Love Handles.

before handles

Now we only have had the kitchen cabinets for about 9 months, so it was about time to add the handles. We had ordered the handles with the cabinets originally, but they showed up with a small number of knobs we didn't want. After wrangling the rest of the handles and sending back the knobs, we are ready to start. Using a jig provided by the cabinet makers, Elsa and Deder got to drilling!

Cupboard doors were easy, but the drawers had to be back-drilled for the short screws.

Sometimes I forget how small she is.

Of couse, these large handles looked pretty silly on the tiny top row. What were we going to do? After a week of debate and test handles, we agreed on--knobs. OK at least we are done with that now.

Floored!

As we are in a rush to get things done, we've made the calculated investment to hire a flooring co. to finish the job. With the materials on hand they made short work of the job at hand and we are blessed stained and sealed floors in every room. Of course it took 2 weeks for the smell to go away but we are slowly moving our living space down and it is fabulous.

The herringbone looks nice!

I especially like how my haphazard salvage job turned out!

Whats that you slate? Part 1.addend.

For you viewing pleasure, more pics of the kitch floor now. Same as the bath, but it took longer to manually thread the heating element and hot-glue it every 3 cm.

Heya Hon! is that tile giving a thumbs up too?

You'll notice Andrea doing all the work here. Deder's usual brute force attack was not survivable for many of the tiles. Thus the camera work.

Whats that you slate? Part 1.

A long time ago, we decided on tile. Then I changed my mind. I was younger then, more romantic, I wanted to fulfill the Craftsman ethic with truly natural materials. Of course, there is a reason people make porcelain tile I now realize.

When we purchased the slate, the pallet of stone tiles had been dropped and it was our (Andrea's) job to sort out the unbroken tile. Once we had those, we realized that this stuff was wayyy more variable than the samples had suggested. There were mica streaks, rust veins, flecks, chips and blots of every color we hadn't thought of. But, it was a natural stone, "nature's messy" I thought. We would just have to make some music with this noise. But I'm no good with music, so Andrea got to sorting again.

First, the heating wire had to be laid

(heated floors will make the winter that much more bearable).

Then the careful, and I mean careful! laying of thin-set and tiles.

Nice work, hon!

And with a little babysitting and a few long nights of washing thin-set off the tools, you get a bathroom floor hewn from a damn mountianside!

Hello, operator

When you've stripped a house down to it's studs, you might as well make the most of it. So before any new drywall went up, we complely strung the house with new wiring AND phone, internet, and cable. Now that the walls have been up for (wa!? a year almost?!, . . crap) well it was time to get those items working.

Since we used the same CAT5e for everything and forgot to label it in the first place, it had to be re-identified. A AA battery and digital multimeter will do the trick, but it means a lot of walking back and forth. Once properly labeled, therecivers in the rooms got punched down.

And snapped in.

Then all we had to do was clip on some ethernet heads and plug-em in. The incoming phone lines can now be removed from the outside of the house, the line interface and line can be moved to a more suitable location, a proper antenna or even cable is now routed to every bed and living room, and with the addition of an ethernet switch, internet in every room (except bathrooms and kitchens--that's what wireless is for).

a salvaged moment

Its easy to gloss over the smaller accomplishments when the whole project is so big, but I want this blog to be the best record possible.

As part of the rot repair 2 years ago, our dining room floor got ripped out rather rudely.

This is what it looked like when we moved in:

Conveniently, enough other parts of the floor were removed to piece back together this one lucky section. After painstakingly picking through the ripped up floorboards we had enough to refloor the dining room. Some are different thicknesses, all have different finishes, and the lengths are very random. Though this section might be a little odd compared to the 20ft lengths in the adjacent walkway, we feel it is the best way to keep the original materials in the house. Hopefully it will blend right in after a little sanding.

installing:

Done for now:

Slow cooking.

I had hoped to have this post done a while ago, but things take longer than expected--as you proud home-owners know. All of our effort are now focused on those projects that get us our downstairs as soon as possible -- yardwork be damned!

First in line is the kitchen, which required cabinets, counter tops, and sink all so that we could install a hood and pass our mechanical inspection (which was very overdue). Here's some photos from the process: