of beadboard with baseboard moulding to the floor better. The only cabinet that would have a toe kick on reverse side would be the 24" unit on the leftmost side so it would match with the standard toe kicks on the front of the cabinets facing the sink.

Now that we are playing mix and match with placement and which side faces which way, we now have 2 cabinets with toe kicks facing the pantry and 2 without toe kick next to them, and on the side facing the sink we have 2 with standard toe kicks, one with and one without. But it's ok! We are clever, LOL! We can box in under the 2 with toe kicks facing the pantry so one side is consistent, and on the workspace side by the stove, it doesn't matter that 3 will have a toe kick and 1 won't as we'll box in the rightmost one next to the stove and beadboard will cover those backs, too).

Picture above is our layout with temporary counter in place so we can function for the next month. 24" pots and pans drawer unit on left, 18" spice cabinet drawer unit, both angled "out," then the 15" open shelf unit facing the pantry/table and the 24" base cab against wall also facing pantry.

TEMPORARY COUNTERTOP TIP!

Seriously - I cannot imagine washing dishes in the bathtub for weeks until your new counters arrive. My back would rebel. So yes, it's been more work to move stuff in and out and we spent a little money today on plywood and contact paper but it HELPS. And I'm sure we will wind up reusing the plywood at some point. Pictured above is 1 piece of plywood cut to fit the peninsula covered in contact paper. (A second piece was added 10 min later.) And BOY, they do not make contact paper sticky anymore. We implemented the same setup in our house in Yardley, PA, during our massive kitchen reno then and the contact paper was like glue. Now? It's like cling wrap. It won't stick to the wood at all so we have masking tape on all edges to hold it down.

Now of course we are joking - who needs an expensive "real" countertop when a $20 piece of plywood and a $6 roll of Contact paper from WalMart work just as well. HA!!!

And another slight glitch today. We had cut the old laminate countertop into 3 sections. Left of sink, sink area, and right of sink, so we could move all sections off and on and still function as we are installing the base units, leveling, shimming, etc. Well, once we installed all base cabinets on that wall, the old double basin porcelain sink pictured above would not fit on the new base 36" cabinet which is as wide as they come!! It has 2 MDF supports (not just corner brackets) as shown above and we suppose we could have notched them out so the old sink with old counter attched could be dropped in place temporarily... but we also don't know if that would be necessary when the LG Hausys solid surface counters arrive with undermount stainless steel attached in place and we didn't want to mess up that support and possibly weaken it for no reason, so hubby went out and bought a cheap stainless steel single basin sink at the local hardware store for $38, smaller, so that again, we can function like normal human beings. He cut a piece of plywood to fit over the sink base and installed the sink and plumbing over it. I am so grateful he can do that work! Pictured below are the sink in plywood temporary counter section and that section covered in contact paper:

Boy, I miss the double sink. I HATE having the dish drainer on the counter, but I know it is temporary!

Kitchen progress - Christmas in September!

2011-09-16T19:39:00.008-04:00

Our cabinets arrived right on time on Monday. It only took 3 weeks, which I think is rather quick, and they were all packaged very well. Each was in its own box with styrofoam corner protectors and no boxes were dented or damaged.

Fortunately hubby was not traveling this week, so he got to celebrate "Christmas in September" with me by helping open these massive boxes that filled the dining room!

Love the knobs! One of our "deals" from Kraftmaid was free knobs or drawer pulls (just for the cabs we purchased). We'll have to purchase matching ones to add to the existing wall cabs we are not replacing, so we opted for these brushed nickel round knobs that should be relatively easy to find. The KM knobs were NOT cheap so there was no way I was purchasing 23 more directly from them (I was told they run about $17 each - insane - can find similar ones under $5 each), but it was nice to get these freebies along with the free sink base as we ordered 10 base units to qualify. And they seem well made. Each one is heavy!

