I'm Alive - I swear!

I'm totally alive... but swamped. Not much house happenings lately. We havve been in puppy madness the last few weeks. About a month and a half ago, we got Abbey, a goldendoodle puppy (now 5 1/2 months)



and then a few weeks later we got Oscar from Idog rescue group, a group that specializes in doodles. He's an 11 1/2 month old labradoodle.



They (Oscar, in particular) are wild and energetic and need lots of attention and walks/runs/playgroups. A considerable change from Taya!

I'm also back in school for summer semester.

So house stuff has been pretty much limited to trying to keep things cleaned up after the dogs. I've been trying to pre-paint some of the wood shingles for the peaks. And Jim keeps planning his future garage addition. But I really don't want to start anything major until the roof is paid for and we have money upfront - so that probably isn't going to happen for another year. The bank downgraded the equity line of credit - not surprising, considering the state of the economy - so there actually isn't really any other good option than frugal saving... which is what I'd prefer anyway.

Now, I've got to go walk a dog and maybe weed some flower beds...

Not a Mudroom but...

So here's my version of the Martha Stewart boot tray (see 2 posts ago):



The boots aren't as cute as the wellies & duck boots Martha had, but what can I say? That's what we (Jim) actually wear.

I think it looks pretty decent, though. I also got some indoor/outdoor rugs to help define the space and catch the snow, salt, & sand. The opening is just 4 feet wide, but quite long to the radiator, so I bought 3 of them and just put them together. It works pretty well.

They don't start at the opening of the door because the threshold at that point is too short, and they would get bunched up. But of course the house (or maybe the floor) is not level, so all I have to do is push it down a few inches where the threshold is higher and we're fine!

I splurged on the boot tray and got it from Smith & Hawkin, rather than buying a cheaper black or green plastic one.

I think Martha's had some smooth river rocks, but when I went to Homer, I could get a whole big bag of broken marble for $4, or several small bags of smooth stones for $7 each. Obviously, I chose the big bag for $4, and it was just enough to perfectly fill the boot tray. And I think it has the right effect.



Luckily (?), I have been able to give it the true test, as it snowed 9 or so inches on Monday - yes, that's right, we got a Nor'easter on March 2nd. It's not my ideal mudroom, but it works pretty well for about a $300 investment. One of these days, I'll make a little bench to go with it. But that will have to wait until I'm down to at least 2 night classes.

Mudroom Substitute

While I want, want, WANT a mudroom, and it may - no, will - happen someday, dog surgeries and new roofs must be paid off first. In the meantime, snow, sand, and salt from the winter storms are getting tracked all over the house and defeating my cleaning efforts of the last post, so we really need to find an acceptable short term solution.

Jim mentioned a boot tray last night. I'd love it if it looked something like this Martha Stewart version



That's kinda cute - I could live with that. And maybe I could make a simple little bench to sit on while you take your snowy boots and shoes off. The only real place to put it would be under one of the kitchen windows. Not ideal, as that's where the door swings open to, but this is all a temporary compromise, right?

Then Jim suggested I combine that with a radiator cover I've been thinking of making... I yakked about it here last winter. Here's some pictures of ones I'd like to copy...





Before any of you think I'm ruining the look of old radiators - never fear, these kitchen radiators are hideous and plain - not like the decorative radiators in other parts of the house. And for any of you that think I'll be ruining the heating efficiencies of the radiators by covering them, know that we now use the pellet stove as the primary heat source, and only turn the furnace on when it is extremely cold out...

It's kind of hard to see, but this is the wall with one of the radiators (covered with project supplies). The window to the left of it is where we're thinking of possibly putting the boot mat, and the back door is just to the left of the window.



I think I need to come up with a serious design for this. I've been watching woodworking video podcasts... we'll see. I'm never at a loss for projects. What I really need to do is focus and finish the bathroom doors (2nd door is half scraped). Oh - and classes start back up on Thursday.

Two More Random Projects

There's a couple of other random projects I've been working on. A year or two ago I went to Brimfield (a gigantic flea market that happens 3 times a year in Connecticut) and bought some things that I thought were pretty cool looking.

Item 1: an little old metal cabinet - probably used in a doctor's office. It had some rust & peeling paint and inoperable wheels on the bottom. I originally bought it as a sink stand for the vessel sink in the 1/2 bath downstairs - the dimensions were near perfect. But I decided that it was a little too unusual to cut up for the bathroom. So instead it became the tv stand for the mini tv from college. When we moved the big tv upstairs to make room for the bigger tv, I thought it was time to redo that piece.

