the chambers

I don't think I've been so excited about a project since the lockers-inset-in-the-wall incident. Or actually, even that wasn't as exciting as my new baby. My Chambers Stove.

Ahhh, my Chambers Stove! I can't even tell you how long I've wanted one of these. At least a decade. I've tried to pick one up in every city we've lived in except Dublin (where I briefly switched my longing to an Aga. Because, well, who wouldn't want an Aga?) but have always been foiled. For a long time I just couldn't convince Will that it was a good, or safe, or efficient. And then once I had (because for a 70 year old stove, they can be remarkably safe and good and efficient. You can cook with the gas turned off once the stove has been heated to the right temperature. I'd like to see a modern stove do that) they were suddenly popular and hard to find for less than an arm and a leg.

I've been watching Craigslist since we got here. Not obsessively, but just checking in every now and then, waiting. Which is how I found our friend here. Practically for free, totally rusted and perfectly located between a lecture Will was giving last week in New York and home. He was going to drive by it anyway...so why not. Which is how I came to be in possession of my very own Chambers B model (although it may be a BZ, the serial number is so grotty I can't read it yet).

She is probably from the mid 40's. My guess, from looking at lots of photos of similar stoves, is 1944, but I'll be able to figure that out better when she is a little cleaner. And she's got some pretty cool features. That whole cook with the gas off, a deep-well burner that is like a built in crock pot. The griddle pops up and is a broiler underneath. Swanky, right? She needs an overhaul, but we need a new stove anyway and it will be cheaper to do that than to buy a new one. Or that's what I keep telling myself. And Will. It will take some major shifting of the kitchen to make her fit. We actually came up with a renovation plan that included one of these stoves when we first bought the house but scrapped it thinking we wouldn't find the stove. So that is possibly back. Or we may do something different. Either way it's a long term project. And if we ever leave this house, she's going to have to come with me. Unless we are going to a house that already has one. Or an Aga. Because, like I said, who wouldn't want an Aga.

the kitchen now

The kitchen is...not done. But it's made some serious progress since we moved in almost 9 months ago, when it looked like this.

There are still so many things to do. New counter top on one side, new drawer and cabinet fronts (or painting the existing ones), a new sink and appliances (oh please, please manky refrigerator, last until we can replace you!) But of course, it can't come all at once. Set aside the cost issues and the fact that we have a long list of other, more pressing projects to do around the house and we still have the little thing of needing to cook two or three meals a day for two hungry kids to work around. But slowly and surly, a little bit by a little bit, it's getting there. This weekend it was new lights, last week we started replacing the handles and pulls, a few weeks ago it was tile (still to be completed once we find the perfect pencil tile trim for the corners). It's coming. And it's so much nicer, half finished though it is. The walls are brighter. The lights are brighter! The open shelves are easier to use than the shallower cupboard. The pantry is full of mouse proof jars. It's spiffed up and a little more modern without being hard and cold, at least it seems that way to us. But mostly it just feels better. Feels more us.

down to the studs

Oh yes. You know that some serious renovation is happening when you see studs and insulation. And also when you have to rely on your phone for pictures because you don't want to risk your real camera with all the dust.

It will be some time before it's finish finished. No all in one go kitchen re-do this time. But it's looking so much brighter and open and us. Well, except for the pink insulation hanging out of the wall. That's not really our color (although Evie likes it) but still, slow and stead, weekend afternoon by weekend afternoon, it's a comin.

painting and planning

It's snowy and soft this morning. My favorite kind of winter day. Not the oh-so-very-cold temperatures of last week, but still cold enough that the icicles aren't melting and the fresh snow from last night, which at the time was not so much fun to drive in but is now looking very pretty indeed, will stay nice and fluffy and soft all day long.

We had a quiet weekend following a minor bathtub related concussion on Friday night. Lots of couch time and movies for the patient, doctor's orders. And her brother was happy to keep her company. She's all better now, crossing her fingers that I will consent to some zip-line time when she gets home (I'm not sure about that, we'll see). But two days of kids on couches lazing the hours away gave Will and I time to make lots of decisions about the house that we've been dithering on. This planning craze I'm in, well, it's extended inside I'm afraid. And so there are more plans afoot. As long as it's too snowy for beehive building, it's just right for painting and tiling and painting some more. There are lots of things in our house that need replacing. They function, but only just (like our kitchen drawers which really need replacing before they start refusing to go back permanently. At the moment we can talk them into it with much cursing, some screw tightening and a little WD-40, but alas, that won't last I fear) Lots of places that, after years of renters, need paint. And of course, LOTS of flooring.

