UPDATE ON KITCHEN REMODEL

I HAVE MADE SOME PROGRESS, albeit quite demanding.  I have completed the cabinet box to extend the counter top, now that the dishwasher has been installed.  This pic shows the new washer, not actually installed at the time but just in place to confirm measurements for the construction of the cabinet.

It is actually more difficult to construct a box to match existing carpentry than to do it all of a piece from scratch, as it were.  I had to revive some skills not used for many years.

While I was busy with that work, Daniel came by and installed the dishwasher, as well renewing the 40 yer old plumbing and fitting a new faucet setup for the sink.  I had 14 1/2 inches for the new box.  I decided to retain the laminex top and to extend this over the cabinet box, using old material from the peninsular top.  The entire cabinet was constructed from these material.  Excellent recycling!

 Amazingly I got it almost exactly matching in height.  I am using an acrylic filler called SeamFil, to join everything up and make a smooth surface.

 As you can see, I have decided to go with the color on three of the walls making up the kitchen/dining/living area.  This is called 'Cloud Burst' and is a blue-gray hue to match the sky so often see hereabouts.

The rest of the cabinet doors and drawers will be done with this color since I like it so much. The framing will remain a wood stained hue but lightened.

Still asking the house to tell me how the rest of the room will be painted.  The Crushed Orange that you can see on the plinth and the door trim will find a place somewhere in this new scheme.

Now that I have a dishwasher that works, I suppose I will have to buy some crockery and cutlery to put in it from time to time.  Image, more than one spoon, two forks, four knives and five plates!

Working on how to do the floor.  Should have this more in shape over the next week or so.

SMALL REMODEL OF THE KITCHEN AREA.

I GOT BACK TO CORNING just a month back, on the tail end of a winter storm.  I was lucky to make it into the local airport (Elmira, ELM), an hour or so before midnight, on the only flight to get in that day.  How nice it was to trudge through the eight inches of snow to my front door and to be home once more!

It took a week or so to gather in two and a half's months of mail and to become my Corning self.  Snow outdoors most of the time so I found the kitchen area staring me in the face.  Staring back, this is how it looked.  Hidden within the peninsula you see in the foreground was an ancient dishwasher that, with my few dishes to be washed straight after use, I had never used. It had  made strange noises when tested prior to the house purchase but did work.  However, I like to wash dishes by hand.

The plan was to remove the dishwasher, demolish the peninsulate extension, and extend the counter some 15 inches to abut the door jamb.  In fact, the demolition of the cabinet turned out to be first necessary.  The eventual removal of the dishwasher revealed that it had suffered a chronic, small hot water leak, resulting  in serious erosion of the sub-floor.

It was now evident that beneath the top layer of linoleum was a layer of ply covering an earlier layer of linoleum.  This presented some of repairing the floor so as to bring it to an equal level to the rest of the floor.  As the plywood layer immediately above the joists had been eroded, the first step was to use a cement based product to fill in the hollows.  As plywood thickness has altered a little since the construction of the original floor, it took two layers of plywood to effect a good repair.
 
After seeing an "almost-top-of-the-line" Maytag dishwasher marked down by $250 at the local Home Depot, I resiled from my disinterest in replacing the dishwasher, so now you see the new one, not yet installed but in place so I can be sure of the dimensions of the cabinet I will build to use the space towards the door.  I was very heartened by the good result of the floor repair and set about preparing the counter top for its extension over the proposed cabinet work.  This turned out to be technically more difficult than I had first thought and this has made the design and cabinet making rather more difficult.

The cabinet box will have a top drawer and lower door opening to two shelves and will closely match the other cabinets.  The drawer will hold cutlery and the shelves will take crockery to make easy the setting of the table for dinners I plan to have once all this is done.

Already I can see how I will have more useful counter top space and better access to the cupboards you can see above the dishwasher.  Also, the kitchen area is much easier to navigate. 