Only problem was that 2 of the boxes that contained the large "super susan" corner cabinets were too large for the delivery men to fit through any of our doors - our widest storm door was 35" and the cabinets are 36". Another storm door was 29.5" wide and if they came in through the basement, the door at the bottom of the steps was only 29" wide. We anticipated this but thought they'd fit through the side deck door. Only if you take the cabinets out of the boxes and do some wonky finagling and only because the rear corner of the cabinets is not square but rather, angled, can you fit through a smaller opening. The delivery folks are not allowed to take anything out of the boxes, so they were placed in our garage for us to lug inside, stacked on top of each other. We had to drag over an old base cabinet (slightly smaller than the boxes) to slide the top box onto. Then a heavy plastic recycling box to drag the box onto to lower it closer to the ground. Then another slide to the ground. And then the lifting began. Too big and clunky for our handtruck.

And lug we did. They were heavy and awkward. We laid down cardboard from the various boxes along the stone path so we could lift, stop, lift, stop. And then we had to go down one step, up 3, and up 4 more. UGH. We are sore. And then once inside, thank GOD the path from the door through the living room, through a hallway and into the kitchen was wide enough by a cat's whisker and we were able to angle it around the railing. Seriously. Otherwise we would have had to break the piece in half and glue it back together!

And why is there always a cat in the way? Pictured above we ran into a snag by the bump-out where the heater chimney is and again managed by the hair of a cat's whisker to get it past. A towel is draped over the railing to keep it from scratching and we had to move that other piece of furniture out of the way.

Ever wonder what's under those corner units? I did. Especially because you have to shim to get them all level, I knew there was something supporting the center weight, and this is it above.

COLOR PROBLEMS!

Now, this may seem minor, and it is, but it is also rather irritating. We agonized over what color to choose. I didn't want more white cabinets. We are leaving our white wall cabs in place and can paint them to match if we have to. So we opted for a Kraftmaid color called "Biscotti" that is like a lovely creamy beigey cafe au lait color on the yellow side to match our yellow walls. I ordered door samples, and we based our decision on that sample. Well, the cabinets do not match the door sample exactly. They're CLOSE, but they are not exact. They lack the yellow undertone and are not as dark. They are not as pale as the off-white-gray "Canvas" color, thank God, that we thought would not work. But it's not what we wanted.

I took a cabinet drawer to Lowes with the door sample, and the best they could do would be to send a Kraftmaid rep to the house and possibly have us send the cabinets back, but if this is the color they are now painting them, the new cabs could arrive the same way. I explained that we are "ok" with the subtle difference and had begun installing them, but are not 100% satisfied. This was the first time they'd heard of anyone noticing a color difference from a sample. Ugh. Pictured above is an old cabinet drawer I painted in the "Biscotti" color when we bought a custom gallon of paint to match the door sample we purchased. It's hard to tell in the pic but it's a hair darker and a bit more yellow. The cabinet underneath that is the new Kraftmaid biscotti, paler and not as yellow. Again, it's hard to tell from the photo because I shot it in bright light which really washes out the Biscotti color. In some lights they almost look white!

Lowes said it was possible the color sample on the door sample we were sent was old and had discolored, and I said if that's the case Kraftmaid needs to know so they stop doing that.

Pictured above - we moved the cut countertops out *again* (I can't tell you now that it's Friday how many times we have moved stuff in and out, but it's better to be able to have a functioning kitchen than have everything out of the room for several weeks or months!) and installed the righthand corner of base units.

And here is Chessie investigating the new goods. This is the beginning of the peninsula SOON TO BE CHANGED due to the fact that a few days later, I realized the oven would not open once we installed the knobs on that drawer unit because the oven door would hit the knobs. Yikes! And we don't have a lot of room to move the peninsula more to the left because it will overlap that large window. Fortunately hubby figured out a few swaps of cabinets and changing their orientation would work. Whew. Stay tuned for another installment in the next day or so with more pics of how we corrected that issue that neither I thought of, nor the Lowes Kraftmaid software, which didn't catch the fact that you have to account for drawer/door depth and knob depth when dealing with an L-shape. We knew we needed to leave space to the left of the stove to be able to open the drawers to clear the oven handle and so those drawers would open, but knob depth - yikes!

A morning visitor - to the garage roof of all places!

2011-09-10T17:39:00.000-04:00

A Green Heron!