Unfortunately, I don't have "before" pictures. But I did some sanding and spray painting, Jim took the locked up wheels off with his sawzall and replaced them with some new ones from Homer, and this is what it's looking like:

The plan is to put it back upstairs in the master bedroom, only it will now become the nightstand, and the chinzy little wooden piece purchased from an Ames (kinda like Kmart but was local to New England) going out of business sale will be trashed.

Item 2: the Dentist Lamp! This was a very odd piece, and I'm not really sure why I bought it. By the time Candice and I lugged it to the car seemingly a mile away, I REALLY didn't understand why I bought it! It actually works though, and it's kinda crazy looking. I thought it would make an unusual reading lamp. But it also was rusty and in need of cosmetic repair.

I've done some sanding on it. Most of it is fine; however, the base is seriously rusted. My 60-grit disks just weren't doing the job. So bought a couple of other stripper tools, and I'm going to try them. One is a 3M product on a course non-woven. When I was a summer intern, I actually worked on abrasive materials like this. I've got high hopes for it. But since I'm not sure if it will be too aggressive, I also bought a Black & Decker wire wheel. But my personal experience with most of the Black & Decker stuff is that they're pretty wimpy. Both of products attach to a drill chuck. Hopefully my rechargeable drill gun will work fine. Otherwise, I'll have to pull out one of Jim's monster drills.

So now that I've finished my homework, and I don't have class for another 4 hours (it's President's Day, so I'm off work), I'm going to go exercise a little bit and then see what I can do about the dentist's lamp!

I'm no Norm Abram...

but I've been working in my own little New Yankee Workshop the past couple of weeks. Though you could probably call it the Ghetto Yankee Workshop, from the looks of what I've made!

Here's the set up: I've been irritated for probably the last 6 months with this little closet in my kitchen. It is sort of a cleaning supplies and pet food stash all, but with horrible space utilization. I think when I first bought the house, there was a shelf in the closet, but I'm sure it was off-square and disgusting (this is either where she kept her kitchen trash can, or she just would splatter dirtiness and filth around for no apparent reason), so it was cleared during the early kitchen demo. Every so often I'll go to the Container Store or Ikea and marvel at the closet organization products. I love the idea of having a totally organized pantry. Once I went so far as to gather the materials to perfectly organize the closet with those wire shelf systems. Then I realized I was quickly getting up to $200 in closet shelving, and decided it was a ridiculous idea (and probably I wanted shoes or jeans or something more than shelving parts) Nevertheless, the closet remained an irritation.

There's also a wire shelf outside of the closet - a Target purchase that worked as a microwave stand in my Jamaica Plain apartment, but doesn't really fit the space in the house. It ends up holding a bunch of stuff and looks kinda messy.

Picking up Materials: last Saturday I decided to avoid homework at all costs, and headed out to do some errands. While at Homer, I priced out 1x3's and plain shelf planks. The planks were $7 each (I picked up 2) and the 1x3's were something like $5 total. While perusing the planks, I found a little shelf that would fit inside the closet but still leave room brooms & mops, so I decided to buy that too ($12). $31 total. Not bad. Although I do recognize that my items were not top quality. But since my "ultimate kitchen" plan includes getting rid of that closet in the long run, I figure that it won't really matter... Here's a picture of my materials:

Production: The good: I was very careful to make sure that everything was level and that I screwed the 1x3's into studs. The bad: I didn't predrill the 1x3's, so I split them at every screw point. And the drywall screws are all exposed (pretty), and I just used exra drywall screws for mop & broom hooks (so very fancy). But - I have to say that I like the new setup much better than the original. Take a look:

Jim suggested that in the spring we move the wire rack into the garage and use it as a potting bench. I thought that was a good idea. (We might have to move some cars out of the way).

The other random project kitchen project I want to do is to put a radiator cover on the 2 radiators in the kitchen. All the other radiators in the house are much fancier and aesthetically pleasing. But since the kitchen is part of an addition, I think these radiators were added later when the interior design as an afterthought. Anyway, they're ugly. But the engineer in me says that covering them would almost surely take away some efficiencies, and since the kitchen is the coldest room in the house, I'll wait until the pellet stove is installed to do that. (Scheduled for March 6th, by the way)