The construction of the cabinet has got to have been the difficult middle third of the project,  I have been working on it for the best part of a week, one way or another.  It is all ready not to be assembled and put in place with only the top drawer needing construction.  Once it is in place, around mid-week, Daniel will install the dishwasher and attend to some re-plumbing.  It is quite a while since I have taken on cabinet work and I seem to be having to relearn lots of stuff, made and recovered from a few simple errors, but have been able to make use of most of the material from the demolished cabinet.

With this work done, I will tile over the Formica top with linoleum tiles and do the finishing wood work.  I have no be able to make up my mind about colors. This will have to  await the laying of a new floor covering.  I have been excited to discover a floating linoleum covering that avoids pulling up the present layer and will lay very quickly. 

With a little luck and some hard work this week I may get all this done.  The Tuesday following St. Patrick's Day, I have a small operation scheduled for my right hand and that will take me out of kitchen action for almost a week.  This had turned out to be far more than the easy, straight forward task I had envisaged.  How like life!

Watch this space for the next update, which should show the completed cabinet work and the final tiling.

ROOF REPORT

THE ROOF IS DONE:  Just a brief report and to let you know that, this New Year's Day 2013, I have survived 2012 and am alive and well.  

Despite diffuculties weather-wise, Daniel has used brief windows of opportunity to install the new roof.  Here are some pics:

The first shows how batons or furlings are fixed to the existing roof (by screws through to the roof trusses) and then the roof segments screwed to the batons. Each seam of the roof overlays the preceeding member, clipping to it by means of interlocking ridges.  And so on, across the width of the roof, with no nails or screws visible, all hidden beneath each seam.

This is a view of the southern half of the roof

And here the front, or northern roof.



My friend Uma, having viewed the roof, commented that it has the effect of making the house seem larger.  This may be due to the polar white color bonded to the metal.

There are not many metal roofs in Corning

Since the work was completed, just after Christmas we had a good snow fall. This is the view from the rear alley.

We have discovered that the roof is quite slippery so far as snow is concerned so that, when the temperature rises, despite the low pitch, it quickly sheds the load of snow.  As Daniel lwas leaving after an inspection, the entire covering of snow came off the rear roof.  Most had gone from off the front, so the roof was bare of snow, unlike the more usual roofs all about.

So, my friends, you have seen as much of the new roof as have I.  In three weeks, I will be winging my way back to the US and, after one or two visits on the west side and in Colorado, I will be back in Corning to see it all for myself, on February 8th.  Health and Happiness to all of you for 2013.

A LONG WAY FROM THE HOUSE

SO HERE I AM in Adelaide Airport, South Australia; a long way from home, so to speak.

UPDATE ON  'FIX THE SUNROOM': Over the weekend prior to leaving for Oz, I completed the last project needing to be done before Winter.  Recall this aimed at fixing two problems: a slight problem with water seepage into the Sun-Potting room and the need to get more sunlight into this room during the cold months.  At right, you can see the dampness problem at its worst>

I have tackled this by digging out the topsoil around the foundation walls, laying down a waterproof membrane, and replacing the soil with a more porous gravelly mix.  This surely has fixed the water problem  and I now have a heap of topsoil to be used elsewhere in the garden.

The problem with the light during the cold months is the acute angle of the sun's rays.  These fall mainly onto the rear walls of the room.  As report in my last posting, I have concreted around the southern walls and planned to place off-white tiles over the slabs, extending out about four feet.  The theory is that sunlight striking these tiles will be reflected up through the windows and onto the ceiling, then to be scattered around the room.  We shall see just how effective this is when I return in early February.  Below is the completed job.

While I am away Daniel will be fixing a new roof.  Since painting the roof white, we have had trouble with a series of minor leaks, especially when the wind is in the north (the direction of the worst weather) which seems to have acted to lift the composite bituminous tiles (low pitch roofs act somewhat like wings, producing a lower pressure above the roof than below, within the attic space).  Despite all our efforts, we have not been able to fix this annoying problem and this has meant that I have not been able fully to insulate the space above the entrance hall and stairs.

So, when I return, a steel decking room colored polar white will welcome me.  This will be secret nailed to batons or furring strips that fixed through the current roof to the roof trusses.  This is lighter than covering the old tiles with new and will create an insulating layer of air between the old and new roofs.

