If I Could Think Of a Clever Title It Would Go Here

It was nice to hear from other local bloggers that Apartment Therapy featured the blog. This was a pleasant surprise, seeing as AT randomly stumbled across the blog via their flickr pool and we had no idea they were writing about us.

Badass!

Magnetism

In the quest to ban clutter from the counters I picked up a magnetic knife holder. The butcher block knife holder was banished to the garbage. In the block's place the magnetic Goddess holds my knives on a lofty perch atop the glass mosaic tile backsplash.



One day I'll be able to place a Global Knife in it... Some day.

A Thank You Letter

Dear Momnipotent & Dadolescent,

I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help in renovating the house. From installing crown molding, building a foyer, fixing doors and steps, the never ending task of attemping to make my house plumb and level, painting, caulking, drywalling and even allowing the use, and in some cases purchasing, a multitude of tools are all very much appreciated. The house has come a long way (though not as far as we had thought) since you originally saw it.



Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Sincerely,

-Me

Kitchen Television

After much waffling on a TV for the kitchen I decided on the 23" Samsung LNT2354.



It will be mounted on the corner wall jutting out into the kitchen (you can see the outlets on the wall if you squint). The sleek whiteness of it will look great next to the crown molding, and it will be in a good position to watch TV from the breakfast bar.



The house is also full of building materials thanks to Leigh's brother's help. We went to the Home Despot last Tuesday and loaded up the rental truck with drywall and lumber goodness. I definitely appreciated the help.

On a sidenote, renting a truck was cheaper than renting a wallpaper remover. Interesting.

Under Cabinet Lights & Crown Molding

I've been busy lately working on the house and haven't taken the camera out much. It was late and the light wasn't good but the 'rents have been asking for pictures, so pictures they get. It bugs me to take pictures with poor light, so I'll have to do a proper house photoshoot when the space is totally complete.

The bathroom is turning out well. It looked even better before I took a circular saw to the wall to cut a channel to run more electrical for some vanity lights, but I won't show you that. :)



And here is where the magic happens. Notice the lovely crown molding. I also decided not to throw a cabinet over the toilet or shelves next to it (yet).



Mom has been asking for a picture that shows the backsplash and the green wall. Throw in the new under cabinet lights and the crown molding and the kitchen is looking very nice...



I had the contractor wire upper and lower cabinet lights, but to save money I said I'd install the lights. For now I am just putting under the cabinet lights, and the jury is still out on uppers. After finishing the hook-up at midnight last night I turned on the lights in the bar and swooned for a while.





The foyer electrical still need to be fixed. All is well except figuring out how to get the ceiling fan on a switch. There are so many wires running through the area that the trouble shooting is taking a bit. The knee wall isn't drywalled yet as hauling materials like drywall and plywood in a maxima doesn't work so well.



Also, the table from Arhaus is on order and will be ours in a couple weeks, but the chairs were out of our price range. The craigslist hunt for chairs is on.

Scheduling and Laser Beams

I get a strange pleasure each Monday when I update my Microsoft Project schedule. You see, being an engineer I have gotten used to scheduling and budgeting. To do both I use MS project to plan my future tasks, show their individual costs, and their dependencies on each other. Currently I have around 200 tasks, with more added daily to help define the level of detail where someone could actually complete the tasks. For instance, under the kitchen category are the tasks, 'prime', 'paint second coat', and 'paint second coat' which are all tasks that need to be done in series, and painting the trim is dependent on finishing the second coat of wall paint. Sure I don't follow all dependencies 100% and I start a lot of stuff before finishing something else, but the software helps act as a task list helping me to make sure that things don't fall through the cracks. Updating the progress on each task rolls up into the higher level task, so it gives a total percent complete of the whole renovation. While progress is slow, there is indeed progress.


A sample, not my actual schedule

Tasks completed this weekend were installing crown molding in the kitchen and bathroom, purchasing and mounting a towel bar & toilet paper holder in the bathroom, grouting the backsplash, starting the drywall touch ups on the bulging seams in the living room ceiling, and re-running electrical for the foyer. The electrical in the foyer doesn't really work yet and requires major trouble shooting, but at least the wire is run and conduit installed per code. I installed it Friday and then proceeded to avoid it for the rest of the weekend to temporarily avoid the frustration.

