Symphony of Science

Loved a link shared by my Tallahassee Twitter friend @RichLeighton so much I have to share!!

Kitchen Project Underway - Day 26

We're getting close to the end of the painting. Today I finished 7 more 12-foot long baseboards and more of the entryway. The fridge is ordered but can't be shipped yet because of the snow storm in New York! Hopefully it will still arrive next week.

(Here are the baseboards... ready to go. The ones on the left are extras (unpainted).)

(Door frame of closet painted and ready for the door to be re-installed)

Tomorrow the baseboards and quarter-round all get installed in all the places that are ready for them. Should make for some nice photos!

Kitchen Project Underway - Day 25

Good day of spackling, sanding and painting in the entryway, and we have our appliance order ready to go for tomorrow! Everything is set as described here except we moved to a different hood:

KitchenAid KICU465SSS

and added a microwave:

GE Profile PEB2060SMSS (except it will be in the upper cabinet, not the lower)

We're hoping the refrigerator will be here middle of next week so it can be up and running when Mom arrives for her visit on Thursday!

Kitchen Project Underway - Day 24

That's Tuesday 2/23 for those of you keeping track at home. Today we have baseboards in the bathroom and the door framed out between the kitchen and the hallway. Progress, progress!

(Bathroom baseboard... other rooms will get quarter-round too, but I think this room is too small for that too.)

(Another view:)

(Baseboard in the pantry:)

(This is the "doorway" that now has a frame:)

(And here's a close up:)

(This is the quarter round to be installed after baseboards. I think it's a good sign how much it blends in with the floor!)

(And this is a potential cabinet color (the wood in the background, not the door on the left. We decided the door is too light. This mahogany/walnut might be too dark...)

Tomorrow it's back to painting for me - more baseboards and maybe some crown molding too. :)

Our Cat Will Sleep Anywhere

(In the breezeway, on top of a stack of lawn chair cushions, in the middle of a pool toy and yes, right on top of the mop handle... mop relocated from pantry/utility room/laundry room for painting/new floor/etc.)

Kitchen Project Underway - Day 23

Monday I finished painting the pantry!

(here it is)

(I wrapped the wall side of the water heater in plastic - there was just enough room between it and the wall to use the roller.)

(This is my to-do list - take everything off the shelves and paint them and the wall behind them. I did the top shelf but the rest is left. Will take a couple days...)

Tuesday I take a break from painting... whew!

Kitchen Project Underway - Day 22

Lots of progress in the painting department today! About 3/4 of the pantry has its first coat (of what some call "a coat and a half" - which means you go back and fix any spots that don't look great); I finished the two doors I started painting yesterday and painted one side of the pocket door. Tomorrow I get more paint - I ran out of Popular Gray in the pantry.

(The pantry/utility room/laundry room painted! (Everything you can see in this picture is painted!))

(Here's where I ran out of paint, though it was my intention to take a break here - I still have to tape off the lines to the hot water tank and somehow cover it to protect it from accidentally getting paint on it. I also have to unplug the washer from the power and the water lines and move it to paint behind it.)

(And here is my assembly line of doors, looking all shiny and happy with their first coats of paint.)

Tomorrow: paint shopping, followed by finishing up the pantry

Kitchen Project Underway - Day 21

More painting but exciting news - it was beautiful outside today! Lately it's been nothing but cold, colder and raining. Today 68 degrees and sunny! So I painted outside! LOL

(First I set everything up, then I finished painting the back door.)

(Here are the two doors cleaned and ready to be painted. In the foreground, the one from between the pantry and kitchen; in background, the coat closet door.)

(And here they are with the first coat done.)

I finished 2 coats on the "tops" and sides of both and brought them inside to finish tomorrow. Progress, progress!

bulletin boards, mud room/area and houzz.com

I'm enjoying houzz.com today - it's a fun site that lets you save design inspiration photos in idea books. Here's an example - in our pantry/utility room/laundry room there will be space between the built-in pantry shelving and the hot water heater for a "mud room area" where we can store our shoes and bags and backpacks. This photo is full of good ideas - I like the bench on top of the shoe storage - so you have a place to sit down to put your shoes back on - that's genius! :)

traditional entry design

See my ideabooks at http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/users/amy_z

Faucets and Fixtures

My posts this week have been so boring (at least to me - maybe the paint fumes are starting to get to me?? lol) so I thought I would share some of the "little" things we're looking at for the kitchen.

For the faucet, no one will be surprised that I like this Delta faucet with Touch2O technology. It has the pull-down sprayer too with a little magnet in it for easy retraction. Learn more about it here. I think we can get it for a lot less than the list price - I saw it in a design magazine at $360.

For the bathroom, these are my favorites so far (towel ring on top/left, tp holder on bottom/right, Pegasus Dorset series in chrome):

I'm also on the hunt for 28 inch high bar stools (the seat at that height, I mean). There are a lot at 24 and 30 but for our 36 inch countertop, I think 28 inch is what we need.) I saw some metal cute ones at Crate & Barrel but they only come in 24" and 30"! This might fill the bill:

"The durable metal frame of each stool is coated with an old steel finish for a timeless, antique look. Every counter stool swivels 360 degrees for complete mobility and has a distressed brown faux leather seat." 26" high

Kitchen Project Underway - Days 19 & 20

Painting, painting and more painting... and of course all the prep work you have to do in order to paint... with a little shopping thrown in for good measure.

Thursday I cleaned and painted one coat on the door frame between the kitchen and the library (the room that would be our formal dining room but instead houses our book, desktop computer and guinea pig). Then made a trip to Home Depot with a friend to check out some of the little things we need for the guest bathroom: towel rod, toilet paper holder and medicine cabinet. The towel rod needed to be a short one - the old one (in all it's cheap plastic light blue beauty) is only 12-14 inches long. Not a standard size at all, so no luck in that department.

(that's our biggest screwdriver, for size comparison)

We did manage to pick up a simple medicine cabinet that is fronted with just a mirror. I'm worried it's a little too big though and that the cabinet door will either hit the window frame or the door (to the room) frame. That might be courting disaster!

Also I removed everything from the walls in the pantry/utility room/laundry room - no mean feat - removing all the anchors for the shelving above the washing machine took some doing. And I reinstalled the door knob to the bathroom door.

Today the inside door frame got its second coat of paint. (Still have to paint the pocket door though!)

I also gave the inside of both back doors their first coat, after washing two of the four walls in the pantry and both back doors. After picking T up at school I got the second coat on one of the back doors - one less thing to do later!

(Pantry door to the breezeway -done!!)

(Kitchen door to the breezeway - with one coat (and obviously still needs to be framed up again...)

Still on tap... for this weekend (I hope) - washing the other two walls in the pantry and taping off the areas that could accidentally end up painted when we paint the walls... painting pantry...

Kitchen Project Underway - Day 18

Today I painted the baseboards. This is a lot more easily done when they're not installed yet! It was a cool brisk day here in Tallahassee - 53 and windy - so I wore 2 sweatshirts and got to work. They dried really quickly so it  didn't take long to get two coats on all 5 of them.

before (on left) - after (on right)

 

before (on top) - after (on bottom)

Today I also got started on washing the rest of the molding (in the house) that still needs to be painted. 

If it's warm enough tomorrow, I hope to prop open our 2 back doors and paint the interior side of both of them. 

Kitchen Project Underway - Day 17

The painting fun continued yesterday (and for the foreseeable future *yawn*). All the door frames and the edge of the pantry shelving all got 2 coats of gloss.

(The door and frame to the bathroom are done! Need to put the door knob back on...)

(More door frames all painted up... plus the pantry shelf.)

(I just painted the top and side of the shelves; I'll tackle moving everything and doing the rest of the detail work another day! I have enough done now to paint the walls.)

Adventures in Lemonade

Thomas has been in love with citrus fruits lately, especially lemons. We made our first lemonade of 2010 right after the new year and then again on Super Bowl Sunday. T does a pretty good job of juicing by hand, but it's hard work! We invested in a little electric juicer this weekend and the speed and efficiency of this little tool has led to a lot of (delicious) fresh squeezed orange juice and some good discoveries:

1. Lemonade is a simple 1-1-1 ratio. Make a simple syrup by heating 1 cup of water with 1 cup of sugar until the sugar is fully dissolved. Cool the syrup then add 1 cup of lemon juice. It will be very strong at this point so add water, a cup or so at a time, until it tastes right to you.

2. Limes are a lot tarter than lemons, and less flavorful. You need less juice - about 3/4 cup to the finished 1:1 ratio simple syrup - and less water to dilute. Limes are also a bit more solid than lemons or oranges, which makes them harder to juice.

3. Orange juice needs nothing - delish straight from the juicer. We do run it through a sieve because T is not a big fan of pulp.

We also learned (via friend Audrey @flowerstrewn via @CookingLight): "Look for lemons that are heavy, give nicely when squeezed, and have a thinner rind (means more juice inside)."

In general also a warm lemon gives more juice than a cold one.

T making lemonade for the Super Bowl.
Lemon photo credit: BeautifullyUsed.com

Kitchen Project Underway - Day 16

Just a little more painting today. Bathroom is done and the sections of the kitchen that make sense to do now are finished too.

(This picture shows the new wall color in the bathroom pretty well. It's "Popular Gray" from Sherwin-Williams.)

(And this is that last wall in the kitchen.)

Tomorrow, if I have time, I'll work on the pantry/utility room/laundry room. I'm also hoping Thomas and I can do some shopping for a new t.p. holder and towel rack to replace the old (light blue plastic) ones.

Still Funny a Year Later

Kitchen Project Underway - Day 15

It was a festival of painting at our house today! There's still lots to do but we got a huge chunk done. I finished the second coats on the trim in the bathroom and got 2 coats on the bathroom door. Then I cleaned 2 and 1/2 of the walls in the kitchen and painted them. We're hoping it just takes one coat. I also got a coat of paint on the trim of the window to the backyard.

(There will be cabinets on the right hand side here (and the light fixture is coming down, it's a beauty, eh?) but we thought this was a great place to start and see how the paint color looks. On the to-do list - painting the door on the left and its trim.)

(This part done except for baseboards (to be installed this week).)

(This is a fun one since you can (hopefully) see that the wall on the left is painted and the one on the right is not. The window frame has one coat (of an eventual 2).) 

(And this one looks funny with the door painted but the outside of the door frame unpainted, but hey progress is progress!)

On tap for tomorrow - painting the walls in the bathroom, cleaning and prepping the pantry walls, getting the kitchen finished up (that last wall and the second coat on the window frame) and the list goes on... :)

Kitchen Project Underway - Day 14

The floors are done! So exciting! I also finished prepping the bathroom for paint and got the first coat on the woodwork. I took some pictures to show the difference between the old color and the new. All the woodwork, door frames, doors etc. will be Heron Plume (Sherwin-Williams). It looks pretty white in the photos but it's a gray-beige.

(The last areas to get flooring - the alcove in the entry way...)

(...and the inside of the coat closet)

(Other end of the coat closet)

(And here's the bathroom. Half of the door frame has the new paint.)

(Here's a close up from the other side of the door.)

Our plan for Saturday is to paint, paint and paint some more. Stay tuned for pictures! :)