The Corner Lot: Tales from 53 Mason Street

Pantry floor. (Long time, no see.)

2016-11-20T22:20:00.000-05:00

You know how sometimes something you thought was super-cool eventually gets tired and makes you wonder what you were thinking back when you were so young?

Sorry not sorry that I didn't wash off the recycling-bin residue before taking this photo. I was just going to rip it out anyway.

Well, that's how we started to feel about our turquoise laminate floor in our unfinished-for-5-years pantry/baking nook. It was basically the NKOTB posters of pantry floors. That turquoise junk cost about $24, so at least we got our money's worth.

So we had this simmering resentment over this floor. But then! We went to help Gabe's mom with some of her old-house projects and she had just taken down some pine shiplap. It was a little beat up, some nail holes, but not too old or stained, a little bit knotty but not too bad. In short, it came with a little patina. I had struggled with just what to replace the turquoise with, because the rest of the kitchen floor has plenty of patina, let's just say, and there's no matching that with something new. The rough side of the shiplap had been painted, but the smooth side was left virgin. Eureka! I had the brainstorm that it needed to be our pantry floor. I always get more creative when the price is right (free).

So we loaded it up, and since November is about the only time anything gets done around here, we got to work.

We ran the boards through the table saw to make them the approximate width of the existing kitchen floor. Then, we adjusted the saw blade to make the overlapping tongue part. We relapped the ship (technical terms).

Since the shiplap isn't tounge-and-groove, we had to nail right through the face of the boards. We pre-drilled holes, pounded in some finish nails (also free), and voila, we had ourselves a floor.

Old floor, meet new.

Someday we'll get around to sanding them and refinishing all at the same time. But since it's been 4.5 years since my last blog post, I don't want to make any promises I can't keep.

And just for good measure...

See what I did there?

I hung this cute rack I bought at the same junque shop where we got our beloved sink.

Did you know that smidgen, dash, tad, and pinch are actual units of measurement?

Maybe these things are yanking our chain a little bit, but they would come in handy for a person who's afraid to improvise.

Hope to get back to you all again before too long!

Porch demolition, yeah!

2012-06-17T22:59:00.002-04:00

This post is dedicated to my dear old dad on Father's Day! Without him, I'm sure we'd never have the desire or confidence (skill development is still in progress) to tackle such a lifelong project. His help and enthusiasm for true craftsmanship has gotten us so much further than we ever could have gotten ourselves. Hopefully he can come over soon and enjoy our improved front porch.

I've often said that our porch looks like someone parked an RV from the 1970s in front of our house. I mean, OMG, those windows!

The ones that are open are the ones that are not broken.

Gabe's mom told us once that they were salvaged from Martha's Restaurant, which was a popular place in Bethel back in the day. I wonder why they would want to get rid of these beauties?

Luckily, the original posts were still in there, encased in clapboards. Could be worse, I guess.

It got worse inside. Meet our old friend, Painted Particle Board.

Because we're still suffering from an overabundance of stuff, and because the porch is generally unpleasant, it more often served as storage during our various other projects than being the nice summer hang-out spot it should be. So this is what it looked like on a good day:

Add all that up with fungus growing on both the floor and the ceiling and you can see how we were ready for change.

The floor was covered in a mysterious substance that turned to mush when it got wet, which was all the time, because the roof leaks in several places. By the time I ripped it up, it was literally growing mushrooms. You should be thanking your lucky stars that I couldn't find the camera before I eliminated that. It turns out the mystery substance was just an underlayment that never got its overlayment, and was definitely never meant to get wet.

1982 was a rough year for porch renovations.

So I pulled up the floor first. The craziest part about the whole underlayment fiasco was that the floor underneath wasn't half bad! A few patches and a new coat of paint and they would have been in business.

1982 "under"layment on left, halfway decent wood floor exposed on right.

We knew we'd be in for a big project, but like the rest of our house, there were strong bones and much potential under all those layers of yuck. The posts and trim work around the door and windows were in great shape.

Gabe got a head start on wiring when we worked in the ceilings of the wall on the interior of this wall. So yay for that.

When I was out for the day on Saturday, Gabe went nuts on the walls. Since he can't use a Sawzall and take self-portraits at the same time, he didn't get any awesome demolition shots. But it was pretty sweet for me to come home to this!

Woohoo! I bet the neighbors didn't even know we had those windows.

And look, we have a decent-looking front door. Bet you didn't know that either!

Perhaps the greatest part about this is that it forced us to clean off our porch, forever, because we have nothing to hide our clutter anymore. The attic is a little more stuffed but it feels so good to have another whole space empty!

I really underestimated the difference this would make - the living and dining rooms have so much more afternoon light. I will have to see if I can find some pictures that will help demonstrate the difference. We feel so much more exposed, but in a good way. And the smell is much better without the mushroom colony growing out of the floor.

Of course, it's not all fun and games. You also definitely notice the peeling paint, which is the worst in the areas where the porch roof deflects the rain...

...and there's a lot of caulk and gunk where the panels between the posts were affixed. We have a lot of scraping in our future.

Overall, it could be a heck of a lot worse. It doesn't feel unsafe or anything. The roof could get interesting, and it might need to be jacked up a couple of inches. But hey, anything that gets us closer to hanging up that porch swing we got for our wedding nearly two years ago (that's still in the box) is a good thing, right? We're forward thinkers.

Kitchen: painted!

2012-05-28T21:31:00.002-04:00

Dear reader, I know it's been awhile since we've updated you on our progress. Believe me, we're not neglecting you when that happens. It's our poor house that's being neglected. So, when faced with a three-day weekend, we wanted to have a little fun. In our case, that means three uninterrupted days of housework.

We divided and conquered. Gabe got to go outside in the beautiful weather and plant the garden. I got to stay inside and sand and paint the kitchen.

Normally I can't wait to paint. It is the most satisfying part of home improvement, in my opinion. With the kitchen, however, we primed it just after Thanksgiving and it has languished ever since. We had tried wet-sanding the joint compound on the walls and ceilings for the first time. Wet sanding is a technique in which you use a special sponge to essentially wet down and wipe off excess joint compound from your bare drywall. The advantage to this is that there is no dust. Dry sanding with special screens or sanding pads creates an especially hellish kind of dust that will infiltrate absolutely every nook and cranny of your house.

So we did the wet sanding and it seemed to be going just swell. In our effort to get as much work done as possible during our Thanksgiving kitchen blitz, we slapped up a coat of primer on the ceiling as soon as it dried. It was dark out. When we saw it in the daylight the next day, we realized we had made a big mistake! It was terribly lumpy, our worst ceiling yet. We should be getting better at this, not worse! And because we had primed it already, it was going to be nearly impossible to fix. Thank goodness we hadn't also primed the walls! We probably would have it we weren't planning on doing those in red primer.

We touched up the walls with dry sanding pads, which are firm and flat and made a nice, smooth surface. We realized that because the wet sanding sponges are wet and floppy, it would be very difficult to ever make it smooth. Maybe we're missing something. It turned out that the combo of the two techniques worked well - the dust was reduced overall because so much material was removed with the wet sanding first, and the results were really good on the walls.

That brings us back to our wrecked ceiling. I meant to do a post when our friend Colin (a favorite here at the Corner Lot for his deck-building and general handy-person skills) came over near Christmastime and helped us plow through a long list of annoying things that needed to get done. One of those things was attempting to fix our ceiling. He talked us down from a ledge, so to speak, when we were considering skim-coating the whole thing. We didn't have the proper tools and he was convinced we didn't need to endure that level of mess or difficulty. So we scraped and patched and scraped and patched. It was grim.

We did the best we could. Then, suddenly, it was May! We just couldn't bring ourselves to sand our patching job because we were too busy living in it and it is such a pain to clean up the results. So I found a solution: just let the whole house get dirty enough that it needs a top-to-bottom cleaning anyway, then sand away.

So, here we are. I spent Saturday packing away everything that wasn't in a cupboard and sanding that darn ceiling once and for all. I knew it wouldn't be perfect, but we just got so sick of it being not done that it didn't matter anymore. The unfinished ceiling was really holding us back, because you have to paint the ceiling before you paint the walls, and you have to paint the walls before you install the trim, and you have to do everything before you finish the floors...and we had a self-imposed moratorium on putting anything on our mostly-bare walls in all the downstairs rooms until that sanding was done. So, before bedtime I had it all primed again and we finally ready to move on. I was quite proud of myself.

The sad part about me making this short story long is that there's no way I can illustrate to you in photos the progress we made. A white ceiling is a white ceiling is a white ceiling in pictures. And the walls are still red, just more red. But I'll do the best I can.

Here's before - it's a little scruffy looking. Very flat primer on both the ceiling and the walls.

And after: more primer and super flat ceiling paint hiding a multitude of sins - which will hopefully be even less obvious when we move past the bare-bulb phase.

Here's the best I could do to show the difference in our old red and new red. The new red, Benjamin Moore's Chili Pepper, is on the top. In the photo, it's still wet so it looks shiny, but it's pretty matte now that it's dry. The old red, Behr's Poinsettia, is on the bottom. This is just the primer tinted that color - the real top coat was an enamel, I believe. Extra shiny to highlight every...single...bump...**shudder**. It was much more orangey. Let's just say we don't miss it.

I am totally awesome at free-handing a crisp paint line, no blue tape necessary (that's why Gabe gets to play all day in the garden). Just another one of my many skills that is quite useful yet will get me nowhere in life. Coulda been a surgeon if I didn't hate blood and guts.

What remains of the wall between the kitchen and dining room got Country Dairy like the living room and dining room. We figured that would help open up the room visually and balance out the red so you don't feel like you're in a big red box.

As a bonus, I finally got to paint this godforsaken beam! This might be the most momentous part of this whole day. The ceiling has been in a state of distress for 6 months, but that beam has been exposed and unfinished for, no joke, eight freaking years since that wall came down. It also got the Country Dairy treatment.

Saturday was a beautiful day, 75 and sunny with a breeze, perfect drying weather. I was able to paint non-stop from about 10 am to 4 pm. Ceiling white, Country Dairy, two coats of Chili Pepper, done! It was a watershed moment for the kitchen. Now two aspects of this kitchen are totally done - the counters and the paint - and all those other projects I mentioned earlier can happen. Hopefully it won't be another 6 months.

Doors & drawers!

2012-03-11T23:09:00.000-04:00

We've been awfully busy lately, so it's great when the kitchen fairy comes over sometimes and gets a little work done when we don't have the time (not to mention skills). Last week she sent Greg to install some beautiful countertops, and this week she sent my dad to deliver some cabinet doors.

That butcher block island top she dispatched a few weeks ago makes a sturdy work bench for a drill press, as it turns out.

The drill press was required to install these hinges that look like they came off a space ship or something.

They allow the doors to fully open so the pull-out shelves can, well, pull out.

Check these bad boys out. Drawer fronts! Cabinet doors!

Look, there are more under the sink!

And on the back of the island!

We went with a simple flat-panel door here because they are 1.) easier to make 2.) won't be a focal point and 3.) will be hidden by stools. We have "permission" from the carpenter himself to add some sort of artistic detail here if we wish. We'll see.

We've got four drawers to the left of the sink. Big, wide, deep drawers with fancy glides that don't allow the drawers to grind themselves into sawdust and deposit it into the cabinet below (that may or may not have happened in our old cabinets).

Up top we got some glass fronts to show off our fabulous Fiestaware.

All those drawer fronts are made out of former baseboards from this very house, so they'll match all our woodwork once they get polished up. We ran out of my great-grandmother's beadboard, so my dad fabricated the rest out of $72 worth of 2x4s he bought at Lowe's. Not a bad deal.

Here's the full effect so far:

SWOOOOOOON

Oh. My. God. We'll have to wait 'till the kitchen fairy's next visit for the upper doors. But it looks almost like a real kitchen!

Countertops DONE!

2012-02-29T21:34:00.000-05:00

***Cue harp music***

Look at that - real, grownup countertops! To accomplish this, we had a rare sighting in our house: a professional. Auntie Noelle Gauthier, kitchen designer extraordinaire at Hancock Lumber in Bridgton, Maine, set us up with Greg Smith of Stone Surface, also in Bridgton.

It wasn't a tremendous amount of square footage, but we did challenge him with our sink that's shaped roughly like a marshmallow. Even the straight-looking parts aren't really that straight, as it turns out. Back in the day, this baby would have been probably mounted directly to the wall and/or propped up on legs with a table or something next to it. None of this fancy built-in stuff. So, yeah. We didn't make it easy on poor Greg by asking him to deal with the slightly flared back corner, rounded front protrusion, windowsill, large gap between the sink and the wall, etc. But he pretty much nailed it. Once we figured it all out as he made a template, he made the actual installation look easy. The whole installation process didn't take much more than an hour.

Here's how it went together behind the sink - we set the sink away from the wall so that the rounded front wouldn't create an awkward slop-collecting nook where it sat on top of the cabinet. Also, it looks badass.

To support the vertical pieces, Greg cut the counter in such a way that there was a couple inches of the horizontal piece behind the sink. (The excess white goop was wiped off and dried clear. Then the vertical pieces support the magnificent windowsill, upon which we will keep our collection of kitchen herbs. Someday.

Is that a sexy windowsill or what?

The top of the windowsill is flush with the top of the sink, and the windowsill overhangs its support pieces by an inch or so for extra detail.

We got a backsplash out of the deal too.

Daaaayuummmm!

The stone is called Delicatus and in real life, it's got lots of colors - greenish, garnet spots, some streaks of rust, and it's very three-dimensional. Greg said something about drinking a glass of wine and staring at it. I guess that's what stone guys do in their spare time. Now that's passion! It looks fabulous, it was beautifully installed, and we can't believe it's actually in our kitchen. Now that we've got this plus butcher block on the island, we can officially check countertops off the list! Yee-haw! Thanks to Noelle and Greg!

How we're making old into new in the kitchen

2012-02-13T21:31:00.000-05:00

There's something special about that first time in a project when you see an actual, finished surface. So it was pretty exciting when Dad brought over some actual, finished cabinet end panels.

We thought long and hard about how to integrate a new kitchen with the very consistent style of our old house. The old kitchen left us very little to salvage - we're pretty much stripping the trim, hoping for the best on the floors, and that's about it. Everything else is/will be new, or at least new to the house. But we really love all the old stuff in the house, specifically the original, never painted woodwork throughout the house. The fact that all the woodwork was never painted presented a conundrum when considering how to match, or at least be consistent with, the rest of the woodwork. When paint's involved, you can build new stuff out of whatever you want and make it all the same color. But if you're in Maine looking to coordinate with 87-year-old Southern pine, you've got a challenge on your hands....