I would also like to provide Dadolescent & Momnipotent with the Highlandtown Hovel Baltimore Rowhouse award for outstanding achievement. I haven't figure out what exactly shape or form this award takes, so hopefully someone can provide some ideas. While I was suffering overload on Saturday night at around 6:30, they stayed at the house touching up the crown molding until 9:30, and then cleaning up the house too. I really can't express how much this means to me, and I am so lucky to have you help out with the house.

On other news I now have a plethora of tools. I went out and picked up a ryobi 18V lithium-ion 4 piece combo kit, which includes a drill/driver, circular saw, reciprocating saw & light for $270. I needed to buy tools, and it's lithium-ion-y good pulled me in.



After taking this home, a craigslist ad that I responded to emailed me back. He had a barely used 18V (not lithium-ion) kit including drill/driver, circular saw, rec. saw, jig saw, rotary tool, sander, light, batteries and a bag all for $140. I looked at it, and it's only been used a few times so I bought it. Now I have a conundrum whether to keep my new set, return it and keep the used set in it's entirety, or just sell of the parts of the old set that are redundant. Really, the tools look pretty much the same so I'd really just like the lithium ion batteries. And fyi, the circular saw in the used set comes with a laser. I like laser beams.

Glass Mosaic Backsplash

The backsplash is now mounted and awaiting grout, and damn it looks good. Since I had never done tile before it was a bit of an adventure.



The tile is glass but isn't clear like most glass tile. The clear stuff looked nice, but at prices from $20-42 a sq ft it was just a bit too pricy. I ended up deciding on the 'art deco' blend from www.mosaictilesupplies.com. It was face mounted to paper, and was on sale for about $8 a sq ft. Score! After buying the tile, the thinset, grout and tools to install the tile it, the cost for the back splash was about $300.



The tile goes on the backsplash between the upper and lower cabinets, as well as the space between the elevated bar counters.



Lessons learned:

After applying thinset to the wall make sure to go over it many, many times with the 3/16 trowel, especially at the edges closest to the next piece of tile. If not, thinset shoots into the seams. Not good.

Buy multiple sized trowels. The backsplash is a tight spot, so using a large trowel is efficient on wide open spaces but was a bit tight to get into some areas. This exacerbated the above issue.

Use the tungsten carbide cutting wheel on the glass tile before nipping it. If not, about 50% of the glass tiles you are trying to nip will crack in ways you don't want.

Apply about 4 applications of water to the paper, and wait about 5 minutes before pulling the paper off the tile. If not, you'll be pulling lots of tile off the wall and resetting them individually.

Also, the foyer is now completely ripped out, with the electrical hanging beautifully from my ceiling... Now I need to figure out how to frame out the area and re-route the electrical.

Kitchen Update

Since I've been blathering about other houses, financing, and painted kitties it's time for pictures of the kitchen. Let's start out with a shot of the glass breakfast bar cabinets, and the new triple-pendant light fixture. Ooooooooh! Aaaaaaaah!



A wee bit closer of a view of the kitchen, showing off Leigh't trim taping job and the newly installed handles on the cabinets - much better than the tape we used to open the doors before. My mother (and others) wanted me to get knobs for the uppers. I disagreed. Knobs are for wimps. Also notice the angle moulding atop the cabinets. It's money.



This is a picture of a normal productive human doing real work, taken by a sub-humanoid not doing real work. And peep the wall color. It is 'Pepper Grass' by Behr, which matches the green in the glass mosaic tile backsplash. The green paint is only on the back wall of the house with the walls on the right side of the kitchen painted 'Sterling', a whitish gray color. We also painted the bathroom Sterling.



Well, hello there Mr. Vanity!



Future updates will be cover the glass tile install, foyer, and bathroom progress.

Kitty McPaintface

Cat must have thought the ceiling paint was milk.



I should have checked her tongue too...

+++

Also, the temporary funding shortfall may now be resolved. ;-) Will know more soon.

Non-Buyer's Remorse

Does anybody else ever get a sense of dread over home renovations? I do. Sometimes I think of all the stuff that needs to be done, and it simply overwhelms me, allowing me to focus on nothing more than the enormity of COMPLETING THE WHOLE RENOVATION AT ONCE. It's times like this that I need to take a breath, work on a task, and then revel in the fact that I have accomplished anything.