A NEW PROJECT

A SLIGHT PROBLEM WITH THE 'ROOM UNDER THE DECK' has been a small amount of moisture entering as vapour and condensing as a very light dew... just some patches appearing on the western wall.  This is despite the waterproofing applied to the below-grade walls.  Apparently the soil under the stairway up to the deck becomes water logged and four feet of water is generates quite a bit of pressure.

Additionally, it would be very nice if I could get more sunlight into this room during the cooler months, especially early Spring when I plan to be growing seedlings and nurturing young plants, this despite that it has the equivalent of four windows facing to the South.

I have decided to solve both problems by digging out the soil surrounding the potting room walls, down to about eight inches (20 cm), then laying in some six inches of a gravel-sand fill over plastic membrane.

  I have completed the excavation and the remaining soil has a two inch/70 inch slope southwards and eastwards, leading to a shallow east to west trench.  I expect this to take away all the water that results even from heavy rains.  This will ensure dry soil around the walls but will not help with the problem of getting more light, and therefore heat, into the room.  It took several days to dig out the top soil.  I have included a picture of the resulting pile.

I think I can solve the 'more light' by paving out from the southern wall some three feet (c. one metre) with off-white tiles.  At the winter solstice (sun at the lowest angle of 42 deg. to the horizon) I calculate that the tiles will reflect light up to about half of the ceiling (which is lined, insulated, and painted off white).  This should assist with the heating of the room through late Winter and early Spring as the sun begins to rise to a higher meridian.  At the least, it will make the room even more pleasant to sit in on the days we have sufficient sun.  Of course, the heated floor will be great on other days.

I am awaiting the arrival of the gravel sand mix as I write this and am very pleased with progress on the project to date.  Soon I will be trundling the stuff by wheel barrow up to the work place!  When finished, besides the tiling, I will have paved in front of the stairs up to the deck and also the stairs going down to the room.  I have ordered up about twice as much mix as I need for this job; the remainder will be handy for other paving jobs around the house.  It costs $75 for delivery, up to ten  (non-metric) tons and $10 per ton,  so it a matter of simple economics to have a bit more than I strictly need for this project.  The next post will tell how the project went.

A NEW CLOTHES LINE!

THIS IS MY SECOND CLOTHES LINE...In a way, this is the end of a mystery.  When I moved into 74 Sterling, a single pole, upright in the back garden, eventually drew my attention.  What on earth could it be? I wondered.  Later, I noticed it was lined up with the west side of the house and had a (sort of) hook mounted near the top.  Going over to the edge of the old deck, what did I find?  Two more rugged hooks, about the same height as the ones on the pole.  Hum mm, I mused, likely as not there was a clothes line strung up between these points.

Now, at that time, it was about this time last year (beginning Fall) and I had been hanging up my washing on an indoor clothes rack, followed by a 'finish-off' in the dryer.  With the dryer winter air, this worked very well.  Come the late Spring and the Summer, the air was much more humid and indoor drying took forever.  Time to string a clothes line, I thought, which I did with rope, a pulley, and a strainer (a gadget to tighten the line).  It accommodated the product of one small wash, of which I do about three a week.  Is there a better feeling than hanging out the washing with a breeze in one's face, and then taking it down, all dry and fresh-smelling, after an hour or so?

The problem with my clothes line was that it sagged in the middle, and I could  not double hang things like sheets and jeans (one cuff on one line and the other on a second line).  Then too, I had to wait for one wash to dry before hanging out the next.  What I needed was a double line.

Now I realize that, for some of you (who live in some urban area where it is actually against city ordinances to hang washing out), this may all seem a little strange.  But recall that I am all for conserving energy.  Just hanging out the washing for eight months of the year means a saving of about $30 in electricity tariff.  My new line has cost me about $30 in various bits and pieces (hooks, pulleys and suchlike), including the cost of the original line.  I used scrap wood for the timber components.  So, next year will see me ahead having broken even this year. 