This weekend we wiled away the afternoons painting the kitchen, which is the darkest room in the house. Too much dark paint and dark wood on floors and cabinets AND counter tops. We're trying to find a better balance of wood and paint to lighten things up. It's still in limbo at the moment, but improving, with more to be done next weekend. We'll call it Phase One of a multi-phase, year long plan to overhaul it. After lots of contemplation, hours spent on Pinterest and many, many color strips brought home from the hardware store, the colors are not so very different than what we had in our old (much loved) kitchen. Darker in some cases. Warmer in others. A little more white and wood and color instead of white and metal and color. But still, similar. What can I say, I'm a sucker for dark grey-blue. The main thing is that we have a plan at last. And paint.

And one room's paint color inevitably leads to the other. So we have more paint strips sitting on the table, mixed in with the ever present playing cards and the cribbage board, which was dug out this weekend when movies became boring (imagine that!). And that paint color, still not quite chosen, has me thinking about what the room after that will be. And on it goes.

bye bye birdsnest, hello sea urchin

When you renovate your own house, I've found over the years (and over several different houses) that there are things that you are willing to put up with that aren't the norm. Or maybe that's more of a living with an architect thing. He's rubbed off on me. I'm not really talking about structural issues or things that are bad. Just things that might make some people crazy that we are perfectly happy to deal with. Like our light.
I love our kitchen light. It's funky and a little silly and it makes me smile just to see it. But, at the same time, about once a year it either needs to be rewired with a new strand of lights or all the bulbs (that would be 200 of them) need to be changed. I'm happy to do this because, like I said, I like my light. But someone else might not love it 200 bulbs worth. So alas, it had to go.

Lowe's and Home Depot had absolutely nothing that fit my slightly strange and modern criteria and I was starting to think that I'd have to order something and have it quickly shipped so that we could make our listing the house deadline when Will reminded me that he would be up in Maryland for a day and could pop into IKEA.
Oh, IKEA. I do love you. I couldn't have, say, my whole house or even the whole of any room IKEA, I'm not the Fight Club type, but when it comes to inexpensive but fun details, they are often my go to people. The light was no different. We considered "The Artichoke" but decided it's a little too common now (not that I don't like them, however) and thought about some wiry led things but finally settled on this one, which we have dubbed "The Sea Urchin" because, really, it does look like one.
I'm surprisingly happy with it. As much as I liked my Birds Nest, The Sea Urchin looks perfect in our modern meets classical kitchen style. And bonus! Only one light bulb to change! Yay!

What do you think? Still funky enough? Will it appeal to buyers?

glossy

Way back, oh, I think last winter, our kitchen was featured on Design Sponge which was very exciting and a little nerve wracking since people comment, but it was mostly good feedback. That same week I was contacted by Better Homes and Gardens about a doing a spread on the kitchen in one of their Kitchen and Bath magazines (I had no idea that they had several kitchen and bath mags, they do, we are in Makeover not Ideas or DIY). SO a few months later they came out for the day and primped, polished and shot our kitchen. I didn't feel like I could blog about it at the time because frankly I didn't quite believe that our little kitchen, our DIY, make things up as we go kitchen, would actually be in a magazine. Plus they shoot way out. Waaaaay out.
So this weekend when we were cruising the bookstore and we picked up the new issue of Kitchen and Bath Makeovers we had to try hard not to squeal to find that yes, we did make it in. EEEK!
They did an amazing job with the room, making it look bigger than it really is I feel, but I guess that's how it goes in the mags. That sounds like I know what I'm talking about, which I don't. But we're pretty excited! And Nigella looks so cute, it just makes me smile that they asked if she could be in the shot!

The Light

So it's funny, but back when the lockers were on Apartment Therapy and the kitchen was on Design Sponge, I got a surprising number of questions about our light. I still get emails now and then on how we made the thing so, since I decided this weekend to add some rope lighting to the core of the lamp which involved taking it most of the way apart, I thought I'd show you guys how it went together again.

* But first a disclaimer! I'm not an electrician. Over the years I've gotten pretty decent at figuring out wiring, especially old house wiring. But just because this is the way I did it doesn't mean it's THE way to do it. I try to always follow safety precautions with wiring and regularly check things around the house to make sure they are ship shape. *

OK, now that that's out of the way, on to the light.

The origional idea for this light was inspired by a photo I once saw of Nigella Lawson's Kitchen. Along one wall was a mass of white Christmas lights. Since our kitchen is fairly modern and maybe a little stark looking for a house with two crazy kids running around it, we decided that a funky wad of lights dangling from an overstated ceiling medallion would be just the thing to silly things up a bit.

