This Can't Be Good.

What good is a porch if it doesn't protect your head from deadly icicles?

An Unexpected Surprise.

Generally, with home improvement, you don't really want to know what's behind the walls. It just might make you question the laws of physics (again and again).

We decided that instead of spending hours upon goopy hours of stripping the beadboard in the kitchen, we'd simply turn them around. Yes, there aren't actually any "beads" on the back of beadboard, but it's reusing the material and maybe contributing to a more "modern" look in the kitchen. We decided to start with the short wall.

However, once we pulled all the boards off, we noticed something peculiar about the brick backing of the fireplace.

Yes, you might be able to notice that there are what seem to be holes in that brick wall, which is the back of the fireplace in the dining room.

Yep, there they are. This is looking in from the fireplace opening. This whole area of masonry was totally deteriorated. One wall of the fireplace, which holds up the chimney, was not holding up the chimney. So, we did what we had to do. We went to Home Depot and bought some bricks and mortar. And we fixed it.

We took out all the loose bricks and cleared away the old mortar.

And we patched it up.



Good as new! Now back to those boards...



Ta-da! They need to be sanded down, and we'll probably paint them, but not bad, huh?

Some assistance.

We've been focusing a lot on the kitchen lately, but as I was reviewing all of our photos, I thought it would be nice to throw up (post, not vomit) a good before and after shot, just for kicks. These are in our posts, but in case you have trouble putting things together in your head:

View from dining room towards the kitchen, before.

Same view into kitchen, but before we ripped all of the kitchen out. Is it really an improvement? It seems so, but final judgment to be made once it's all finished.

Snow.

This has nothing to do with our house renovation (except for the fact that you get to see our bare front porch sans stumpy tree-bushes, which we cut down a couple months ago). Just wanted to post a couple photos of our house in 1.5 feet of snow, and our dog Fiver enjoying it.


Piles of snow in the front.

Fiver bounding in the snow. This doesn't adequately show that she totally sinks in the deeper parts of the snow, where she has to bounce out like a bunny.

A Room without Walls.

This is what walls can do for you:
They keep dust and dirt out of your house. They keep heat in your house. They look good (better than a chicken coop). If you have walls in you kitchen, for instance, you might feel it is appropriate to spend time there, even prepare food and eat it. Depending on how well and recently you had cleaned, you might go so far as to invite guests over.

Needless to say, removing the walls from your kitchen alters its feel.

We took down some walls in the kitchen and took off all the plaster. The plaster was in bad shape, especially where we had taken down the dropped ceiling, so we just took it all off the lath. Good opportunity to do some insulating, especially since we have a giant duct (left over from the exhaust fan) bringing cold air into the room.

Also, we took out the walls of the tiny room by the side door. We changed our minds about the layout and decided that we wanted the refrigerator there. Plus, we had done such great structural reinforcement that we knew the wall was unnecessary. It makes a HUGE difference in how open the room feels now! Check it out:

Yep, looks good. Won't you be our dinner guest?

The door to the basement is now out in the open. She's a beauty.

Note the duct above the beautifully decorated door. It now has a plastic bag over it. ALSO, that square thing in the wall to the right with the concrete circle in it? The old exhaust vent from the original stove. Pretty cool.

More With the Floor.

Lest we become to comfortable in our kitchen, we felt it would be wise to rip out the floor. Having completed the task, we recommend it highly. The kitchen is now totally uncomfortable. Additionally, we are crippled, coughing and have a 7' tall pile of kindling in our basement.

As covered in previous lectures, our flooring situation was complicated. The stratigraphy was as follows from top to bottom:

1. ca. 2006 - ceramic tile matching in date and style the surrounding kitchen which has been positively dated to the late Home Depot age.
2. ca. 2006 - Hardie Backer cementitious tile backer (contemporary with ceramic tile).
3. ca. 1970s - Cream and brown colored Linoleum in a style inspired by cigarette smoke and spilled gravy.
   
4. ca. 1940s - Linoleum of indeterminate color. It is possible that this linoleum was installed before color existed.
   
5. ca. 1920s - Thin oak flooring. This flooring was apparently installed during a period of relatively low nail prices.
   
6. 1893 - Original pine flooring. Too chopped up to save. Believe us, we tried.
   

Seen above are many of the flooring types we we encountered (we found this wonderful montage below the sink cabinet). Below, ceramic tile. Far right, original pine boards. Above right, cream and brown linoleum. Above center, early colorless linoleum tile.


Removing the tile and backer board was easy. You could say we barely broke a sweat, but Adam is always sweating.

After the removal of the tile we had thin oak flooring.

We made a beaver hut with all of the oak flooring.


Eggs anyone?

Reagan ponders the possibility of somehow sneaking out so that she won't have to deal with cleaning up the pile of spikey, nail-ridden oak pieces.

This is the original pine flooring. After we cleaned up the beaver hut. The floor boards themselves were very nice but they only covered about 80% of the kitchen floor. If you know anybody in the market for a 114 year old floor, give us a call. This opportunity won't last long.


Finally we got to the original subfloor, wide rough-sawn pine boards. These would have been a cool floor if they had been installed so they touched each other, or the walls. The barn look is very hip in kitchen design right now.

We added a plywood subfloor on top of the pine boards so the final floor will be at the right level. The canine is our dog Fiver. She is getting ready to christen the new floor by spilling her water bowl on it.

Next up...new walls.

Flooring issues.

We've been in quite a dilemma with the kitchen floor. We hate the cheap tile that's on there now. Originally, we wanted to put cork floors down, but we found out that in order to make the new floors level with the existing floors, we'd have to rip out the original pine boards that are still there, underneath the more recent layers. This idea pained Reagan, of course, and so Adam tried to figure out a way that we could save the original floors.

Option 1: Put down the cork and try to make a well-designed way to match up the two floor levels (primarily between the kitchen and the dining room). Well, this might be tricky, and chances are we'd stub our toes a lot.

Option 2: Nix the cork and just refinish the original pine floor. The problem here is that we ripped out 2 thresholds, and so these areas would have to be patched. Or, we could just put in new thresholds that were flat or something. However, we started to uncover the original floor, and it's not in great shape. There are other areas that would need patching, and there are lots and lots of nail holes from the later floor.

Lower right corner, existing tile. Lower center, the thin oak boards over the original pine, upper center. The two little squares on the left are the cork samples.

The original pine on the other side of the sink, by the door to the side deck (with lots of paw and foot prints).

Option 3: Suck it up, Reagan, and rip out the original floor and install a nice, even, new cork floor. Yeah, that's what we're going to have to do.