 To solve the 'bend in the middle', I fashioned a prop.  The rope passes through plastic tubing inserted through holes in the cross piece.  This protects from fraying and means it can easily be slid this way and that to accommodate washing.  The pulley systems gives a two times mechanical advantage and makes for easing tensioning of the lines.

To make a good job, I removed the rust from the old pole and repainted it in fire brigade red (matches the rear gutter recently de-rusted and painted).  It has two components, the line and spacers, and the tensioning apparatus (pulleys, hooks, and strainer) and can easily be demounted in the cold, snowy months.  This little project took me about half a day to complete and has been very satisfying.  It has fit very well with painting the deck.

The Autumn/Fall season has arrived somewhat early and the leaves on the blueberry bushes between the line and the rear alley have turned crimson.  There are touches of color in the trees.  The lawn grass is making frantic effort to grow and store energy in the root system.  The Canada geese have mostly departed so an early and cold Winter is to be expected.  I do not mind, I am off to Australia for two months in November and will not be back until mid-February.  Lots of work to do to have the house ready for the Winter!
 
I have also been acquiring furniture, some chairs
for the living area, and four chairs and a table for the dining area.  These all seem to fit in well with the overall arrangement and colors.

A winter project, when I return, will be a minor remodel of the kitchen area the details of which, I am confident, will come to me over the next month or so.

After virtually camping out in the place for most of the past year, I now have trouble deciding just where to sit!

MAJOR PHASES COMPLETED

FINALLY...
Pretty much done in the upper level.  The Living Area turned out much better than I had hoped.  The color (Cloudburst) you can see around the window, wall to the right, and doors is a bit of serendipity and seeks to import the clouded sky often present hereabouts.

I suppose this continues the theme of bringing into the house the colors of the environment. I my case, the basic colors used elsewhere, like Torch Light, Grass Cloth, and Crushed Orange, are somewhat 'loud' and used partly to remind me of colors found in Australia

It will be a while before I tackle minor improvements in the kitchen area.  I have since reversed the way the doors on the 'Fridge open and this makes things a lot easier as I now do not need to walk around the doors in order to get at the contents.  Here the philosophy is, "If it works, don't fix it.".  In the Fall, I will clean up this space and replace the present linoleum with linoleum tiles.  It will take a while to feel my way into just what to do.

It is hard to realize that this space was once two rooms!

My friend Blaine, from whom I purchased the road bike you can see in now over to the right in the regular content, gave me two prints of scenes from Central Australia he purchased when in Alice Springs (one of the Olgas, and the other of Uluru, otherwise know as 'Ayers Rock').  These are now framed; one is hung in the bedroom and the other in this area such that, coming up from the stairs into the passageway,  you can see one to the left and the other to the right.  This reminds me that, standing at the top of Uluru, one can see the Olgas some 30 miles away.  You can just see the Uluru print hung in the living room.  I am especially fond of these prints as, in my flying days, I made the trip to the Centre several times with various groups of friends.  I will write of flying adventures in the companion blog.

Since completing this work, I have turned more to the garden and am beginning to wonder just where to plant trees.  I have six blueberry bushes growing well,  a couple of trees awaiting re-planting, and a bunch of plants in the front of the house that will be moved in the Fall. I have also constructed the first raised garden bed.  Putting up an outside clothes line has completed the 'a la maison' feeling.  It is great have the washing out, fluttering in the breeze and drying in an hour or so.  The air is too humid during Summer for clothes to dry quickly indoors.  Of course, this enhances the energy efficiency of #74 Sterling Street.

The challenge now is to populate the interior with suitable furniture.  I have made up a list of what to buy and what to build.  Apart from my own needs in the upper area, I need to make the lower level able to receive house guests.

The deck needs treating with preservative and there is a lot of fixing, tidying, and cleaning beckoning me, not to forget that the exterior will have to be painted before Winter.  And so it goes, on and on!  Posting-wise, this will become even more sporadic as I work to recover parts of my life that got submerged in the overwhelming press of demolition and rebuilding.  I will work on some slideshows that will give you an overview of what has been accomplished.

So...Watch this space!