Days 45-50 a sunny kitchen

This was my February vacation. It didn't feel much like a vacation - but it feels good to be sitting in an almost completed kitchen! YAY!

This is what's been happening since day 44...

Sunday: We grocery shopped and did our usual. We made a trip to Home Depot and picked up primer, 3 cans of paint (different colors), brush cleaner, door knobs, hinges. I had a rehearsal, and it was Den's homework to remove the basement door, bathroom door, and bathroom closet door from their hinges.

Monday: I woke bright and early and ready to tackle the kitchen. First on the agenda was to use oil based primer on our wood trim. I used that blue painters tape to tape my edges. This took a little longer than I expected. Next, I came to the realization that after I painted, I wouldn't be able to sand the wall anymore - because the dust would fall onto the wet paint. So I went through and patched any last spots on the wall. There were quite a few. At this point I picked up Grammy. She was my helper this week!

I know what you're thinking. "You made an 88 year old woman paint your kitchen?" Well. Not exactly. First, let me tell you that she loves painting. She told me that "Nothing is better than having a paintbrush in your hand." That's an actual quote. So I told her we could lay the doors flat between two old chairs and she could keep me company and paint those. We also discovered that she could sit at the table and paint the cross things I took off of my windows.

So anyway. I picked up Grammy. After a much needed trip to Dunkin' Donuts (Gram wanted a little "zing". Another quote!), I sanded the walls. This also took longer than expected, but I know that the sanding is one of the most important things about prepping a wall. I think I did a good job. Of course, there are places where you see imperfections under the paint, but as my father-in-law told me on the phone, you'll never get it 100% perfect. I'm fairly close though! Gram painted, I sanded.

Have you ever used oil based paint? Because it smells worse than anything I've dealt with during this renovation process. We tried opening windows, but of course it IS February in New Hampshire, so it was for short amounts of time. I went to bed with a rockin' headache. Another fun fact about oil based paint - it does not come off of your body. Latex paint is easy to clean. Oil? Not so much. I was covered - hands, legs, hair, parts of my face - and it was there until Wednesday when I finally scrubbed it until my skin felt like it was coming off.

After sanding, I used a damp sponge to get the dust off the walls, and then went to priming my wood trim with the stinky paint. This took - you guessed it - longer than expected. Especially since I had to remove our ugly blinds (those screws were not wanting to come out) and the hinges/doorknobs from the doors. It was a productive day - we got a lot done. I brought Gram home and called Dennis and said - you'd better pick up a pizza or something. (Part of me was afraid of lighting the stove to cook... all those fumes may cause the house to burst into flames!!) I had my pizza and finished the trim, showered, and fell into bed exhausted!

At the end of the day, things pretty much looked like this. Primer on, the walls all patchy looking and everything's a total mess. The refrigerator was literally in the middle of the room, with a door suspended between two old chairs. All my appliances were stacked on the breakfast bar and table in the dining room. Newspaper everywhere. Drop cloths everywhere. Also - did I mention that the space around my kitchen window is so small I had to use a watercolor paintbrush to get in the space?

Tuesday: This was the day of our snowstorm. I decided that Grammy needed a break - and I did not want to have to drive in the snow. So I was flying solo for much of the day. I used painters tape to outline the walls, and then primed the walls. After that was finished - about halfway through the day - I took my white latex paint I'm using to paint the wood trim and gave the wood trim a first coat. Dennis came home early because of the snow! He did a first coat on the doors while I finished the trim. Things were still all disoriented in the kitchen, but it was beginning to look like something - we were excited. We worked together to make a batch of fiesta rice and steamed some tamales MJ from Den's work sent home for us. We played XBox. It was a nice reward!


Wednesday: This day was the longest, yet the most rewarding.

I grabbed Gram - who continued to work on the doors and those cross things for the windows. I put a second coat of white on the trim. It looked great! Then, I took my little paintbrush and used our wall color "Quiet Veranda" (a pale, buttery yellow) to edge around the windows. Yes, in an ideal world I would have waited until the next day so I could tape the trim, but I had time restrictions here - and I needed the kitchen DONE. Plus, I have very steady hands and was very precise. Dennis got another call and I asked him to bring home subs or something because there was to be no cooking break. After I brought Gram home I used the roller to fill in the spaces around my edging. I was up until 10:30 painting, but it looked like a real kitchen. I was so excited! By the way - under the bar I didn't paint all the way to the floor because our heater will be attached there, as well as baseboard - which is currently in the basement!