...unless your mother has secretly been hoarding a stash of the very same stuff from her grandmother's house, built in the same era not 25 miles from here. (You knew there was going to be a punchline.)

Sheesh, it looks like it came off the same train! When my mom finally sold the house I grew up in last spring, my brother identified this stuff in the attic of the garage and knew we had to have it. When I saw it, I knew our long-awaited kitchen renovation may finally be within sight. Of course it was filthy, but it was the right stuff and never painted. Some of it is even autographed, so we'll have a third signature to add to Fred & Frank's. This particular piece was made out of cut-down beadboard cabinet doors in a frame made from thick door jambs.

Here we have the end of the cabinet to the left of the sink...

The side of the upper cabinet...

The other end of the island...

and the piece de resistance...the dishwasher!

The dishwasher apparently took some extra work. How's this for dedication: when Dad ran out of Memere's beadboard, he simply went to Lowe's, spent two hours looking through Douglas fir two-by-fours, and made his own. Then he framed it in teak. Yup, we've got a teak-front dishwasher.

So that's the beginning of the story about how my father took my great-grandmother's kitchen and re-made it into ours, in Gabe's grandparents' house. I guess it's official - we can never move. I think I can deal with that.

Baby's bottom butcher block

2012-02-06T22:31:00.001-05:00

Boom. Countertop.

YEEEEAAAHH!

Look, it's the continuous plane of countertop I've always wanted! No more random cabinet and stove jumbled together with Grammy's buffet and shoved together in the middle of the room. Basically, it's one giant work table with a stove in the middle. With so many windows and doors around the perimeter of the kitchen, this makes up about 90% of our counter space. At 73x56", we can easily fit 4-5 people working around it and...

... it's got an 8" overhang so the guests on the cooking show can have a place to tuck their knees.

It clocks in at the whopping price of free because my dad made it out of a maple butcher block table he found discarded on the sidewalk and some cherry that he cut over a decade ago from the woodlot next to the house I grew up in. (OK, wait, I think he may have spent a few bucks on the oil we used to condition it. And I suppose we should also consider the time and/or skin he put into it.)

It's tough to tell how baby-soft it is in the photos, but trust me, it feels niiiiice. While Dad worked on cabinet details, Gabe and I practiced our de-whiskering skills. This is a process you would use to "finish" wood surfaces that aren't getting a varnish-type coating, such as cutting boards, rolling pins, or this fabulous butcher block countertop. It's a pretty simple process that makes a huge difference. First, wipe the surface with a damp rag. Then dry it quickly with a blow dryer or heat gun.

That's my Star Trek blow dryer.

Fact: my blow dryer gets used more often for home improvement than actually drying my hair. I spent about a half hour looking for it for this project before finding it in the basement...next to a box of plastic film used for shrink-wrapping drafty windows in the winter.

The water and heat raises the grain of the wood ever so slightly. Look closely and you'll see and feel that the wood fibers all raise in the same direction. If I had a microscope that could take photos I would demonstrate this for you. Then you take some pretty fine sandpaper and sand only against the direction in which the fibers are raised, like shaving against the direction of your hair. Do this a few times until you can hardly feel the fibers anymore after the blow-drying step. It's pretty simple and doesn't take that much time. (Here's a video if you're just dying to see it in action.) We did it 5-6 times and now it feels fantabulous.

After you've de-whiskered all the whiskers, dump on a whole bunch of butcher block oil and wipe it in. Then do that a few more times until it looks smooth and wonderful. We used J.E. Moser's Butcher Block Oil at the recommendation of my brother Andy, who knows these things. (Happy birthday, Andy!)

Here's another view. (Still in love with that stove, btw.)

We are super duper excited to have a real countertop. We've also had stone templated for next to the sink. Ooooh, can't wait!

Champ helped clean up all the sawdust. What would we do without him?

New stove...hubba hubba!

2011-11-30T09:04:00.001-05:00

Many of you may remember my dreaming of a fabulous vintage stove. This Old House magazine ruined me for life with a picture of a copper Chambers stove. Then I found out they also came in red, blue, yellow, pink...I pined, I ebayed, I craigslisted, I googled...but those darned things are hardly, if ever, found within a 250 mile radius of Maine (if you're in NY, NJ, or CA, there might be hope for you!). And it's tough to drive that far when you don't know how well something 50 years old is going to work, aren't sure if you're going to have the skills or stamina to refurbish it, can't honestly move all 450 pounds of it, deep down you know it's too big for where you want to put it, and they weren't designed for islands, which we long decided would be the best way to go in our kitchen, barring an addition or some other sort of drastic change.

Sigh.

When we got the drainboard sink, we realized that would be the great vintage focal point of the room, and mechanically we'd never have to worry about it. You know, because sinks don't have mechanics. Once we had that in place, it became easier to let go of the vintage stove. Also, the stove would face away from the rest of the room anyway, so only the cook would ever see it. We got over it. And just because the vintage stove isn't going to happen doesn't mean we aren't pretty psyched about what we DID get. Turns out new stoves have some pretty sweet features!

Meet the GE Cafe model # CGS990SETSS. Five burners and two ovens' worth of awesomeness.

Champ just had to check it out. (No, the oven wasn't on)

It has the maximum amount of cooking space you could possibly cram into a standard 30" stove. Together the ovens have more cubic footage than even most (far more expensive) 36" stoves we looked at. No silly useless "warming drawer" here. Tom the LP Man came over yesterday and hooked 'er up. We bought it from Sears online and had it delivered to the closest one in Gorham, NH (extreme bonus: no sales tax). They had one of the best prices - the best of the best prices wouldn't ship to our area (booo) and Sears was able to get it to us in all of two days, so we had it before our Thanksgiving kitchen blitz and we could design our island around it.

After months of eating mostly canned soup, we were THRILLED to whip up some risotto with Brussels sprouts, garlic, and shallots from our garden.

Chef Gabe

We only lived three days without a stove because we had just left our old electric one plugged in in the middle of the floor, but it's been such a mess that we haven't done any real cooking. I didn't realize how much I missed the smells. The powerful burners heated up the whole 10" cast iron pan (rescued from a rusty basement demise years ago) for once. I also powerboiled some tea mid-afternoon. And I also made my famous-in-four-states chocolate chip cookies, choosing the bottom convection oven for the job.

They came out nice and evenly cooked, no pan-switching necessary. Delicious.

Then I washed my pans in my big new sink...look, they actually fit in the sink! We're really moving up in the world now.

We got a new faucet that we should install soon...note the old faucet mounted to our plywood "windowsill" here. The new one is wall-mounted and will fit into the original holes hidden behind the pan.

This morning, we got up extra early to make pancakes on the built-in griddle. The middle burner grate just pops right out and you plunk in the griddle right over the huge, oval-shaped burner. It actually heated up nice and evenly, with no cold spots that I noticed. Amazing! (Of course the Chambers stove invented this like 60 years ago. Ok, I'll shut up now.) I'm going to huck that vintage-but-not-in-a-good-way electric griddle I've been using for pancakes.

I kept the pancakes warm in the small top oven...no need to heat up the huge one! I think I'm also going to huck our toaster oven because I always wanted it for baking one small thing. Now it's unnecessary with a petite oven for warming, or making just one pan of brownies or casserole.