We were enjoying breakfast at the kitchen table on this lovely cool late summer morning, watching chickadees tear apart the dying sunflowers and goldfinches on the purple coneflowers, when hubby suddenly said, "What the heck is THAT?", pointing to the garage roof. He knew I'd run over with my camera so he jumped back to give me room. Managed to get a few blurry shots of him (her?) through the screen, and then got lucky and got a few more through the side living room window that currently doesn't have a screen in it.

Not the type of bird you'd usually see on the garage roof. They are found in tall grasses around lakes and ponds, like ours, but we've never seen one here before. Pretty cool! Love those yellow legs. Here's the Cornell Lab of Ornithology link on his specs.

And at first I thought he may be an American Bittern, so I looked up those guys, too. Check out their vocals. If I heard that in the yard, I'd swear the pond was burping and about to fully drain. LOL!

Sunday's kitchen remodeling progress

2011-09-04T17:43:00.002-04:00

A purple morning glory peeking out amidst the autumn blooming clematis

Sand, spackle, wet sponge, spackle again, second and third coat the paint along the edges (for some reason yellow going over a slightly darker yellow is being a PIA and not covering well). It never ends.

A little lunch break - leftover shrimp cocktail. YUM.

Pictured above is the new wall-mounted white hot water heater unit we purchased to replace the 2 runs of standard hot water baseboard units. Soooo much better. No dented fins, no dented cover that always falls off if you accidentally kick it. But... while installing it is "easy" it meant poor hubby had to enter the cistern crawlspace room beneath and do some plumbing and exploring.

First, we purchased and installed an 8' strip of oak moulding that's rounded on the front end to cover the gaps where the oak floor didn't meet the wall, as shown above. I figured a front rounded edge would be better than something with a "step" that you might kick as you walk up to the window. We'll stain it to match the floor as best as possible and put some poly on it.

Because that wall is a little bowed in the middle, the molding could either be scribed and cut to match (PIA), or left as is and we'll put some baseboard molding against the wall above it, which will hide those 2 gaps.

Then hubby anchored the heater unit in place with brackets and determined where the copper pipes should go, and drilled holes into the crawlspace. One hole on the right worked out well - the drill bit went right through the oak and subfloor into insulation somewhere near the sill plate.

The hole on the left? Well, the bit didn't want to stop drilling. We were hitting "something" and hoped it wasn't a patch of concrete that we saw while in the crawlspace in that general area as shown above where the lefthand arrow is pointing. It wound up hitting a new floor beam. Sigh. Fortunately NOT in the center of it. He was able to chisel out a vertical notch to allow the pipe to extend down. Whew.

And here is poor hubby on TOP of the cistern, which is in the center or the room, sides built up out of stone and mortar, with an old throw rug draped on top of some plywood that partially covers the cistern, trying to determine whether he's going to have to do this replumbing on the left or right side of that main new support beam. Fortunately the work had to be done on the left side, where you can almost fully stand up. (The old cistern was filled in, so is only about 6' deep, no more water in it, btw.)

As freaked out by spiders as I am (him, too! he deserves a medal for going down there!), I am intrigued by that room and I'm not sure why. I think it's because the cistern makes me curious. How did they get water into it decades ago? Via a huge pipe that led in from ... where? Our side yard where the pond is is very wet. Is there a pipe out there that used to lead into that room? And how did they keep critters out of the water? I assume they didn't drink the water, but rather, used it for washing. Did it freeze in the winter? Or maybe just a layer of ice would appear on top?

This old window, that's been plywooded over and caulked, may be another culprit that lets cold air in. We're going to see if we can put some insulation batting over it and seal it off better.

So yes, while hubby crawled around down there today with soldering iron, can of spider spray, a broom, and supplies, I was upstairs in the clean room above spackling and touching up paint. He deserves a medal.

More progress on kitchen reno

2011-09-03T17:34:00.002-04:00

"Mom, I see ghosts behind you."

We continue to work on the minor kitchen renovation by cutting countertops, pulling out base cabinets, sealing up underneath, painting, spackling, painting and cleaning.

Here's the "under Pantry area" being boxed in – SO much better than the ragged sheetrock edge. Our helper is wondering if she could help apply primer.

Uh-oh – the backsplash was glued on here, too! Big holes to fill.

Some of the holes to patch – others are deeper.

Toekick under dishwasher to fridge has been removed. Looking under with flashlight, hoping there aren’t 42,000 spiders.

HMM. To right of stove, the toekick has now been removed. Mouse droppings and mysterious huge white batt of insulation are visible on floor in 24” x 24” dead area. That IS a cold corner but maybe it won’t be cold once we seal up! I mean think about it – it gets to minus 10 here sometimes. A ½” x 3’ long gap lets the crawlspace air pour up slowly. Like having a window cracked. But the batt of insulation is worrisome. What is under it???

Here’s Paul cutting the counter. I figured out we could cut it to the left of the dishwasher and leave the sink in place, and cut it to the left of the sink as well, so we can remove the cabs under that area.

LOVE MY FOAM! LOL! When it dries we’ll cut off the excess and I’ll caulk over it and put caulk in the gaps where foam wouldn’t fit.

Under the dishwasher. Not too bad. The subfloor here went all the way to the wall. Just added some spray foam as the sheetrock didn't meet the subfloor.

We wound up removing the window trim, because the side pieces stopped at the backsplash, and we won't be installing a backsplash when the new counters come in. Discovered that there is no insulation in the space between the window trim and the frame itself. Normally you wound insert pieces of insulation batts in there with a chisel, or spray foam. So off came all the window trim and in went more spray foam.

Here's Bean, wondering why the counter is gone, but happy to find her little pot of oat grass just planted 4-5 days ago is now ready to munch on. ;-)

What a mess! The camera doesn't show 75% of it. Items moved around and piled up in various rooms. Despite trying to be organized like by putting all outlet covers and screws in one little rubbermaid, and all tools in another, and moving drawers to another room, etc., it just seems like "STUFF" has to get moved and moved and cleaned and moved and cleaned and painted and second coated and sanded and cleaned and third coated and so on. As all of you who have done home remodeling before know, it seems like THE WHOLE HOUSE gets involved.

Now, where is the maid? LOL!

Here's a shot of where some cold air, and small critters, most definitely found their way into our living space. Where the hot and cold water copper pipes come up from the crawlspace to the sink, and where the big white PVC drain pipe exits the sink into the nasty area, were some gaps. A good 1/2" around that white PVC pipe. I mean, a small raccoon could come up through that (grin). Maybe not a raccoon baby, but -10 degree air YES.

Gaps be gone! No more! Spray foam insulation and caulk, and hubby was thinking maybe there's even some sort of rubbery tape we could put over those. I had an idea to patent something for the floor-meets-wall gaps... but as with all my brilliant ideas, it has probably already been done. But maybe not, so I must do some Google searching on the topic. ;-)

4 new digital stamps/embroidery patterns!

2011-08-29T12:01:00.000-04:00

We've just added 4 new digital stamps / embroidery patterns to our Etsy shop. Check out:

Snack Attack

muffins, pie, coffee mug, jar of jam, burgers and ice cream, and an ice cream cone

Yum!

Spooky Stories

cat popping out of pumpkin, witch's hat decorated with moons and stars, a wagon of pumpkins, scary flying ghost, and a funny scarecrow head

Boo!

Scarecrows

Scarecrows of all shapes and sizes, wearing patchwork clothes - even one with a tie. Plus acorns, candy corn, the text "crows not allowed!" and "trick or treat!"

Fall Still Lifes

5 fall still life images for you to print and color, or use as an embroidery pattern, including images of cornucopias, pumpkins, gourds, acorns, autumn leaves, flowers and apples

All available in our Etsy shop as 300 dpi .jpgs that will be emailed to you.
No shipping charges!

Lil’ Carrot Nose Snowman Wallhanging

2011-08-24T17:04:00.002-04:00

Mom (Diane) has just completed another e-pattern to add to our collection. I'll be converting it to a paper version, as well, but for now the PDF file e-version is available in our Etsy shop! PDF means I will email you your copy within 24 hours (usually sooner) of receipt of your payment. No shipping costs!