Thursday: I had some private lessons to do in the morning. After that, you guessed it, I picked up Gram. She did a second coat on 1 door, and then relaxed and kept me company. We listened to the "Frank Sinatra station" on pandora. I used a roller to apply a second coat. I cleaned the counters and bar. I put things back where they belong! I love the color of the kitchen - it's bright and sunny! After I brought Grammy home, I made some dinner. (A great recipe for chicken piccata - I will share it later this weekend!) We had a relaxing night! Here's the finished product below.

So, like I said, we're almost done. What's left to do? The light over the kitchen sink needs to be replaced (it doesn't work!). I need to get white outlets and outlet covers and put them on. The lights on the ceiling are low on the priority list, but they need to be replaced too. They work, they're just ugly. I need to clean and seal the grout on the floor, and around the inside of the bar we're putting up white wood along the edges.

Next room you ask? The bathroom is my vote because the doors are not on yet! We'll take it a piece at a time - with me going back to work (tear...) I won't have the time to bang it out quickly.

Oh - PS. Day 50 (Friday) was spent in Boston with some fabulous ladies!

Weekend agenda time. Clean and grocery shop.

A Guest Posting

Kate has really done a great job with her blog, and it's time that I finally come through on my promise to add a guest-posting. I agreed to do it weeks ago but, until tonight, I hadn't yet run out of excuses to sit down and write something.

I don't really have anything to say, but Kate suggested that I should write about the pasta sauce I made this evening. I did it a little different than usual, but I think it came out pretty good.

I started with peeled garlic cloves. Quite a few, actually. I think there were probably 10 or so. I find that grated garlic distributes flavor even better than minced, and it's a lot easier. I grated them with a small fine grater, and set the resulting mush off to the side.

Then for no particular reason, I decided it would be an interesting idea to grate the onion too.

Well, onions are a lot wetter than I thought. I ended up with a little pile of onion-mush to match my garlic-mush, but there was also a fair amount of onion... uhh, juice, that I drained off and got rid of. I probably should have just diced up the onion like a normal person.

I browned a pound of lean ground beef and 8 sweet Italian sausages, and set all the meat aside. I heated some olive oil in a medium sized pot, and fried up my grated aromatics over medium-high heat for just a few minutes. Then I added two 24 oz cans of crushed tomatoes, a 6 oz can of tomato paste and reintroduced the meat.

I gave the whole mess a stir, and added 3 bay leaves, some basil, oregano, fresh ground black pepper, salt and crushed red pepper flakes. I'd tell you how much of each, but I never measure. I brought the sauce to a low boil, and then reduced the heat to low and let it simmer mostly covered (I set the lid just a little crooked to let out steam) for about an hour - stirring every 15 minutes or so.

We enjoyed our meat sauce over ziti with lines.

Day 18 - a cave fiesta!

My day off! It's always nice to be home - I'm glad to say I got a little relaxing done and a lot of work! As I said yesterday, I wanted to save my cleaning for today. So, after breakfast I dove right in. I decided that since I had cooking plans for the afternoon I needed to reorganize my refrigerator and freezer.

Let's go step by step...

First, I emptied the contents of my refrigerator onto the counter. Yes, at some point I thought to myself "What am I doing?!" But it turned out alright!

Next step? Organize the inside. The shelves are organized by category and the door is organized by how often the items get used. Hopefully it will make things a lot easier to find!

After my fun in the kitchen, I tackled the rest of the house - mainly the living room. I wanted to do a little something different over my mantle, and clean up some stuff that was still kicking around the pellet stove area. I found a little Valentine's Day wall hanging, and put some candle holders and pictures up.

Next - it was time to cook!

I wanted to get a minestrone soup made for me to take to lunch this week. I halved the recipe from last time and after it cooled a bit, separated it out in between 4 plastic containers. Off to a great start!

Next, I made some Fiesta Rice. Since it is Tex-Mex week around here - it's delicious and makes a lot so I can use it throughout the week. I made a chipotle bean burrito filling, and for dinner tonight we had the fiesta rice and the burrito. It was delicious! The bean filling was super easy to make and I found it in my new "Cooking Light" magazine!

To make the burrito filling...

Heat a tablespoon of canola oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat.

Add a minced garlic clove and cook for 1 minute.

Add 1/2 teaspoon chipotle chile powder and stir constantly for 30 seconds.

Add 1/3 cup water, 1 (15 oz.) can of drained black beans, and 1 (15 oz.) can of drained kidney beans. Bring to a boil.

Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in 3 tablespoons fresh refrigerated salsa. Mash the beans with a fork to desired consistency.