I guess the cause of it today was a case of non-buyer's remorse. What is that you say? It's when you agree to complete a task yourself, when you have never done it, and have heard it's a difficult task in the first place. This task is installing glass tile backsplash.



The engineer in me needs to know EVERYTHING before I commit to a task. Not a good trait, but one that definitely causes me to heavily research any renovation project, making sure that I cannot only complete the task, but I can do so in the most efficient and expedient manner possible. I need to chill.

So to help calm the nerves I'm making a to-do list, and am going to finish scrubbing my wall with acid. The scrubbing will give me some instant gratifaction, and making a list of things that need to be done before refinancing my house so I can focus myself in the next week. I put my nest egg toward paying a contractor to renovate my kitchen and add a half bath downstairs, but now I need to pull some equity back out to pay for making my one uber-bathroom upstairs into two bathrooms. In order to maximize the money I can take out, I need to make the downstairs perfect, hence a list so I don't dilly dally on things that don't matter to my immediate goal.

Things to do before Appraisal

Finish brick wall

Paint kitchen

Get trash removed from backyard

Install backsplash

Demo my itty bit foyer

Install knee wall to change entrance

Install new light above entrance

Move electrical outlets due to foyer change

Remove crappy looking fake fireplace

Lay wood floors in living room

I'm starting to feel better already. Time to put on some Ray Lamontagne and play with acid.

P.S. My pantry cabinet is now installed, the fridge has found it's rightful place in the kitchen, and I now have a functioning bathroom downstairs.

P.P.S. Since Leigh is away most of the week on business, and I miss her, I'll post an old shot of her too.

Kitchen Pictures - Before & During

The downstairs kitchen renovation began in September of 2007, almost one year after the initial purchase of the house and has been continuing since. The kitchen used to be on the stairway side of the house, but after much convincing by the parents we decided to switch it to the opposite side of the house.

I looked back for pictures that show just how bad the kitchen was, but being such an eyesore I wasn't excited to photograph it. Here is the best shot I have showing the kichen area before the renovation. Notice the kitchen on the stair-side wall, no downstairs bathroom, the old door, two windows, the lovely hole in the ceiling that happened one day before my parents visited, and the plaster & drywall on the stair wall (at least until this weekend).



I really wanted a bathroom downstairs, as there was only one bathroom in the house (unless you count the throne in the basement, which I'll get to later). I would have really liked to have an island, but putting a half bath in the middle of the house made the middle area pretty useless. A bathroom there would have left a width of about 6', too narrow for a table, making the house feel cramped. Now a half bathroom is fit in the back corner of the house allowing a real dining room. A lot of homes in Baltimore city have odd floor plans due to the skinny rowhomes floorplan here, so anything done to maximize the space helps. Here is a shot of the new kitchen with a half bath where the old kitchen was. Also notice the outlet and cable hook-up for my (eventual) swivel-mounted LCD TV to watch from the breakfast bar. :)



Since I couldn't have an island and a bathroom downstairs, we decided to put in an L-shaped kitchen with a peninsula coming out in the main area of the house. To lighten up the room I chose glass faced cabinets and had lights put in them. Glass shelves were put in the cabinets, and the glass frosted to diffuse the light. It looks pretty sweet, and when the triple-pendant light over the penisula is put in it will look pretty sweet.



Friday and Saturday the tile went in, so that looks pretty sweet. Definitely glad I went when the running pattern, and the 12x18" tile run along the length of the house. It helps elongate the room, methinks. The sign on the floor says "keep off", but I don't think Cat paid attention to it.



Some miscellaneous info on the kitchen. The cabinets are Kraftmaid, with Putnam maple doors in a Toffee finish. The upper cabinets are 42", with an angle crown molding above and a smaller molding on the bottom to allow for under cabinet lighting to be installed later. Next to the bathroom on the stair-side wall is a pantry cabinet that is yet to be installed, with the fridge going next to that. The old 28" back door was replaced with a 32" wide to allow more light and larger sized furniture into the home. The door is glass, with a plastic film that looks like frosting when installed. A window on the right was removed from the back wall as the new bathroom wall would have intersected in the middle of a window. The window was replaced with a smaller opaque casement window to bring light into the bathroom.