Our Lil’ Carrot Nose Snowman Wallhanging is approximately 12.5" wide x 18.75" high, and easy to make. No binding required, he uses a simple "sew and turn right sides out" design. The chubby snowman decked out in hat and scarf for another long cold winter is seated beneath a "NOEL" sign. 2 easy to make tabs sewn on with buttons will allow you to hang your wallhanging from a decorative rod, or you could even use a small tree branch decorated with faux snow! His face is painted, so the pattern assumes you have a really basic knowledge of painting with acrylic paints.

Kitchen renovation - beginning to seal the gaps

2011-08-21T17:24:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we ordered our new base cabinets. They should be in in "3 to 8 weeks." Kind of a wide timeframe there. So looking forward to this! Today we realized we could start some demo work by removing the baseboard heaters and investigate what might be lurking beneath them that may need sealing. It's not heating season yet, so we won't be without heat. And we'll be replacing both units with a more efficient and nicer looking wall-mounted unit anyway.

Pictured above - the existing baseboard heater with front cover removed. The fins are pretty bent up and that yellow spray foam insulation underneath is what we were barely able to squeeze in ourselves several yrs ago which didn't work well because as you can see in my very rough illustration below, it didn't really reach the joint where wall meets flooring:

That "back plate" is screwed to the wall and you can't see the joint where wall meets floor, and you can't remove the back plate without damaging the fins. But I found a great video online that shows how you can unscrew the plate, lift it up, tack it in place, and use a spray foam insulation "gun" to seal up, then lower the back plate back in place. Check out the video! We'll be doing this in our other rooms soon! Works well if you don't have many layers of flooring and have some leeway under the fins to see any gaps and get the caulk or insulation gun underneath.

Hubby gets a lot of credit for being able to drain the system and cut the pipes in the very spidery crawlspace room that houses the old water cistern (dirt floor, stone walls, nasty).

Under the pantry, after we got the heaters removed and I vacuumed, it wasn't too "gappy" where the flooring meets the walls. There was a huge opening on the left, where the heater pipe ran into the crawlspace, but we knew that when we moved in and we had steel wool stuffed there.

Here's the under-pantry area all sealed up (I LOVE CAULK):

Along the rear wall was a different story. The newer oak flooring wasn't cut to meet the sheetrock perfectly on the wall ends, and even the MDF subflooring didn't quite meet the sheetrock. On the left, there was a good 1/2" wide x 12" long or so gap where one could look down into the crawlspace area and wave to the spiders. UGH!

Along the rest of the wall was some dark colored flooring paper that you lay between layers of flooring (like tar paper) and when we moved that away from the joint, there were gaps, though not as bad as there - we could see batts of insulation below. Still - any gap is a bad gap for bugs and cold air. So we used good old spray foam insulation first, which we'll cut back with a serrated knife when it fully dries, and I got out my trusty caulk gun and sealed the rest.

Looking and feeling better already!

We won't be able to fill the missing chunks where the flooring should have extended to the wall, and since the new heater unit will hang on the wall under the window, the gaps will be visible. I'm thinking a 3" wide x 1/4" high piece of oak moulding with a rounded front edge (like something you'd use as baseboard moulding or a threshhold) is what we'll have to lay flat on the floor, stained to match.

Tomato heaven!

2011-08-19T14:00:00.000-04:00

Fresh garden tomatoes

Fresh garden cucumbers

Fresh garden basil

Storebought (but fresh, not stringy) mozzarella

Balsamic vinegar, olive oil and sea salt

YUM

Our kitchen renovation! Invitation to follow our journey...

2011-08-18T19:34:00.009-04:00

A partial kitchen renovation!

Please join us as I blog our before-and-after progress over the next few months!

We are finally undertaking what we consider a minor, partial kitchen renovation. Our kitchen is lovely, so we are lucky, considering the main portion of the house dates to 1860. It's large (about 13.5' x 15'). The ceiling is high and slanted, with nice recessed canister lights. The flooring is my favorite hardwood - oak - and in fantastic condition as it is only about 10 yrs old. The walls are painted a pale golden yellow. Cabinets are white, a mix of painted/restored 1970s cabinets and some newer white Thermofoil cabinets that almost match door style-wise. We have room for a small round bar-height table and chairs, there's an amazingly functional computer nook, and a large much-needed pantry. (I remember living in houses w/no pantry - trying to stuff everything into base and wall cabinets - a nightmare.)

