Kitchen Tour

By mid-April, Bill and I were sleeping and eating at the new house and going back to the old house to work on getting it ready to hand off to the new owner. While we are living with moving mess in the rest of the house (to one degree or another), the kitchen is pristine. This was Bill's plan all along. He wanted a "sanctuary" from the rest of the mess: a room that was complete and beautiful where he could escape from the moving chaos.

To me, this is the essence of that sanctuary.

Kitchen Update - Part 5 (The End)

[Last of the re-dated Kitchen Update posts.]

After tearing out half the kitchen, opening the wall and moving electrical and plumbing, putting the wall back together and painting (see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4, aka "How Painting is Like Knitting"), it was finally time to build the washer/dryer closet.

I only have a couple "in progress" photos. Here, Bill's built the top and the side and I've started preparing to paint.

How Painting is Like Knitting (aka Kitchen Update - Part 4)

[Another re-dated post that was originally written in June.]

House painting that is. You might think it's a bit of a stretch, but it occurred to me a couple months ago while I was doing some painting at our new house.

As mentioned in my previous Kitchen Update posts (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3), the new house didn't have a spot for our washer/dryer and we decided to create one. Bill tore out about half the kitchen, made plumbing and electrical changes and put the wall back together. Right about then, it was time for Bill to go to BC with his buddy Craig and move Craig's new boat down from BC to Lopez.

And it was time for me to paint.

Before you actually paint, you need to lay down drop cloths ...

tape off/cover anything at risk for getting paint on it ...

Kitchen Update - Part 3

[Another re-dated post that was originally written in June.]

Having considered and rejected plan "A" (see "Kitchen Update - Part 1") and figured out plan "B" (see "Kitchen Update - Part 2"), Bill dove in to the work.

He moved water lines, installed and connected the sewer line and moved electrical.

Here (above) are the water lines, extending towards the location
for the new washer/dryer closet (to the left outside of this photo)
and the electrical outlet that will be used for the new under-counter freezer.

Wow! Is It March Already?

[In this midst of a bunch of re-dated posts, this one is accurately dated. Bill was spending most days at the new house working on the Kitchen Update and I was spending most days at the old house.]

I can't believe it's been 3 months since my last post!! Winter is my busy season, but this is ridiculous. Of course, the fact that I haven't been blogging, doesn't mean that I haven't been knitting. (Hey, even during the busy season you still have to wait in ferry lines and ride in/on ferries/cars/airplanes/trains.) But, I'm back at it now. I'll probably do a few post-dated posts, matched up to when I actually did the knitting,

However ... today is a post about what I've come to learn is a typical Lopez winter/spring day.

This morning I took a look at our weather forecast. It's been raining a lot and this morning was yukky and I wanted to see just how long it would be until we got some sunshine. Here's what I saw:

Egads!! Another week of this!!!

Kitchen Update - Part 2

[Another re-dated post. Originally written in June.]

Having determined that plan "A" wasn't going to work (see "Kitchen Update - Part 1"), we set to work on plan "B".

An option we had previous considered was moving the refrigerator and putting the washer & dryer in it's place.

This option involved building a cabinet/closet to enclose the washer/dryer. That seemed like a bigger project than plan "A". However, now that plan "A" was out, we reconsidered.

Of course replacing the fridge with the washer/dryer meant finding a new home for the fridge. The only easy option was the coat closet directly across the room from the fridge and using the coat closet space for something else was already on the table. (We had previously agreed that the front doors would be our main entrance which meant we didn't need a coat closet in our kitchen/dining room next to the "back" door.) In fact, we considered changing the coat closet into a washer/dryer closet and this likely would have been our first choice but for the amount of plumbing work it would have required.

However, we weren't sure if the fridge would really "fit" in this spot. Since a new home for the fridge was critical to plan "B", Bill took off the closet door and the framing around the closet and slid the fridge across the room. It looked GREAT! I don't have photos from back when he did this, but here's how it looks now.

Kitchen Update - Part 1

[First in a series of Kitchen Update posts. All written in June and re-dated to be closer to when they occurred.]

My "New House" post shows photos of the house as it looked when we decided to buy it. We really liked what the previous owners - Mike & Jen - had done to the place. (If not, we wouldn't have bought since neither of us had much enthusiasm for taking on a big remodel project.)

However, the new house didn't have a laundry room or laundry closet. In fact, it didn't have a washer & dryer anywhere at all. It did have plumbing for an under-counter combination unit to go in the kitchen (replacing the cabinet 2 to the right of the stove in this photo).

As the laundress in our household, I made a management decision and told Bill this just wouldn't work for me. (I like our current, fairly new, washer & dryer quite a lot plus my past experience with the combination units was not impressive.)