I'm really, really, really looking forward to doing something like baking a cake in the top oven and biscuits, which need to be much hotter, in the bottom oven. And wow, look - a functioning light! It's official: wonders have not ceased.

It has been a joyous day at the Corner Lot indeed.

Thanksgiving kitchen blitz

2011-11-27T21:47:00.001-05:00

After doing the stuff-your-face thing, we took advantage of the super-long weekend to show the kitchen who's boss. (Last Black Friday, we demo-ed the living room ceiling. What a year it has been!) Dad came over again with a truck full of tools, and when that happens, you can make a lot of progress very quickly. Here's how we went from this...

They're wearing matching shirts again

to this...

...in 982 easy steps.

After much negotiation (which may or may not have happened on the back of a crossword puzzle at Suds Pub), we settled on a cabinet configuration. I'm a huge fan of symmetry, and the island has to pack maximum functionality for two cooks into minimum space. Dad cut and assembled the cabinet boxes out of 3/4" birch cabinet-grade plywood.

The island amounted to two 20-inch wide boxes with a cross pieces connecting them in the center to make the larger 30"x24" box opposite the cut-out for the fancy schmancy new range.

Last time Dad came over, he built the boxes for either side of the sink, one for the fancy schmancy new dishwasher and one which will eventually contain drawers. This time, he worked on wall cabinets for both sides of the window. Symmetrical, of course!

Gabe and the old man fussed with the boxes until they were perfectly plumb and square and all those other things that cabinets need to be. At this point, Gabe had already applied a coat of varnish and sanded the pre-cut panels. We'll give them a second coat later after all the other woodwork is installed.

Oh, it's plumb alright.

Popeye the carpenter man.

Meanwhile, the rest of us sanded the drywall, ones of the world's largest pains in the you-know-where. (Neck, shoulders, etc.) We dabbled in wet sanding, which is much less dusty than using traditional sanding blocks, because it's really literally just wiping down the dried joint compound with a special sponge. More on the results of that later.

Champ helped out by stirring the primer...yes, that's red primer. It's leftover from the last time we painted our kitchen red. (The color was the only thing we didn't hate.) As a wise Home Depot paint person once told us, tinted primer helps you use fewer coats of the (more expensive) real paint when you're doing deep colors. Deeper colors can take a lot of coats to get the desired effect so hopefully tinting the primer can save us a step or two.

He's good with sticks.

After hastily applying a coat of primer to the ceiling on Saturday night, I couldn't wait to make those walls red again on Sunday morning.

Coulda been a surgeon with my mad free-handing skillz

Here are all three of us doing our things. Gabe is electrifying new outlets on the end of the island - sure beats the heck out of this! This Thanksgiving blitz was a pretty good indication of how many people can comfortably work in the kitchen if we're ever able to cook in it again.

After cutting a hole for a light box, Dad and Gabe jammed in a shelf between the wall cabinets. Turns out there's such a thing as making your measurements too accurate...this one took some planing and grunting to get in place because it was so tight. I won't mention the new chip in the sink that resulted from this process.

That was a busy three days. Oh yeah, and we also connected the sink to an actual drain (no more bucket!) and hooked up the dishwasher. I'll give an update on our sweet new appliances and some more camera angles next time. The countdown is on 'till Tuesday morning when Tommy the gas man comes and hooks up the stove (there are some things for which even I we will bring in the pros.) For now, it's time to catch up on some sleep.

The kitchen tide has turned...we are fully in rebuild mode

2011-11-15T21:39:00.001-05:00

I'm proud to report that we are now fully in rebuilding mode in the kitchen. For awhile, we had been dilly-dallying on demo-ing the sink cabinet, because why remove the old sink until you're ready to put the new one in? Living without a kitchen sink is not for me. But we found a sink, and my handy dad offered to come over and help take things to the next level.

Here's the sad sink cabinet. Its friends abandoned it weeks ago. Fairly well built, but covered 1980s gold-flecked laminate and a fair amount of filth. Also obstructing something that would emanate mildew smells and still on top of the 4-5 layers of flooring that we removed everywhere else a couple of years ago. In general, it was the source of much disgustingness. Dishwasher purchased for $100 at a yard sale in Vermont and worth every penny.

We yanked that thing right out of there and made all sorts of interesting discoveries. Here's two kinds of super-rad early 1900s linoleum. Note how it was applied directly to that beautiful board that was the backsplash. We scraped off what was visible after we moved in (it was also covered by the same laminate that was on the counters). We discovered that what was not visible was fairly rotten, the source of the aforementioned mildew smell. Gross. You can also see the outline of the original cabinet that would have held the sink.

For several generations they wrapped new flooring around the old cabinet. We have reached a point of no return on that.

We hacked up those last chunks of flooring and discovered this on the very bottom...

An outline of the original sink cabinet. Note the flared front. The paint would have been the floor of the cabinets there. The paint outlined symmetrical cabinets on either side of the sink, which is just what we have planned. Lots of mystery holes - who knows what else was here. Radiator? An old dishwasher? We may never know.

We found another of Fred's signatures on the side of the window frame...too bad we didn't see it until after the spray foam went in. Sorry, Fred!

We also found where Fred had marked where the sink should go. Silly me, I'm the one who smudged it!

I'll fast forward through removing all the rest of the plaster and lath and insulating, and I will spare you pictures of the half-rotten backsplash and the baseboard that had been eaten by....something. Dad and I put up plywood on the walls. We did this in place of drywall so we can hang cabinets and shelves wherever we want without worrying about framing. It was a long a crazy day. Darkness fell. We persevered. Now, I introduce to you our new/old sink....

Ain't she a beaut? After lots of searching, including a long and fruitless drive to a New Hampshire architectural salvage place, we found this about 10 miles away from our house at a "junque" shop in Gilead. We had been looking for a double basin sink, but they're quite hard to find, especially in the rather petite (for a drainboard sink) size we were looking for. It turned out that this one was the exact size of our previous sink cabinet, which means we can have the apron front without intruding on the space we need for a dishwasher. Also, the backsplash is the exact height needed (8") between counter height and the existing windowsill. We didn't even do any serious measurements before we bought it, so we consider ourselves extremely lucky on those fronts. This basin is big enough to wash an entire cookie sheet in, and we realized that because we plan to have another small sink in the pantry, one basin would be ok. We just love that detailed apron front, and the drainboard has a fan pattern, a design I've never seen before. Can't find a brand name, but numbers on the back may or may not indicate it was made in 1936. It still needs some cleaning and has a few chips, but we just love it!

On Sunday, I also managed to do a first round of mud and tape for the drywall. It was a very productive and exhausting weekend. Next we need to pull the trigger on a faucet, vent, and a stove, and keep mudding, and keep taping...stay tuned, Corner Lot readers, stay tuned.

Lots of kitchen news

2011-11-06T21:49:00.000-05:00

Nothing terribly photogenic has happened in the last couple of weeks, but believe me, we've been hard at work. We leveled every single strip of ceiling strapping, pounding shims above our heads while knocking decades' worth of dust directly into our eyes. We've added fresh insulation in amongst the crazy framing (the best part about this is that now the area between the ceiling and the second floor are insulated all the way around the house. Previously that area was totally uninsulated, which is why it was interesting to discover our upstairs bathroom pipes in that space). Then we had to nail lath back onto all the studs - yes, the very lath that we just removed. If you don't put some back after removing both plaster and lath, then you'll face all kinds of problems with your original woodwork later because you'll have removed too much depth. Without the lath, you'd be about 1/4" off everywhere. That would suck. Luckily, you don't have to put it ALL back. Just a few strips nailed vertically on top of the studs will do.

