Kitchen & Baths GONE!

The backyard is a disaster. We're having a door installed out the rear of our basement into the backyard and they brought in a tractor to dig the hole. They also pulled our fence. Luckily Jeff hasn't spent a lot of time on the garden in the last few months, like he had originally planned.

The kitchen is gone. Tomorrow the chimney will go too. The prior owner had finished the small attached porch into a breakfast nook—with scrap wood from Montgomery Ward shipping crates and cardboard.

This is the ceiling and refrigerator space from the original kitchen space. Looks much better structurally.

The half-bath on the main floor. We'll be moving this wall over about 6"; the bathroom is too small.

The basement bathroom space. The foundation is a mess; all this piping was run through channels dug into the foundation. We'll have to fix this before we close it back up.

Tomorrow the chimney is removed and they do the final excavation for the basement door. The basement doors are probably being cut open on Monday.

First Day

Today the Craftsman Design & Renovation (CDR) team prepared for the destruction that begins tomorrow. They sealed off doorways between living space and construction space.

Choosing Exterior Colors

We're getting down to the wire and we're having to make our final selections for our remodel. Jeff is pretty insistent about wanting a yellow color scheme, so we're planning to finish the exterior house along these lines.We've got our stain color (the yellow on the right in this set) and roofing lined up...













...but we're still not quite sure which third color (for the gables) to choose yet. It's going to depend on what would look good on our specific house shape. This house has a lot of gables on the front.
Our kitchen designer also reminded us that we have to get Jeff's range ordered; production time is 10 weeks for custom colors. So, off we went the other day to try and match the soapstone slab. Jeff and Sharon don't exactly agree on the color, but it's Jeff's stove so he gets first choice. This is the color Jeff wants to go with.

Sharon is trying to delay the decision a few days while we continue to wait for our tile sample order from New England Art Tile. She's hoping the tile will resolve the impasse.

Almost Ready for Demolition

Jeff and Sharon spent nearly 9 hours yesterday packing up the kitchen. It was amazing how much stuff we had crammed in those cabinets. We carefully labelled each box with most of the contents in case we need to retrieve stuff during the remodel. Here is the "temporary" kitchen storage box area. Our contractor is planning to hook up a temporary laundry room sink down in the basement for us for water supply. So, it will suck, but not as bad as it could. =)






Except for a couple unsealed boxes, the kitchen is empty.

Today we have to finish clearing out the center of the basement because that's where we'll be setting up the temporary "kitchen" (laundry sink and refrigerator) . We still have a lot of misc. boxes and stained glass supplies in that space.

Wednesday is when the real mess begins. They'll be starting the basement demolition and will be starting to cut doors into the basement foundation. This first week will probably be pretty unpleasant; it will surely be a good time to get familiar with our county library system.

Though, the rest of the house looks pretty messy, these are mostly empty boxes that need to be cleared out. Time to get them gathered up in one place and put an ad on craigslist.

More Stenciling Practice

Sharon has made good progress on her self-study stenciling "class" this week. When we're not packing, she's been working on the reading and the practice requirements. She first practiced her stencil on paper, then she practiced on cotton fabric...
... then she practiced on linen.
In 3 to 5 days, when this stencil is fully dry, Sharon is planning to start embroidering it to bring out some of the details, something like this.All this practice is, of course, leading up to building curtains for the living room.

Down to the Dregs

Due to the short timeframe to prepare for the remodel, we hired Willamette Valley Movers to help us move our stuff into storage. Sharon is glad we did! They were extremely efficient, fast and careful. They took only two hours to wrap the furniture, move everything out and load up their truck; it probably would have taken us an entire day, or more, and there certainly would have been more wear & tear to the house and furniture. It was definitely worth the extra expense.

The bulk of the stuff is gone, now we just need to deal with the dregs. Oh, and we still have to pack the kitchen.


That 10'x30' storage unit doesn't seem so extravagantly large now.

Mostly Ready for Movers

Jeff and Sharon have been industrious this week and they're mostly ready for the movers. There goes the master bedroom—again. The living room is full of boxes. And the furniture throughout the house is empty and ready to wrap with moving blankets for storage. The movers are due tomorrow morning at 9AM.

Yardley Forge

Jeff and Sharon drove over this morning to visit Steve, the blacksmith who owns Yardley Forge. (He's also on Etsy.)

Because he was local, we took the opportunity to see a pot rack in person before we ordered. Steve's quality seems excellent and we were delighted to order one from him this morning. Though, he'll be modifying his regular design a bit in order to have it hang closer to our ceiling.

Sharon also coveted a number of dragon sculptures he had around his place. We may need to buy a dragon for the yard once our remodel is finished.

Playing with Stencils

Since Sharon has started rereading stencil books for her independent study project, she's gotten an itch to try stenciling again. We can't pack all the time, so when we take breaks, Sharon has spent her time reading stencil books and planning out future projects. (She's not always so good about finishing projects, but she is certainly good at planning them!) This afternoon she pulled out her stencil supplies and gave stenciling another try.

While we haven't yet received the tile samples we ordered from New England Art Tile, we've tentatively chosen this tile to embellish our kitchen backsplash because the colors should blend well with our color scheme. Also, the tile design is reproduced from a tile originally made by Alfred Meakin in Staffordshire, England in 1910, according to John Parkinson over at New England Art Tile.

This afternoon, it occurred to Sharon she already had a stencil that would complement this design. She bought this Mission Rose Trio stencil from American Home Stencils a few weeks back.

Today she realized with just a tweak of the colors, she could make this.She also made this one for fun, because she had the right colors out.

Packing Again...

...hopefully for the last time, for a very long time. We're making progress on our list, but probably not fast enough to have everything ready for the movers on Thursday. We'll surely have to do another trip over the weekend to finish stuff up.

Here is the living room at about lunch time. The pile is quite a bit larger now.

The master bedroom closet and dressers are packed. The sewing room has also been partially packed. We haven't even started the kitchen.