The frame for the lamp is actually two of these, tied together with white electrical tape, wide edges facing eachother. The lights that were on the frame got zapped when someone who shall remain nameless (Hint, it wasn't me and I generally don't let the kids take on the roll of electrician, so also not them) was messing around and wired it wrong. Yeah, that's why the light is one of my projects. Black goes to black. It's just how it has to be.

Anyway, I had always intended to wrap the thing with gobs of Christmas lights anyway so the underlying lights are totally disconnected from the project and we treated the whole thing as a simple frame.

To begin with I fed a six foot long string of rope lights through the core of the lamp. I'm not a big fan of rope lighting in most situations, but inside the lamp they add a lot of light without being at all visable. And in the kitchen, brighter is better in my book.







The end of the rope lamp was plugged into the end of a string of white mini lights which I wrapped around the frame at about one inch intervals until I had used the entire strand up.













Once that string had been used up I plugged it into the next which was wrapped across the circle over and over to form a web.



The web is key because it holds the mass in in the next step. You want it open enough that some lights can dangle through but not so much that the whole thing drops to the floor.







Last strand! The third string of mini lights (fourth altogether) is wadded a bit and stuffed, kind of at random, into the web.




Once it's hung you can pull the wads through to give it a messier look, for the moment though, just stuff it all in little wads into the web.

The last strand was hardwired to some standard lamp wire (the kind you see on floor lamps) which was then secured to the top of the frame. I also secured two dummy sections (meaning they were in no way wired in) to two more points on the fram, creating a balanced, three string look. Because I didn't want the actual wires to do the supporting however, I also hung the three wire hanger that came with the lamp at the same points with the top hooked through a bracket on the ceiling.

If you aren't comfortable with hardwiring, you can also hide an outlet in your ceiling where the junction box is and simply plug the lamp in, hiding the junction with a smaller medallion that mounts to the larger one.

The bulbs will eventually burn out, as all lightbulbs do, so be sure to keep the extras that come with the strands and maybe keep an extra string of lights around to steal bulbs from when you need them> Ours went about eight months with daily use before the bulbs started fading, which isn't bad for teeny little light bulbs!

6 Month Mark

I was flipping through last years calendar today (transferring dates, always a fun January task) and I realized that as of this week we have owned our house for 6 months. I was kind of shocked. I knew it hadn't been long but it felt, it still feels, like MUCH longer than 6 months.

I remember walking through the house on the day we closed thinking "what have we gotten ourselves into?" This is the third home we've owned and it wasn't really in any worse condition than the other two, both of which we renovated in a relatively brief time. But with those houses, both 1920's bungalows, the changes were mostly just paint and decor. Yes, we replaced the kitchen counters in one and we ripped out the whole bathroom of the other, but the bones of those houses were so beautiful that really all they needed was a little love. This house had much less character to begin with, and a truly truly terrible kitchen.

On that day I felt like we would never make a presentable home out of the mess we faced. With Will ripping the carpet off the stairs and telling contractors where to knock down walls and put in vents, I thought about the finished, not the way we would finish it but never the less finished house we were already living in and I felt totally overwhelmed.

This afternoon I went hunting through iphoto looking for photos of the before and realized that we've come much further than I ever thought we could. There is still plenty to do. The yard is practically untouched. The mudroom, the basement, and, of course, Will's long list of things to finish, but I can barely remember the house as it was. Which is a really good thing because, ugg, it was pretty ugly.

So now when I feel like we aren't moving fast enough to get that to-do list done or the mudroom in working order, I'll *try* to think back to those before photos or these or these and stop stressing. I can't guarantee that it will keep me sane, but I will try. So, to help me remember and just in case you'd like to see, here are some before and after of the kitchen, dining room and kids room (see links above for bathroom and living room)

Before and After

It was pointed out to me that I neglected to put up a full lenght "after" photo of the lockers. So, here we go. A before and after of the same(ish) shot.

Before lockers
















After lockers
















I'm still looking for a spot for my lovely little organizer.....

Pantry Pantry Pantry

Until we moved to Charlottesville, I'd never actually had a kitchen with a pantry. Obviously I'd had kitchens with shelves and storage, although some of those have been very much on the small side. But I'd never had a dedicated pantry space until we moved into the house across the street. There we had a large, double-door, slide out pantry and it was heaven. But pantry's are one of those things, like dishwashers and garbage disposals and a washer and dryer of your own that, once had, are hard to live without again. Not impossible, mind you, but once you've tasted the freedom of scraping your dinner dishes right into the sink and flipping a switch (a garbage disposal is on the list BTW) it's just no fun to go back to scraping into the garbage.

