Craigslist Score!

Sharon found another craigslist score yesterday and went and picked it up this morning. (She was cruising around shopping on craigslist when she should have been studying!)

She actually found someone less than a mile away that was selling quite a few old, probably handmade, douglas fir pieces of furniture. They'll surely look great on our main floor after the house douglas fir woodwork has been stripped and stained. She got all 5 of these pieces for the bargain price of $100! They obviously need some cleaning, but they're in really good shape for the price.

Door Stripping

We retrieved our doors from Houck's Process Stripping today and Sharon thought she should write an update for anyone thinking about undertaking a similar project. The doors were $120 each to strip, including the waste disposal fee. (We also brought in one of the sets of French doors separating the living room and the entryway and they'll be $735 to strip. This project is really going to add up.)










Houck's did a mediocre job, as there is still quite a lot of paint in some of the crevices. These doors are definitely not stain-ready; we'll still have to work out the rest of the paint from the crevices, or figure out how to touch them up with a paint/stain to cover the light paint. Also, as we've been warned, we'll have to sand these doors before we stain and shellac them.














We also got a not-quite-a-surprise that one of the doors had been altered to make it wider. Sharon had realized it had the joint, but didn't realize the fix had been so poorly done in a light-colored wood. We're also going to have to fix this door. It seems sort of weird that Houck's didn't even bother to strip the paint off this edge.

Found a Pot Rack!

Sharon is pretty excited because she thinks she finally solved the last puzzle we had for our kitchen remodel! Jeff wants to recess a portion of our dropped kitchen ceiling to install a pot rack and we needed to know by April 4 what pot rack we would be buying. Sharon's been shopping for a while now, but everything was either crummy made-in-China crap or very expensive. Today, she finally found a locally-made pot rack that appears to be quite affordable. The website is Yardley Forge and according to Google they're even located in Portland!
We are hoping we can get this modified a little bit so that it doesn't hang quite as low, but otherwise this is just what we've been looking for.

Here is our period picture of a kitchen pot rack—taken in the White House kitchen in 1901, according to the original source.

Latest Kitchen Plan

We got the latest kitchen design from Craftsman Design and Renovation last week. Most of the hardware and small details have been fixed in the drawings, though we're still working on the tile design. All of the cabinets will be made out of stained FSC-certified douglas fir and the base cabinets will have a piece of trim, a shoe molding, that reaches down to the floor and will make them look more period. The countertop and sink are going to be made of Minas Verde soapstone (which we've already had shipped from California).

Here are drawings, in clockwise order. This first diagram is the overall floor plan of the kitchen and adjacent ½ bath and pantry closet.This is the "pantry wall" facing away from the sink towards the back wall. This wall will be most visible and we're doing our best to make this look as period as possible. The cabinet on the left will be built in a period style with glass and beadboard backing.This is the side wall, with the exterior window. We're getting a copper hood made and we're pretty excited. We're also still trying to work out the details of the tile behind the range; we may buy some custom arts & crafts-style tiles to go along with our reproduction subway tiles. We are using a fairly modern looking range; a Blue Star that Jeff really wants.This is facing the sink, which will overlook the backyard after the remodel. (The current sink looks out the side and we get to stare at the side of our neighbor's house while doing dishes.) We decided to go with a farmhouse-style sink because we're having one made out of matching soapstone. Farmhouse sinks are not actually period for the 1910's era, they were earlier, but this is another one of those compromises we're making because we like it. =) We're getting an antique-style bridge faucet. Also, the integrated Miele dishwasher is to the right of the sink and will have a panel to hopefully help disguise it.This is facing the refrigerator. We're getting a Sub-Zero refrigerator which will be fitted with wood panels to help disguise the fact that it's a great big appliance. The microwave is to the left of the refrigerator, and is going to be below the counter. Presumably guests will only see the microwave if they come all the way into the kitchen.

For the cabinet hardware, we are going with House of Antique Hardware's bin cup pull and cupboard latch.


The light fixtures in the kitchen are from Rejuvenation—the Jefferson and the Rose City. We're getting closed-shade lights because we're likely to use funky-looking light bulbs—either CFLs or LEDs, when they become available.

Dining Room Before Pictures

Sharon and Jeff managed to clear out all the detritus lingering around the dining room this evening so Sharon decided this was as good a time as any to post dining room pictures from before the remodel. The kitchen demo begins in just over two weeks, the paint stripping in just over three.
We're going to start uninstalling cabinet doors in a few days (probably right after finals), and start bringing them in for dipping.

Sharon already brought in the two sewing room doors and they're ready to pick up. She's hoping she'll have some spare time soon to work on staining those doors so we can get them reinstalled. Though, we'll probably have to wait until the worst of the demo is over, because it's likely going to be very dusty in the house.

Final Exams!

Last night, Sharon finished up the last of her class lectures and now only has final exams remaining. Two of her classes have fully-take-home finals which need to be completed and emailed to the instructors. One class has a take-home component to the final which must be completed and then brought in when she arrives at the in-class portion and the last class final is taken fully in class.

From the looks of the one take-home final she's received (Intellectual Property), it's going to take many hours to complete. The exam is straight-forward, but it's going to be quite a bit of writing. She's probably going to have to spend most of the weekend on her schoolwork, which is definitely going to set back our packing schedule.

If she can just manage to focus for one more week on her classes, she should pull out a decent quarter grade-wise. But it is so hard when there are so many other—more fun—things to do. (Packing and cleaning are more fun than doing finals, unfortunately.)

While Sharon only has two classes left to complete the paralegal program, attendance next quarter is in doubt. Since she transferred into PCC pretty recently, she has a pretty late registration slot. And by the time she got to register, her last two classes were already full. =( If she really wanted to be persistent, she could probably manage to get the instructors to add her on the first day of class, but it is so tempting to simply skip next quarter and have time to deal with remodel projects.

Currently, she is hoping we'll strip the upstairs woodwork ourselves, which will involve quite a bit of time and effort. We'll either try and strip in place or pull pieces for dipping, depending on where the woodwork is and how difficult it looks to strip by hand.

Window Dressing

Sharon has been collecting pictures of window coverings for a while now. Here are some of the best examples of how windows might have been finished in craftsman homes during the early 1900s. All but the last picture were pulled from "The Craftsman" magazine (mostly 1904 and 1914). The last drawing was pulled from an Aladdin Home Kit catalog from 1913.