So why on earth are we renovating? For a few reasons that will make this room absolutely perfect for our needs.

- First, we are seriously short on counter space. Despite the size of the room, we really have just one wall of cabinets as shown above, that wrap in a minor way onto perpendicular walls. I wouldn't even really call it a true U-shaped kitchen. Since hubby loves to cook, we are always in desperate need for him to be able to spread out. So we will be adding a 7' peninsula, which will make the room more of a U-shaped or almost galley style kitchen (minus a second wall), which we had in the last house and it worked out just fine.

- Spiders (sorry, cannot take a photo and show you - it is against my religion to record them on film, LOL!). And cold air. We are inundated with spiders who like to camp out and set up homebase under the toekick area, which isn't fully sealed up. Each week I vacuum up at least 3-5 of them and sometimes a massive, nasty mini tarantula runs across the floor. They don't just materialize out of thin air. Beneath the kitchen is the lovely 1860's-era dirt floor/stone wall semi-crawlspace with old filled-in water cistern. See above. Ugh. A haven for "creatures." They are welcome to live down there and STAY down there. I am buying a case of caulk.

I think there may be gaps where the sheetrock walls meet the flooring, and where the pipes go into the flooring, that need some good caulking and sealing up. Pictured above is an example from another room when we installed some laminate flooring. You might think, "Oh what's the big deal? A cabinet will go in front of that." Or baseboard molding. Well, those millipedes that invade houses in summer, and ants, and SPIDERS (UGH - did I say "ugh" before?) can get into microscopic cracks, so giving them a 1/2" or 1" of space is ridiculous. Seal that baby up! And on really cold winter days, I've placed a thermometer in the base cabinets and it has dipped to the low 50s, yet the floor is insulated from the crawlspace.

- Storage space. In each corner of the existing run of base cabinets, there is a 24" x 24" area of dead space (see red lines above outlining the dead space). Some base cabinets extend into those corners - they are called "blind reach cabinets" appropriate enough, and it's very difficult to get to anything you place in that area, but in our case there isn't even a cabinet area there - just literal dead space. In our last home, we gutted and totally renovated a 1957 kitchen and installed a "Super Lazy Susan" in one of those corners. Oh my!! What a difference. It held the blender, mixing bowls, some pots and pans, pie plates, you name it, and nothing got lost in any abyss! We will now have 2 of those "Super Susans" and I am grateful to whomever invented them.

- Visual Clutter. I am tired of seeing the garbage can and recycling bucket on the floor out in the open. In the pic above you can see the garbage can to left of stove, and the recycling bucket is behind it. In our newly renovated space, we will have a pullout base cabinet that will contain both of them behind a door, as we had in our last home. YEAH! And where you see the garbage can now, that is where the new 7' peninsula extension will begin.

- Drawer space. Drawers are awesome in a kitchen. They do cost more because you are paying for the slider hardware and drawer fronts, but they are so functional for spices, cooking tools, towels, etc. Most of the KraftMaid drawer inserts are wonderful but so incredibly overpriced. We are only incorporating a basic few like pullout trays in base units and the spice insert above, which I only purchased to bump us up $27 into the next Lowes sales bracket so we'd get an $800 savings instead of just $400. I hate to say it, but while KraftMaid cabinets are high quality, they really get you on these upgrades that most times you can purchase independently at places like Bed Bath and Beyond, and even in Lowes itself. Come on, $47.19 for that drawer insert, 18" wide? That's about $1 worth of wood and some basic cabinetry skills if that (cutting and gluing). But again, I purchased it to bump us up into the next bracket to get $800 off our order instead of just $400, and hubby is now contemplating how to organize his current set of about 8,572 spice jars. ;-)

- Baseboard heaters. We have hot water baseboard heat and I also vacuum up countless spiders from around the baseboard units. When we had a problem with our heater 18 months ago, soot escaped from the basement onto our kitchen walls through the crawlspace, so again, I don't think the walls are sealed well where they meet the floor, and you can't get a caulk gun under the baseboard unit because of the fins. They are rather dented, cat fur collects on them, and they are a huge eyesore. Hubby is going to replace them with a wall-mounted more enclosed radiator type of unit and we'll put nice baseboard molding where the fins used to live. Yeah! The pic above shows our little kitchen table and pantry unit to the left of it. The peninsula will run between the table and the stove.