I got fat-free tortillas and made burritos with a little reduced fat cheese, chopped tomato, lettuce and sour cream. It was very easy - and even Dennis commented that it was "a lot of food!"

Back to work tomorrow...

Day 16 - a huge advancement!

Saturday was a great day! We took one of my weekend agenda items and kicked it in the face!

We finally bought our granite breakfast bar! Woo-hoo!!!! We went to a few places and ended up making the purchase at Merrimack Stone Industries in Merrimack, NH. We found a piece of stone that we liked called Peacock Green. We were then able to go outside and find it in a remnant. A remnant is a fantastic thing if you're looking for doing a small surface in granite. It's basically a leftover piece that was cut from a larger order. It's waaaay cheaper than cutting from a full sized slab of stone. So we were fortunate and found what we liked at a good price! Merrimack Stone Industries was great - I liked that they had all of the full slabs out to see. Their "showroom" is not like you would picture a showroom to be. It was not showing different counter tops already cut. It was literally giant slabs of granite and stone all over a huge warehouse space. I liked it because you got to see the actual stone you were getting - because they're all a little different. For example - the one in the picture on the left... ours has a lot more black than that. (At a glance you may think it's black.) There are strains of the green, and strains that look teal, and some that are brown - but it's dark and looks black.

So... I'm super excited! They're coming to do the template on the 29th, and we'll schedule an installation after that. Great news, great day!

In the evening we went to my Jared and Katie's and had Katie's homemade mac & cheese, salad, and apple crisp - followed by playing Mario Kart on Wii. Fun night!

The Beginning - Day 1

And so it begins.

So nice to meet you. My name is Kate, and I'm unorganized. I want to be, and every year it's my resolution but I always fail. But... this year is going to be different. It's all about the blog, folks. It will keep me honest, and hopefully you can add some comments and/or ideas along the way.

You should be proud! I've spent a good part of my vacation reorganizing the house. The way I see it, I don't stand a chance being organized for a year if I start off with the house a complete disaster!

Let's go room by room, shall we?

The kitchen.

My favorite room in the house. You will notice clean countertops! The wallpaper has been stripped but needs to be prepped, primed and painted.

Look at those organized kitchen cabinets!

This used to be a wall. Now it's a big gaping hole with a lot of potential. My fantastic Father-in-law is helping us build a breakfast bar. We took the whole wall down and built this half wall. At this point we need the granite before we can move on to the next step.

The dining room.

It used to be impossible to keep warm because it was all by itself. This used to be a solid wall. We (along with Duane, my super Father-in-law) made a doorway. The difference in airflow and heat is HUGE!!!

The hutch. It was filled with scrapbooking crap - now it's organized!! Notice the very attractive bucket of joint compound in the corner...


The truth. The pile of tools and shit in the corner of my dining room. I want these to go away.

The living room.

The Christmas tree. (Awww...) This is my favorite place to read - my book is laid out. You will also notice Tommy and Quimby... the sweetest cats you'll ever meet. (Awww again!)

Slightly littered with Christmas stuff. Don't mind the box fan on the chair pointed at the pellet stove... another adventure in home ownership was our pellet stove blower thing making the most God-awful noise you can imagine. (Think fingernails on a blackboard...) so we were forced at 1:00 am (on a school night I might add) to rip the f**ker out. So to heat the house until the pellet man comes we are simply pointing a box fan at the stove and it's blowing hot air around. Classy, huh?


The sunroom.

This is Dennis' favorite place. We bought the house because of this room. All that needs to be done is to paint.


The downstairs bathroom.

On a particularly ambitious day last July, I stripped the wallpaper and took off the mirror. I thought... "Hey, this will be an improvement over the ugly wallpaper, and also easy! Yay me!" Not so much. Apparently we need to unbolt the toilet and sink in order to get at the wallpaper behind it. Ugh.


Another unexpected snag. Those cabinets don't go all the way to the wall. there's a wallpapered space between the cabinets and the wall. My body only fits in the small space if I twist myself at an unatural angle. If you think you can fit, I am willing to exchange a couple bottles of good wine for that wallpaper to disappear. Any takers? I got the vinyl part off and I'm thinking I will just prime/paint over the paper backing still stuck to the wall - does it really matter? It's behind the washer and dryer!

Look at those organized cabinets! Before this picture was taken they were filled with all kids of crap - from cat toys to Ann Taylor shopping bags... you name it. This is much better.

Upstairs is not done yet, I won't take a picture of the mess. :)

Thanks for taking the tour! If all goes according to plan, it should only get better from here!

Time to relax with a beer and book. Cheers, and Happy New Year!