Here's a close-up example of one spot that was super obnoxious to get to the point of being able to put drywall over it - note the layers of studs new and old, shards of lath jammed behind the door frame and thus unremovable, etc. It was tedious. And dirty. But we'll be glad we did all that leveling and measuring in the end.

That red strip will be a nailer for our new/old wainscoting. We recycled it, which is why it's red. At some point, much of the wainscoting was hacked down to counter height of 36". You can see where the original nailers were closer to 42". But because we plan to use the freshly-stripped old wainscoting, we adjusted them all down to 36". Another pain in the you-know-where that we'll be glad we did later.

Before we hauled off about eleventy billion pounds of plaster chunks, we saved a few to represent all the colors we found. Poinsettia red, which we painted, that lovely fruit wallpaper, a shard of baby blue, a light green, a bright yellow, and yes, this kitchen was once pink. I'd pretty much kill for a picture of that. We put these all in a ziplock bag and shoved them back up in the ceiling for the next ceiling-tearer-downers to find.

Finally! Time to start drywalling. Champ lent a helping paw.

And we celebrated putting up the ceiling by cooking up something tasty. No more ancient dust bunnies falling in our food!

Someday we'll look back at this and laugh. That day can't come soon enough.

Kitchen = demolished

2011-10-22T21:33:00.002-04:00

Thank God, the really messy part is over - well, at least until we start sanding some drywall. There were all kinds of weird superficial things in our kitchen that made us want to rip it out, but as it turns out, the WTF-factor is more than skin-deep.

"I can't unsee this."

Let's start with some seriously WTF framing around the right window. Note the hugeness and weirdness of the header - it's totally different than the identical window to its left, and every single other window in the house. It looks like they may have started framing out a wider window, but there were no signs of that the plaster had been altered, so they must have changed their minds at the last minute before they sealed up the walls? We'll never know. WTF.

Here's something that isn't so much WTF as it is just a plain old fire hazard.

That is (was) active knob and tube wiring (this part being a knob). Knob and tube wiring can be safe, as long as you can prove that it hasn't been altered by crazy DIYers, eaten by squirrels, or had its rubber cover degrade in the past 86 years. However, one of the key principles of knob and tube wiring is that it needs to be suspended in open air in order for heat to dissipate. Soooo, when you blow in insulation, you fill up that airspace, so technically there's very little air in which the heat can dissipate, so....you see where I'm going with this. Looking forward to getting the rest of this out of the attic - the kitchen is the last of it on the first floor. Hooray.

This is what we found in the spot where we were hoping our fancy new exhaust fan would exit.

Yeah, that's the new (early '00s) plumbing for the upstairs bathroom. When the kitchen is done, the bathroom will officially take the title of Most Embarrassing Room In The House, and we hope to rearrange everything, but we think this drain needs to stay...it's a good thing we never actually got around to buying a fan. Looks like we'll be investigating downdraft options.

Here's a cross section of the insulation we found: the gray closest to the windows is blown-in cellulose, and the pinkish is blown in fiberglass (aka the itchiest substance on earth.) Also some wads of pink fiberglass batts crammed in around what must have been a light fixture box at one time. All gone now and to be replaced with nice new insulation!

Here's why replacement windows - windows that you install within the existing frame of a previous window- kind of suck....

They're nearly impossible to insulate around without ending up with huge gaps like this, so you're really only solving half the problem (the other half being the old drafty windows themselves.) That slot is where the sash weights would have moved up and down to counterbalance the old windows. We found the weights still stuck in the slot, their corresponding windows long since removed. There are also smaller gaps all the way around the window frame. With replacement windows, you can try to insulate around them by squeezing whatever you can in the cracks, but you can never really be sure if you're getting to all the air space unless you open the walls up. If we had the cash money, I'd replace the replacement windows in a heartbeat. It's also kind of silly that they'll be white forever when we have natural wood trim everywhere. Sigh. Perversely, we're lucky that the second floor windows haven't been replaced, so when we do it, we can do it right with windows designed for new construction. Made out of wood.

One more nugget.

This outlet was supported entirely by spray foam which happened to be stuck to that pipe in the background. Somehow I don't think that's up to code either.

Next: more insulation and new, less-sketchy electricity everywhere! And lots of showering until that fiberglass itch goes away. {scratch, scratch}

Why we need a new kitchen

2011-10-19T22:48:00.001-04:00

Here are your final views of our old kitchen. I know, I know, you'll miss...

...the fact that we took the trim and wainscoting down over two years ago, thinking we'd strip it and put it back up, and then realized instantly that there was no way we'd be putting freshly-restored trim back up over walls like this. (Not the best way to showcase my precious vintage Pyrex collection)

You'll probably also miss the following ultra-sketchy electrical situations shown below (note: this is just a few of many of the ultra-sketchy electrical situations.)

Outlet supported entirely by the wire to which it is attached

220 outlet sticking out of the floor. Funny story: it smoked and tripped the main breaker of the
whole house the first time we plugged the stove. Fixed by my wonderful father.

One of two knob-and-tube light fixture hook-ups. No box, just
wires protruding from the ceiling. For the last 86 years.

You'll also likely miss our "island" consisting of an old buffet, a cabinet removed from the wall that was removed eight years ago, and bottom-of-the-line electric stove...

...and our floor, off of which we spent an entire summer scraping up multiple layers of lord only knows what back in '08, exposing beautiful original flooring, which, with no finish left to speak of, then absorbed three years' worth of uncleanable filth...

Yellow paint and scum line probably indicate the floor of the original cabinet on this spot

I could go on. But I will spare you, and prevent further embarrassment to myself. The sad part is that Gabe and I really LOVE to cook, and are really good at it, and entertain regularly. I made my brother's wedding cake in this kitchen, for crying out loud! But the good part is that using it for three years helped us realize that it does have many potentially redeeming qualities. For example...

Despite many having tried to convince us to eliminate a window to allow for more counter space, the two large windows let in amazing late-afternoon/early-evening light (i.e., the time you're most likely to be in the kitchen). Also, replacing them with smaller windows would just look funny from the outside, because this house has some extreme symmetry, which I am a big fan of. And after thinking about it, messing with the windows wouldn't really improve the layout much, because we love the huge island that allows everyone to stand around facing each other while they work. The only think we'd change would be to center the stove so that Lefty (Gabe) and Righty (moi) can each have our own side of the stove.

I also like everything about the layout of this photo.

We love the sink in its original location under the window, looking out over the garden. Sinks belong under windows. Period, end of story. I'm not afraid to say it - sinks in islands, at least ones meant for doing dishes, are just plain dumb. Who wants a dish rack hanging out in the middle of your island all the time? Unless you don't cook, and therefore don't do dishes. We cook, and do lots of dishes. I also really like the pot rack, although I didn't think I would at first. But it should never go above the stove where everything on it would just gathers grease - next to the sink is good because you can just hang everything right up the second you're done washing it. And the cabinets for the dishes are right above the dishwasher - that almost makes too much sense! The only thing I'd change about this is find spots off the counter for the microwave and toaster oven.

Then again, stoves totally belong on islands. In the efficient layout of the Foursquare, wall removed, you can stand behind your stove and talk to all your guests and family in the dining room....

...or look to the right and you can see into the living room and even watch TV if you're inclined. That exposed chimney....that's another thing I'm looking forward to never seeing again.

The stove in the island makes it feel like you have your own cooking show.

For the fridge, we've found the perfect balance of convenient, yet not in the way - we built a large nook for it where a pantry used to be, closing off what used to be a second door to the bathroom with a useful cookbook and display shelf.

So as you can see, we've done a lot of work to it already. We're ready to pull the trigger on the next phase, the messy part. The trim and wainscoting is stripped and waiting for us in the basement. In the meantime, believe it or not, we've even acquired a bonus stash of matching, unpainted, vintage Southern pine, which came out of my great-grandmother's house and was hoarded by my mother in her garage attic until she sold her house earlier this year. But that's another story. With fresh electricity, insulation, drywall, and re-installed trim, we'll be looking good in no time. After that, new cabinets will just be a bonus!

We hope you'll join us for what promises to be a wild ride. You're welcome to come over anytime as long as you bring some tools and/or anything that can be heated up in a microwave.

An Open Letter to the Plaster In Our Kitchen

2011-10-15T21:35:00.000-04:00

Dear Kitchen Plaster,

I want you to know it's nothing personal. Yes, we managed to preserve the plaster in other rooms, but you've suffered many more tragedies than them, long before you came into my possession. If you had been mine 50 years ago, we might be telling a different story today - but alas, that is not the case.

It definitely wasn't me who covered you in particle board, probably with the intention of applying laminate? And I sure as heck didn't pound a million nails into you and add a dropped ceiling. In fact, we tried to rescue you from these very things, but the damage was done. There's just no going back.

So while we've been living in this work in progress for over three years now, that's just the tip of the iceberg. If the particle board was here when Gabe's grandparents bought the place in 1980, then the kitchen has been incomplete for...let's see...OVER THIRTY YEARS. Longer than I've been alive. At least. After scraping down the layers and patching you up, we applied some fabulous red paint to you. But let's be honest: it was lipstick on a pig, a few more years of life support, an 86-year-old lady's last face lift. The time has come to put you to put you out of your misery.

It's not just about your looks. We know you're hiding things. You're concealing old electricity that can't handle all these new-fangled gizmos we have these days. Have you noticed the light above the sink recently started blinking randomly? I don't think that's good. And we'd like a fan. Since we removed the second bathroom door, we can no longer open it and use the bathroom fan to remove excess smokiness. And Lord only knows the state of the insulation behind you.

Don't get me wrong. We've cooked a lot of delicious meals in you. They got even tastier after we patched and painted the ceiling, preventing the old lead paint chips from raining down on our food.

After some incremental improvements, there just isn't anything more we can do. I hope you'll understand. See you in the big Foursquare in the sky.

Love,

Jessie and Gabe

Finishing off the powder room FOR REAL this time!

2011-10-11T23:11:00.003-04:00

What's your visitors' first impression of your house? If many of your visitors drive hours and hours to visit you to take advantage of your proximity to skiing, then chances are their first serious impression is of your downstairs bathroom. Ours was pretty grim when we moved in - it had doors on both ends, making it a tunnel that resulted in awkward conversations such as "Oh sorry, you go first.." "No, you can go..." It was lavender, the sink leaked out of all orifices, the toilet and sink were a cruddy beige marblish look, the original floor was buried under layers of god only knows what, the window was new but everything around it was drafty as could be, the original plaster was covered with laminate, which was then (badly) painted, it had a tub with missing chunks of fiberglass from where doors had been ripped off...need I go on? Oh yeah, and a poorly installed, not-quite-finished flimsy beadboard ceiling...and the medicine cabinet was installed over the toilet, so when you were looking in the mirror you'd occasionally drop your toothpaste or your makeup you-know-where...ok, here's the true before picture:

This was after we already replaced the vanity and the toilet

You can read all about the layout change, the lessons we learned during the triumphant gutting, reusing the sink and mirrors we found in the attic, and the eventual installation of new wainscoting. You'll notice that the date on that last post was June 2010. Since then, we've had this (shown from the opposite door of the view above).

Much better...but once the initial thrill of just having the previous room gone wore off, there was still much to be desired. We accomplished a few hundred other projects since abandoning this one (again with the DIYADD), but after a certain point, you just want some gosh-darned doors on your cabinets!

So when my dad offered to come over and help out over Columbus Day weekend, we couldn't say yes, yes, YES fast enough. Here we are gluing up a frame to attach the cabinet doors to - the frame itself made from poplar from my grandfather's woodlot in Ohio.

Now onto the doors themselves - bead board to match the wainscoting in a poplar frame.

Gabe got sanding duty.

Here are the doors all clamped up - we accomplished some more cool projects while we waited for the glue to dry. To be blogged at a later date.

Here's what it looked like under the sink. Random lengths of drywall, the back of the bookshelf in the kitchen, and exposed wires and pipes in a large chase leading upstairs.

We figured we should clean that all up while we were in there, so we painted some 1/4" plywood and screwed it on all three walls. It will be easily removable in case we need to access anything back there, but in the meantime, it'll look a lot better and we won't lose things in the nooks and crannies. Here's the frame primed and painted, plus the new back and side walls of the cabinet.

Looking better already! Much more to come!

Fancy new desk: $10

2011-08-24T22:24:00.001-04:00

Yeah yeah, I know I'm supposed to be showing you finished dining room pics, and if I didn't have DIYADD, that's what I might be showing you right now. But instead I'm going to show you my new desk and you're just going to have to deal with it.

I have not one but two very interesting jobs in the general field of non-profit communications, project & event coordination, etc. I work from home for both of them, which is a lifestyle best described by the Oatmeal. In any case, I spend a lot of time in my office. It'll get gutted eventually - it got some bad renovations at some point probably in 1940's, giving it some nasty cardboardish wallboard and taking from it the original trim. But after last fall's paint job, further renovations to this room have been pushed down to the bottom of the very long list. So I keep finding myself improving a room that'll eventually get torn out, and I'm ok with that. It's sort of liberating knowing that nothing is permanent.

For the true horror of the before pics, see last fall's post, Couldn't take the brown rose wallpaper anymore. For the purposes of this post, let's start here.

Much better than before, but still, that's a plastic folding table and two mismatched kids' desks. I was pretty excited about the one on the left, which I intended to use as a sewing table, but in practice it was far too small. The one on the right was Gabe's when he was a kid. That surface combined with the table just made for too much room for clutter collection, something I suffer from. So both of the kids' desks went back in the attic to wait for some kids to show up.

In the meantime, I acquired a small scuffed old filing cabinet, and a piece of laminate counter top that my dad scavenged from his office. It had a horrendous faux wood grain. Both of those things sat in the basement for awhile until one day I had a brainstorm. Yes! A tape measure confirmed that the counter top was the exact right length to fit in this space. It only took a few more months for me to buy a couple of cans of spray paint and make the magic happen.

I scootched myself over to the left so I can have room to the right for writing on actual paper, when necessary, or plunking down a sewing machine.