- Oh. And hubby really really would like an undermount sink as we will have to replace our countertops while we are at it. We are investigating the various brands of solid surface materials and I agree that an undermount will be ideal. No lip and moldy caulk anymore. Did you know you can even get an undermount with a laminate countertop? I'm not sure we're willing to make that leap though, as the laminate edge seems like it could get easily chipped, tho it is definitely more inexpensive. Formica makes a relatively inexpensive nice looking solid surface material we are considering.

We are only replacing the base cabinets along the main wall. The wall cabinets will remain intact, as will the computer nook. This is the computer nook pictured below:

There's nothing wrong with either the wall cabs or the computer nook, and the budget doesn't allow for a total redo. I have to say, that computer nook is SO handy. Checking email, looking up recipes, putting Pandora.com on while cooking or doing dishes, or listening to Sleepy Hollow on wxpn.org on weekend mornings. Love it. In the ideal world, I would install lightly stained maple cabinets as in our last home because white shows the dirt big time, but instead we are going for a painted cream color base cabinet made by Kraftmaid called "Biscotti", and we are going to live with the mix of Biscotti and white for awhile. If it looks odd, we can always paint the existing white cabinets. Biscotti is the middle door sample below. "Canvas" is the leftmost, and "Willow" which is a beautiful sage green is on the right. Canvas was lovely but it might look "dingy" next to the pure white cabs. And I LOVED willow in the store, but it seemed too dark at home, esp if we ever want to paint the wall cabs to match. And Biscotti matches the yellow undertones of the oak floors beautifully:

So please stay tuned and I hope you enjoy following our progress as I post our progress here! Kitchen reno on a DIY basis really isn't a daunting task. Having gone through a major one before including crowbarring up old linoleum flooring, ripping out sheetrock, adding insulation, redoing wiring and plumbing, adding a new wider window and bracing the ceiling during that endeavor, etc., this should be a piece of cake (haha).

Really when you think about it, unless you are building new, which can be totally intimidating because there are no limits so it's hard to know where to begin, renovating an existing kitchen comes down to your wall measurements, considering what is fixed in place like the sink unless you want to move plumbing, accounting for the stove and refrigerator and whether you can move them easily, what you absolutely need, what you are willing to compromise on, and looking at the cabinet catalogs and figuring out how to lay out your cabinets in the space available as they usually come in 3" wide increments, plus filler strips you can cut down to any size.

Trick or treat and autumnal goodies!

2011-08-18T17:42:00.000-04:00

Fall is unbelievably just around the corner, and we have 2 patterns (and more coming soon) that some of you stitchers may be interested in available in our Etsy shop.

Our easy to make Trick-or-Treat tote, which can also be used by adults who just love jack o'lanterns:

And a fall-themed pumpkin wallhanging. Looks great when hung by a branch as shown on the cover:

AND... more to come real soon. I'm working on one with a black cat!

Sunset after the storm

2011-08-10T21:13:00.000-04:00

Fortunately we got the mild version of the storm - just some heavy rain. Happened to look out this evening and noticed through our dense trees that the sunset looked fantastic, so grabbed my camera and drove around the corner. Wish I'd had my tripod, but next time! Enjoy. (Click to view them larger.)

Do you have a solid surface sink?

2011-07-29T17:54:00.000-04:00

Found a four-leaf clover the other day! First time in YEARS!

Looking for feedback on the following types of solid surface counters and/or sinks if you have one. Reviews are mixed about stains and stain removal. Corian, Allen & Roth, Formica, LG Hausys, DuPont and WilsonArt. LOVE the way the counters are totally integrated with the undermount sinks - no lips, no caulk. But don't want to be scrubbing the thing with bleach 3x a day. Any comments or tips welcome. Thanks!!