Kitchen Dreaming

The kitchen is my highest priority in the Prineville house because it must be done before we move in. I am debating whether to stick with the current cabinetry and just replace the counter and appliances, whether to reface the cabinets and add a couple more, or whether to replace it all.

Jeff loves his Blue Star Range in Portland, so we want to buy another for the new house which means we'd no longer need the wall oven and we would have to rearrange the base cabinets. Also, the current vent over the stove doesn't vent outside of the house; that will have to be changed.

I'm thinking about refacing the current cabinets or replacing with ready-to-assemble (RTA) cabinets, depending on the cost. I love cherry, but I'll also consider other woods without a dark grain, i.e. maple, fir, etc. I don't know why, but I've just never really been a fan of the heavy grain in oak. I've had plenty of oak wood furnishings in my life, but given a choice, I'll take cherry any day.

While I'm binging on Netflix I've been cruising around window shopping for some possible materials to use for the kitchen. Here are some of my current top choices. (I mostly make these posts so I can record the information.)

Backsplash: Philadelphia Scabos Travertine 1x2 Basketweave Honed with Black Dot Mosaic Tile
Cabinetry: Shaker-style Cabinetry Shown in cherry, but I may get maple or birch or fir, depending on cost.
Counter: Blackish Soapstone (I assume I can't find the amazing green soapstone again, so I'll simply make the black soapstone work)
Flooring: Bottom: Four color choices of Mannington ColorFields Smooth surface rubber flooring: L to R: Battleship, Oak, Mesa or Scroll (I'll use whichever matches the backsplash best.)

Backsplash: Georgia 3" x 6" Travertine Subway Tile in Mediterranean Ivory
Border: Crema Marfil Border 3 1/8"x 12"
Floor: Mannington ColorFields Smooth surface rubber flooring: Trumpet (or whichever matches best)

Appliances: Stainless steel, or a matched color.
Range: BlueStar 30" RNB-series Range
Dishwasher: I still love my Miele dishwasher so I'm planning to get another.
Refrigerator: Another 36" built-in. We have Sub Zero now, but we may try a BlueStar in case we want to get a color and we'll be able to have it match. :)
Hood: I could get a matching BlueStar Hood

Huge Record Purge

After finishing three file boxes of SCA records, I undertook to also sift through all our personal records. We had tons of them in the basement storage. I didn't take a specific picture of them before I started sifting, but I did find this one. You can see all the black and blue file boxes plus a few banker's boxes.

I've spent all week sifting and discarding nearly all the records from before 2010. It was appalling how many records we had from the 1990s. I cannot believe how many times we moved all this paper.

Anyway, I spent at least 20 hours this week and I've finally finished this project.

Sorted and Labelled and Ready to Move

Empties!!

Prineville Escrow Closed

We drove to Prineville on Monday to sign the papers and get the keys.

The house is pretty small, actually. Only about 1600 square feet. It has two and a half bedrooms (one is really tiny) and two bathrooms.

Entry looking into Living Room

Other side of Living Room. I think this used to be a bedroom but they removed the wall and
merged it into the living room to make it an L-shape.

Craigslist Purging

In addition to shredding records, I am trying to get started on purging furniture that will not be moving to the new house, especially the stuff that is not in current use. In case any of my Portland followers are interested, I'll show some photos here.

 Antique push button recliner. The fabric is worn out on this one. I'd be pretty happy with $150 for this one.

Antique oak chairs. I picked these up at a garage sale several years ago and we never really used them. They've been sitting in our basement for ages. Somebody cut the legs off, so the seat is only 16.5" off the floor. I'm only asking $10 each to get them gone.

Long term, we're also looking to sell the living room furniture, pictured here.

And the parlor furniture.

And the guest bedroom furniture. 

Ideally, I'd like to use the furniture to stage the house for sale but I'm not sure we'll have enough time to sell it all at the last minute.

Slow Start at Sifting

It has been really hot in Portland this summer. We basically skipped spring this year. I don't function well when it's really hot, so I've been crashing in the basement on the futon and I often get sucked into binging on TV. This week I have finally managed to start sifting financial records. I realized we've got records that date back to the early 1990s, and there is no reason to keep most of them anymore, so I've started shredding them.

We have an inexpensive shredder so it's not quite up to the volume I need to process; it keeps overheating. I can usually shred for about 20 minutes before it needs to take a long break. This is five day's effort.

I probably have a couple more weeks of shredding to do at my current pace.

And I have a bunch of photo scanning to do too. I have at least three boxes of old family photos I had planned to scan right away when we moved here and then return to other family members. It's been eight years and I still haven't done it. It's time. Even though we're hemorrhaging money right now, I went ahead and ordered a new photo scanner so I can get this project finished too. These boxes are not moving to the new house.

The new house closes on Aug 20. I suspect we'll pick up our pace of sifting once we start moving stuff over.

House in Prineville

The last time we went shopping for a house we spent three years and five failed attempts before we finally bought our beautiful Craftsman house in Portland. So, this time, I decided I would not write much about our house shopping efforts because it so often went sideways in the offer or escrow period.

We are buying a simple little rancher house in Prineville, Oregon. The inspection was Friday and there were no surprises, so there is very little to stand in the way of close at this point. I have to admit, I'm a little freaked out because we're buying the new little house before we sell our beautiful big house in Portland, but I simply can't deal with moving into storage and living out of luggage while we find another. So, we're taking the leap of faith that it will work out. I guess we shall see.

Historic houses in Prineville were pretty much nonexistent, but, in reality, I didn't really look for them. I decided I didn't want a really old house because I am slavish to the details of "getting it right" in my remodels and decorating. By buying a newer house, we don't have to spend anything upgrading the plumbing, electrical and other systems and are free to do what we like without feeling guilty about messing it up. (But since I love the Craftsman style, our work with be heavily influenced by it.)

Why Prineville? Well, we have a good friend who lives there and it is significantly cheaper to live there. It's rather hotter there than Portland but, in truth, we spend most of our time indoors and we'll be fine with air conditioning.

I will do another post with interior photos. The Frankenstein kitchen counter is pretty funny. As usual, we do have plans to do some remodeling, though we have a strict budget and we'll have less grand interiors than we have now.

I know I will be sad to leave our big, beautiful house in Portland, but when we bought it we planned to both be working full-time and expected to be more financially able to afford Portland, but we've since realized that's no longer our plan. If we stay in Portland, there's a good chance we'll outlive our retirement assets. I'm hoping by cutting our cost of living to something less than half the present cost will extend the time.

I expect our Portland projects to kick into high gear later this year. The current plan is to get the house onto the market next spring. That gives us the winter to get rid of roughly half our stuff. I really should get started now, but I think I'm still in denial.

Considering a Move

Jeff and I love our beautifully restored home. We do not, however, love Portland anymore. I wish we could pick up our house and put it someplace else, but that's not possible. Ever since our last property tax bill, we've been contemplating a move.

This week we've started poking around property listings in a few different cities. We're still pretty casual in our efforts. We don't know if or when we'll move, but we've started exploring our options.

On Saturday, we drove down and visited Sandy, Oregon. It's a small town not far outside of Portland. It was a nice little town with some cute Western-themed facades along their main business route. I wish I'd remembered to bring a camera. Here are a couple of photos I swiped from a google search.

We looked at one teardown house. The lot would be perfect to build on, but the owners want way too much money for the disgusting little shack.  We liked Sandy, but I'm not sure if we can deal with 80-inches of rain a year. LOL

We're also planning to look at Springfield and Prineville, Oregon.

If we find the right house, or the right lot to build on, we might just make the jump.