Here are some nuts and bolts - I used a scrap board for the front left leg, and the back left corner is supported by a scrap 2x4 screwed to the wall. This way the backsplash can be right against the wall. That's my 2002 vintage subwoofer on the floor in case I need to have an emergency dance party.

Here's an idea I expect will be stolen any minute now. While rummaging through our extensive paint collection, I discovered a can of chalkboard paint. So I put it on the drawer fronts. And then I drew on them, which was fun.

Now let's take a tour of my accessories. An old, small, unusual blue crock with lid hides all those ugly chargers and usb cords that you almost never use but probably shouldn't throw away...

Source: came with the house

A super-awesome skier mug for my writing implements, 1970s-80s perhaps?

Source: one of dozens of possible northern New England Goodwills

My most excellent old Dirigo Beverages crate. "Dirigo" is Maine's state motto, meaning "I lead." A great name for soda, and now that I think about it, pretty motivational for a home-office recycling bin.

Source: mind-blowingly awesome auction in Andover.

Now let's zoom out a bit so you can see my shelves which I installed awhile ago. They are solid wood with a molding around the edge, and they are supposed to be narrow counter tops, but my aunt the kitchen designer gave them to me and said I could do whatever I wanted to with them. They look a little funny in an L shape now that the small desk that was on the right is now gone...I may decide to put them one on top of the other on the same wall over the right side of the desk. This will be right around the time I find something other than cardboard boxes to put everything in.

Shelf source: Kitchen designer's display reject pile

And while I'm at it, I might as well show you the curtains I also made awhile ago. A heavy navy blue cotton with primary polka dots. They're just so me. And not a bad view either. This room also often serves as a guest room so I'm sure our guests now appreciate being able to sleep past sunrise.

Source: All fabric that doesn't come from a yard sale automatically comes from Marden's (duh).

Altogether, I'd say those are some pretty good improvements, without being so precious that I can't rip it all out someday. Total expenditure for the new desk: $10 for two cans of semi-gloss black spray paint. Not bad, not bad. I think I'll splurge and paint my desk chair next!

Things we found in the dining room ceiling

2011-08-11T20:51:00.000-04:00

Despite a lack of postings, dear reader, we have in fact been diligently working on the dining room ceiling. It's tough to convey drywall progress in pictures, because coat three of joint compound doesn't look a whole heck of a lot different than coat one. I finished painting this morning (*pats self on back*), but it's going to take a lot of scrubbing before I can show you the final results. In the meantime, it's time for one of my favorite series of posts. Yes, that's right: it's time for another installment of Things We Found In the Ceiling: Dining Room Edition!

A Things We Found In the Ceiling post wouldn't be complete without some baby pictures. Looks like the family has expanded since we took down the entryway ceiling.

We even found another Valentine! There's been love in every room so far.

Happiness will be ours!

Sweet and old fashioned - Loving and true
- Such is the heart - I am offering you.
To David Lee Aubin...from Howard?

A paper doll. With a bowl of hearts. Delicious.

Fake pearls, a keyhole plate, and a small buckle.

Wrigley's: the perfect gum.

I'm surprised it doesn't also cure cancer.

Magnolia face powder. Tres elegant.

Top of large container of baking soda (about 12"x12" IRL). The crazy part about this: we had one of these hanging in the kitchen of the house I grew up in.

Several pages from a children's book. Here are two of my favorites. Here's Jacko....

and....HAHAHAHA. Why is the *ahem* cat wearing a dunce cap?

And in the department of Those Were The Good Old Days, here's a receipt for 110 gallons of range oil. Total bill: $9.90. Date: Dec. 23, 1931.

That's all for this installment of Things We Found In the Ceiling. Tune in next time for TWFITC: Kitchen!

The Corner Lot gets a corner garden

2011-06-28T17:53:00.000-04:00

Just when we thought we thought we were done with adopting my mother's plants, we somehow ended up with two more pickup loads of them. I always figured that our perennial beds would expand, but this was a little like drinking from a fire hose. Luckily, my mother can't keep herself away when it comes to building gardens, so she lent us her considerable expertise and shoveling experience.

No, really - she used to be one of Stephen King's landscapers. Gabe just really likes his books.

We started with a big rock on the corner - Betty had it put there when she realized the snowplows and school buses were shaving off a tiny bit each year. We enhanced it a little over the past two years surrounding it with wild roses, irises, and daylilies transplanted from various overgrown places around the property, plus a bunch of daffodils and tulips to liven things up in the spring. It really wasn't much. Then came the two pickup loads of a wide variety of much more exotic daylilies, a bunch of other stuff I'm sure I'll get educated about eventually, and several kinds of hosta, including this monstrosity:

No, that is not a miniature wheelbarrow. That is a hosta with elephant ears.

It was a two-weekend process. Week one involved killing the grass, procuring another pickup load of composted horse manure, a bit of procrastinating, and gutting the dining room. Weekend two involved a lot of sod removal and digging. We started at the aforementioned rock on the corner....

The stop sign is a common element of corner lot garden design.

...and expanded it in both directions....

It's tough to get it all in one picture, but now we've got this!

What we really need to get is a new camera that doesn't take blurry pictures.

It extends from almost all the way to the tree behind the street sign, around the corner, past the tree in the front of the lot, to a little beyond the rock steps we built into the bank which will eventually enter a path to the front door. Boom. Garden.

I think that's enough garden expansion for one year. This summer is going to be about the inside, which in the past we haven't been able to get around to until fall. I am determined to be cooking Thanksgiving dinner in a newly-drywalled kitchen (cabinets...we'll see...) and eating it in a completely finished dining room. There, I said it. Wish me luck.

Dining room demo

2011-06-21T22:29:00.001-04:00

In the middle of our huge garden project, we decided to finally rip down the dining room ceiling. I mean, why not? What's the point of finishing one project before beginning another? I'm just glad I never have to look at this

Cracks and popcorn

or this

Knob & tube wiring joined to a new dimmer switch nailed to the beam installed when Gabe took down the wall between the kitchen & dining room. Supposedly installed by a real electrician.

or this

Exposed structural beam and 2x4's supporting it that I freaked out on and painted white. Looks much worse in person.

or this

Other 2x4's supporting said beam. Ran out of white paint on this side. Exposed wires to dimmer switch & thermostat.

or think about this

ancient knob & tube wiring

during dinner ever again.

Now it looks like this:

which I think is already an improvement!

After the epic living room project, this one should be a piece of cake. It'll only take four sheets of drywall, and the wall came down years ago, the first time Gabe lived here. The sooner it's done, the sooner we can gut the kitchen too! Wahoo! I think I'm going to make some strawberry jam first, though.

Since a ceiling came down, you know what that means....yes, soon it'll be time for yet another installment of fascinating items found in the ceiling! Stay tuned!

And we're back.....in the garden

2011-06-10T22:11:00.000-04:00

Howdy folks,

I know, I know, it's been awhile. But it's finally been long enough since a major house project that the memories of the exhaustion, filth, and level of insanity to which it can drive you have faded just enough that I can see myself getting back into it. While I'm dying to take down some more popcorn ceilings, first we had to tackle the garden. The nice thing about gardens is that once you put them in, the little seeds do all the hard work themselves, leaving you time to, say, gut your kitchen and hopefully put it back together in time to harvest.