So you could say I was a leetile excited when we finished up the pantry Sunday night. Finished, is of course, relative in our house. There is still trim to add and we had shelves but no brackets, but for all intents and purposes, we had a pantry. Yesterday flew by in a whirl of I don't even know what and I never had a chance to go hunt up some brackets but today I was at Lowes bright and early(ish) so I could get to work on moving out of the tiny, cramped space we have been using and into my brand spanking new and much bigger space. Ahhh....space.

Once the island cupboards were cleared out I was able to shift some of the other kitchen things around so that we no longer have to pull out tumbling piles of plastic IKEA cups to get to the slow cooker or the yogurt maker. And while I realize it wont last, I'm far to lazy with things that cant be seen to keep everything tidy all the time, I love having everything straight and orderly.

I also scrabbled up some magnetic spice jars for the inside of the door to the "baking locker". Because it was an experiment I only made four but now that they are done I'm planning on heading back to the grocery store for more of the cute, squat little jars I found before they run out for the season. Whoo-hoo organization!

Woosh, and now no fish stink

So I cooked FISH last night (at 11:45. I know, terrible, but we forgot to eat dinner - dont worry, we DID feed the kids- and after finishing the hood/locker install were starving. By the way - salmon smeared with Red Hill Farm Creamy Dill Dip - yumm!) and my house did not smell like Pike's Place Market. Amazing! I love my hood. Oh, and the husband who put it up.

Now excuse me while I go fill up my new pantry......

Dust Dust Everywhere

My house is so unbelievably dusty right now.... I almost wish it wasn't sunny, it make the dust all the more visible. Sigh... It will be worth all the mess in the end...Right?

Meanwhile I'm trying to come up with a Christmas card idea. My original idea isn't panning out so I'll have to keep trying. I did, however end up with a cool circle cutter due to my first attempts. I love new craft toys. If I can just get the darn thing to work smoothly.

The wall came tumbling down (and the dust came billowing up)

Will and I are masters of starting new projects before old ones are anywhere near complete. This is why, despite the fact that the bookshelves have been up for two months, we are still missing the end shelf under the window and the heating vent behind the couch is, as yet, unpainted. We’ll get to it. I’m sure of that. But for now it will sit unfinished while we move onto new and exciting things.

This weekend was no different. Remember when I said the hood would be finished early next week? Yeah, still not done. It’s always too cold or too wet or too late to cut the hole in the exterior wall. And until that is done, well, the hood is still in limbo.

Saturday would have been a good opportunity to finish the wretched thing, well, other than the snow, but it could have been done. But did we do it? No. Instead we blew out the wall between the kitchen and the bathroom for the pantry, despite the fact that company was coming for lunch on Sunday.

“we could finish the hood.”
“We SHOULD finish the hood!”
“But it is snowing.”
“And really cold out.”
“And since taking down the wall will take a whole day and the hood will only take an hour or two we really should take advantage of the weekend.”
“Your right, we should. The hood can wait till tomorrow.”
“And we can get everything cleaned up for lunch tomorrow anyway.”

Right. There is still dust EVERYWHERE in my house. I keep mopping the floors and still they look coated in dusty, cement colored mud. But we did get the wall out. And we did get it, relatively, cleaned up. We did not get the hood in. That’s at the top of the to-do list tonight. If it’s not sleeting ice by the time Will gets home. Which it might.

On the up side we are well on our way to a kitchen pantry, which just tickles me pink. I cant even tell you how much I look forward to my baking equipment being in the island, where I, I don’t know, do a lot of my baking! Just the idea that I’ll be able to buy more than one can of soup at a time is strangely thrilling. Weird what I find thrilling isn’t it. It’s like the Christmas that I got a vacuum and was really excited until I realized how lame it was that a 20 year old would be THAT excited about a vacuum. What can I say, I’ve always been a little odd.

But back to the wall. It was not (thankfully) a load bearing wall so, other than the horrific mess that ensued, it came out fairly easily. Last night we put the lockers in and build the wall back in around them and tonight (barring sick children, headaches, working late, dogs knocking their canine tooth out-seriously, she did that yesterday!- or any other number of interruptions that could befall us) we will start drywalling the thing in. After we finish the hood. And go to cub scouts. And eat dinner. And make a new-because-we’re-coming-down-to-it before Christmas to-do list. But it’s doable, right?

Now I just have to find a new home for my organizer. It's the one casulty of the wall turned to pantry and I'm a little sad about it. Not sad enough not to do it. But it was the perfect spot to keep all the keys and mail and notes and phones being charged. Three days it's been down and they are all scattered around the house. So much for organization..