Recycling Old Wood For Kitchen Island

Taking down all the old wood shelving and partition walls in the basement...

... then recycling the old wood for our new butcher block(esque) kitchen island, which Peter will build...

... seems to be the destiny of this wood which has been recycled before by the previous owner out of crates from local textile mills.

Do It Yourself Stair Runner Installation 2

After Stair Runner Installation Part 1, here comes part two, the finished project...

... looks like a professional installation, doesn't it? But you'll see it has some Do It Yourself characteristics...

... our solution to the "turn" dilemma that can simply not be solved if you only have a pre-cut/pre-edged roll of stair runner to work with...

... and here on the landing I'm sure you notice (hopefully only barely) the diagonal seam...

... we think it's perfect!

Entry Foyer Done

Nothing out of the box...

... the before: Entry + Stairway..., I just couldn't decide on a color with punch, and if in doubt go beige(ish), right. So that wall ended up just a tad darker then the hallway color and the two cubes give us room for gloves, hats and sunglasses.

Stair Runner Installation

Finally we got around to begin the stair runner installation and cozy up the stairway to the second floor...

... it begins with cutting and stapling on the pads that go underneath the rug...

... and the same for the tackless strips -those pink things with little nails that hold the runner...

... nice job!

... pushing the stair runner, so it is gripped by the tackless strips...

... et voila!

But we're not done yet, we've got a challenging turn here to figure out..., and in case you wondered..., we followed these Stair Runner Installation instructions.

Entry and Stairway

I'm in the process to finish the entry and stairway..., meaning I'd like to give that one wall a different color than the rest..., add some cube shelves, mount new light fixtures which are ordered and lastly install a stair runner which we still have to find.

About Floors and Mice

While I re-finished a stretch of kitchen floor, the neighbors cat worked on reducing the population of mice in our septic hill. Said neighbor informed us yesterday that she had received seven dead mice. That cat is on a roll and I'm forever thankful.


more cat pictures

What it takes to Mount House Numbers

Good job, bad job. It's obvious. Is it? So what does it take to mount house numbers? Two people, two attempts.

An Uninvited Guest to Get Rid Off

I do not want to know what kind of creature this is sitting on the wall...I caught it with the designated bug jar and gave it back to the outside world. This was not the first time either, and I sincerely hope that this is not an old house thing.

Summer, Celebration and a Little bit of Spackling

The summer kicked in just on schedule for our one year of home remodeling celebration. Peter did some ceiling spackling in the kitchen, other than that we hung out on the porch and drove out to Sachuest Point near Newport walking the trails where I spotted the two happy hats.

Tight Squeeze

Since the leak above is fixed the Washer/Dryer unit went back into place.

Old Wood Door Hardware Restoration

Now this is what I call a sweet project: little effort and big shiny result. I simply steel wooled these plates, except for one which Peter wire wheeled because he's a lover of power tools.

Polished Wood Baluster Railing Spindles

The work upstairs is coming to an end...,a little bit of paint touch ups here and there, but that is for later. So after giving the hallway floor another finish I attended to some details like cleaning and polishing the wood baluster railing spindles, done with Orange Glo Wood Cleaner and Polish. No more construction dust up there...

Installing Ceiling Mount Light Fixtures

Installing the new Ceiling Mount Light Fixtures was somewhat easy. There was no need to replace the old outlet boxes and I screwed the straps that hold the fixture directly into the ceiling (plaster with wooden lath boards).
There were four of these oldies...

Upstairs I installed a couple of flush mount light fixtures:

A semi flush ceiling mount light fixture for the living room:

And the old ceiling lamp in the dining room has been replaced by a playful chandelier:

Built In Dining Room Corner Hutch

This built in dining room corner hutch needs a fresh coat of paint, a leisurely project that I can do during breaks from my scraping mastic off the kitchen floor workout. I also want to use the original drawer pulls and strip the paint off them. They are bronze with a nice brown patina.

Installing Fiber Glass Attic Insulation

Installing fiber glass attic insulation is easy. We already had a six inch layer of vermiculite attic insulation and just added another six inch with this fiber glass insulation that comes in rolls.

More Winterizing -Door Weather Stripping

Today was about weather stripping doors. Self adhesive rubber weather stripping around the frames of the exterior doors and screw on weather stripping on the bottom of the exterior doors as well as on some of the interior doors to keep the cooler hallway air out. Well, today it's pretty warm so we'll see once the cold kicks in how effective everything is and/or what else needs to be sealed, stripped and insulated.

Winterizing Windows

Siding contractor Kevin gave us this big roll of foam that turns out to be great for winterizing windows. After deciding which windows will be permanently closed during the winter time I am squeezing the foam in between the panels, the foam then expands an makes an airtight seal that can be easily removed once spring comes around.

Mice in Wall

Today we decided to take the kitchen wall out after catching the mouse that was roaming around -suspecting more nests. What we found was somewhat shocking: an entire section of the wall looked like as if it was insulated, but with tunnels and hundreds of mice droppings. At one time there must have been so many mice living behind this wall...

A Mouse in the Wall

After discovering a couple of mice nests we now officially have a living mouse in the wall. I have heard noises late at night and this morning there was poop on the kitchen counter! We'll be setting up some traps.

Priming Stairway and Hallway Walls

I finished priming all the stairway and hallway walls which took me six hours -hard to believe but there is a lot of wall there. It looks very white right now and I want to decide on a color by the coming weekend when we have our next Home Depot run.