So, last weekend we put in the garden. It was a touch late, but it rained for pretty much the whole month of May, and then on Memorial Day weekend we went to two weddings, the first of which necessitated a very large cake made by moi. So there went a week right there. I'd say we're doing pretty well considering.

I'll hold off on the vegetable garden update because right now it still looks like a patch of dirt, this year with a little augmentation from some barnyard animals, if you smell my drift. But there is other exciting news on the garden front. I don't want to jinx it, but my mom is *this close* to selling her house, the one I grew up in, after years of trying. My mom used to be a professional landscaper and greenhouse manager, so you can imagine how awesome the gardens are. They're pretty wild now since she hasn't really lived there in three years, but that just means there are plenty of huge, mature, beautiful perennials for me to steal before she hands over the keys. Here's the first truckload:

And here was a spot of patchy grass that has struggled to grow in since we rerouted our driveway away from this general area (that was pre-blog.)

Being careful to allow a buffer zone large enough to accommodate future snowbanks, I carved out a triangle to mimic the angle of the corner of the driveway and the road.

I dug out some ripe, juicy compost from our bin to augment the sandy soil. Much of this was leftovers from our wedding last August, so it included such delights as lobster claws and Champagne corks. Our biodegradable plates definitely need more time but they are progressing towards being dumped in a garden eventually. I was slightly tickled about planting the Champagne corks. I hope they grow something good.

I tried to vary the colors - I had some purples, some silvers, and of course, many shades of green. I added tall stuff in the back for visual interest.

And I found this lovely artifact in the basement...

I've been wondering what to do with that for a long time. One sunburn and many bug bites later, we had...

The new view from the kitchen window:

Not bad, not bad! After purchasing a couple bags of mulch and a few perennials at the library plant sale, the total cost of this garden was oh, about $12. Thanks Mom!

Spring hopes eternal

2011-04-12T21:23:00.000-04:00

Saturday was one of the best spring skiing days of our lives. Then on Sunday, it was official: all the snow finally melted off the garden. I figured there's no better time for a before picture. Before pictures are best taken on gray, dreary days so everything looks as grim as possible.

About a month ago the snow was nearly to the top of the compost bin

This picture makes me feel sad for our very nice mail lady. Maybe we'll do something about the crooked mailbox this year. I honestly have no idea why it has a chain dangling from it, either.

Here's the back garden that we worked so hard on last spring. It's full of perennials given to me at my wedding shower, theoretically. Time will tell if they made it through the winter. Notice that our neighbors haven't done so well in the snow-melting department.

Here's the garden on the very corner of The Corner Lot. It just happens to have a cute doggie in it. Hopefully the garden won't stay as brown as he is for very long.

I did not realize that our dog matches our house until I took this picture.

But I guess there's nothing wrong with that.

Things may look pretty brown now, but I did see a few signs of life already!

That's garlic, which we actually remembered to plant last fall! A+ to us! Note to self: order seeds so the garlic won't be so lonely.

Meet Champ the Wonder Dog!

2011-03-22T20:29:00.000-04:00

There's been an exciting development here at The Corner Lot. WARNING: Prepare yourself for an onslaught of cuteness.

This is Champ!

He is a chocolate lab/pointer mix - two of my favorite breeds all wrapped up in one deluxe package! It turns out that this combo of breeds is on the International Designer Breeds Registry and is sometimes known as a "pointador," but our little guy is a pound puppy from Harvest Hills Animal Shelter in Fryeburg, Maine.

All this growing makes him really sleepy all the time.

We had just started looking for a doggy when we saw him on Harvest Hills' website on a Friday night. On Saturday we went to check him out, and on Sunday he came home with us. Ideally we would have waited until spring, but then we realized that the likelihood was pretty slim that we'd find another puppy so handsome and mellow within a reasonable drive from us when we were supposedly "ready." Now we barely remember what it was like before we had him!

He already has a girlfriend named Daicey, a black lab blend adopted by our friends a few days after we got Champ. Here he is with his arm around her. She is named after one of the most beautiful places on earth, Daicey Pond in Baxter State Park, and he is named after Champ, the lake monster in Lake Champlain. We think they're going to be good swimmers.

Here's Champ helping Dad tap a maple tree. Yup, it's that time of year again.

More sleeping.

Good boy!

2 cords of firewood + 10" of snow = classic Maine workout

2011-02-26T13:36:00.010-05:00

Sorry for the posting delay, folks. We've been too busy relaxing in front of our toasty-warm new-old woodstove to do any new house projects. Also, Gabe also went back to school and I started a second job, but that's another story.

Of course, the problem with being toasty warm all the time is that eventually you run out of wood. We had a supply of really old wood in the basement, and we guessed it would last until the first of March. Well guess what? It's almost the first of March, and we're almost out of wood. So we called a guy advertising seasoned dry firewood in our local weekly rag, and asked for two cords at $220 a cord - not bad at all for dry wood in the dead of winter as oil prices head towards the stratosphere. He says, I'll be there at 10 a.m. tomorrow. 8 a.m. the next day, he shows up while we're still in our jammies - hey, I work from home and no one could accuse me of being a morning person! He showed up early for a pretty legitimate reason: a beastly snowstorm was heading right for us. And just like that, we had two cords of firewood occupying substantial space in our driveway, becoming increasingly buried by the minute.

It's times like this when you eat a hearty breakfast, summon the latent courage infused in you by five generations of Maine ancestors, get outside and get to work.

We carved out some of the iceberg that has been forming at the end of our driveway to make room for a nice neat stack. We extracted some old pallets from the basement to pile everything on. We soon realized that it would be easier if we threw a tarp over the pile to keep the snow off it as we worked. We stacked, it snowed. We stacked some more, it snowed some more. Before too long, we had this (taken this morning, after the sun came out):

That ought to get us through the rest of the winter. I hope. It'll probably burn a lot slower than the 15-year-old bug-infested sticks, rotten, mushroom-covered limbs of trees cut from our yard, and broken furniture we've been burning so far. Once the snow melts (or, at least before it falls again next November), we'll get this stack a proper shed. For now, I'm just glad it's not in our occasionally wet basement!

Gabe ended up stacking a bunch of the wood by himself while I went inside to work on that second job I mentioned earlier. To finish off our Maine day, we made some fish chowder and I rewarded Gabe with an apple blueberry pie.

And then we shoveled. Ayuh.

Our mudroom bench project featured on Manolo for the Home!

2011-01-31T16:01:00.003-05:00

Woke up this morning to a pleasant surprise - our mudroom bench made from salvaged and reused materials was featured on another blog, Manolo for the Home. I'm still getting to the bottom of how this happened but suffice it to say that I'm quite flattered and thrilled. Thanks go out to Christa for posting it. I hope those of you who ended up here because of the link will come back soon!

Check it out...The $3 Hall Tree at Manolo for the Home

Dreaming of green in January

2011-01-29T17:26:00.004-05:00

I created another tab on top of the page, this time a review of our garden progress since the advent of the blog. January is a great time to daydream about that stuff - after all, the seed catalogs are piling up quickly. Frankly, though, looking back through these posts made me kind of glad that right now I can stay inside and hunker down in front of the woodstove. That gardening stuff is hard work. But boy have we come a long way.

Also - jiminy christmas! - it reminded me that it'll only be a few weeks until we have to start tapping the maple trees!

Check it out: The gardens of The Corner Lot, aka Three-Tenths Farm