Flooring's On!

With less than a month to go before baby Barnhart comes and with the recent flurry of house project posts, I thought it was a fine time to kick it into high gear and get our living room and dining room floor finished up.

The hardwood floor has been living in various stacks ever since we tore it up and painstakingly removed the nails (thanks Rachel and Paul!). The floor has lived on saw-horses under a tarp, in the car tent, in the front porch, and most recently in the garage. It's been in the process of getting cleaned up for about 5 years now. After removing the most obvious defects, we ran the flooring through a planer, hand-scraped all the joints, checked for nails, trimmed the ends, and ran it through the planer once again.


It doesn't take long for planer shavings to fill up the shop vac. Somehow, it still had suction.


Rachel helped run wood through the planer - I shoved it in, she grabbed it and stacked it. We had 2-4 pieces running through at all times and it took a little over an hour for the final planing.


The wood is planed, trimmed and neatly bundled. Within a week it should be acclimated to the house humidity and we'll start nailing it down. More photos to come.

Here's a photo of Rachel with our recently trimmed-out kitchen window. Part of the flooring project will be to clean up our old trim and finish up the living room/ dining room.

The Joy of Headers, or, On Tearing Out Walls

A couple weeks ago I finally made good on my threat to tear out a wall that was dividing my kitchen and dining room. Here are a few photos for those of you who think this sounds like a good time.



A photo of the wall before tear-out (it's the section on the right).



Even though it wasn't a load-bearing wall, I wanted to have some support in place when I removed the old studs. So the newer (whiter) 2x4s run through the ceiling and tie into the studs above where I needed to cut them. (note: if one of your 2x4 studs runs at the same angle as the one in this picture, you might need a new level or plumb bob).



For the header, I used two pieces of 2x10 LVL (laminated veneer lumber). It's stronger and straighter than regular lumber, and fun to order at your local lumber yard. Here they are reclining on the deck before being sandwiched together with construction adhesive and half a box of nails.



With the old studs out of the way, I pulled down an old 4-foot header that had spanned the opening.



Nailing in place the corner studs that the header will sit on.



How much do I love my new header? This much! As you can see, the new opening is quite wide and allows a lot more light to pass through from the kitchen to the dining room.

Janell's Anniversary Gift

I decided to purchase my lovely wife a combination food processor/blender as an anniversary gift. Upon getting this lovely gift home and opening it, I realized that it was not quite what I expected. Here's the photographic evidence.

A Halfway Kitchen (for a Halfway House)

Some of you may remember my post about that simple kitchen project I was looking forward to. With the very able assistance of one Mr. Mike Barnhart, that project took a giant leap forward this past week. Here's a brief photo update:



Plumbing in the new drain. Dad's trying out his old-timey serious pose.


The PEX water lines, which will feed the kitchen sink and dishwasher.


And here they are, stubbed up through the floor.


We had to remove some drywall in order to run new electrical lines for the countertop outlets.


More wiring. For those of you interested, we added six circuits: two dedicated GFCI receptacle circuits, one dedicated refrigerator circuit, one dedicated dishwasher circuit, one dedicated garbage disposal circuit, and one 220V range circuit (in case I decide to switch from gas range to electric range in the future). You could power a bingo parlor off this kitchen without tripping a breaker.


Closing the drywall back up.


The lower (base) cabinets are just sitting in place here. I still need to mud the drywall joints before I can install these, but Dad and I wanted to see what they'd look like sitting in the new kitchen. I think they look pretty good.

Watch out for killer biscuits

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The Cyclery of Bikes

Well everyone, I'd like to thank you for your contributions (or aspirations to contribute) to a new bike for me. My current one is on its last spokes. I bought it for $40 a couple summers ago, and I estimate that I've ridden between 1000 and 1500 miles on it now. At four cents a mile, I think that's about as cheap as transportation comes. With your generous gifts, rest assured that my next bike will be obscenely expensive and nowhere near the cents-per-mile ratio of my last.

I don't have the new bike yet, though I would have loved to post a picture. Being a shrewd blogger, I know that photo posts attract the most readers. Here then are two bike-related pictures that I've been meaning to post. The first is from 1992. The second, 2007. Fifteen years and the bike has come full circle again. Lest Ben think it was abused during the years outside his care, I'd like to remind him that the bike received a comprehensive tune-up around the Christmas of 2002.

The view from my window

For anyone I didn't talk to before I left (almost everyone) I am in the Bahamas with Casi and several of her friends and family. She decided to have her next birthday in the Bahamas (her 30th) so we all got cheap tickets and rented a big house to stay in. 

Here's the view from my window:

So far everything has been good - although we went through most of yesterday without any water...which meant no toilets.  Apparently it was an island-wide problem.  Now that the water is back on, I've been going as often as possible to ensure that I will have just gone if the water goes out again. That's what I call smart.

David gets a new birthday picture

Last weekend, David and Amber made their way out to Aurora in search of thrift stores, perhaps a little food, and a scrabble throw-down.


They were successful on the first two counts, but as the last picture will show, scrabble was a lot more fun for Andy than anyone else. Fortunately, as a consolation we had a cake decorated with David's two favorite pastimes: Nascar and beer. Very small beer.

Happy Birthday David!

Better late than never?

I feel sheepish even writing this because I don't have a catchy poem like Mom always creates and there is only one hour left of David's birthday. However, I happen to really like the tradition of making birthday blog posts, so despite my poor blogging skills, here it is. Happy birthday David!

Simple Kitchen Project

I have a simple house project, if anyone is looking to do some light work.

I need to take these cabinets–



–and put them in this room–



Nothing to it, right? In fact, if I wasn't wasting all this time blogging about it, I might have half of them installed already.

I've been keeping an eye on used kitchen cabinets, and this set just came in to the local ReUse Center. They're in pretty good shape, and the kind of style I was hoping to find in a used cabinet. They look like they came out of a 1950s era kitchen. Now I just need to get the wiring and plumbing in place, and then figure out my layout. Here are a couple of closeup shots, to show the finish and detail:



And this one's my favorite – the onion and potato bin cabinet.

Sun-kissed Beauties Return to Unfavorable Weather

Stepping off the plane into 80's and brilliant Florida sunshine...easy.

Coming back to blustery snow and battleship-gray Michigan winter skies...well, I don't suppose we're going to get much sympathy somehow.

Nevertheless, I share with you a few select photos so you can join in the experience of a late winter escape to warmer climes.

We flew to Ft. Lauderdale and spent a couple days just north of Miami relaxing on the beach. From there we drove south to the Keys, spending a night at a State Park in the middle Keys. We drove into the everglades to spend a night camping on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico and had some magnificent (really!) bird sightings. We finished up back at Ft. Lauderdale (at the yellow hotel, Ella will say) relaxing by the pool and playing with our sticker books.

On the beach at Bahia Honda State Park in the Keys. Beautiful weather and no Jellyfish incidents.

Exploring on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale. Ella and Elisabeth both enjoyed finding shells, crabs, rocks, and assorted treasures though Elisabeth was much less discriminating (cigarette butts, seaweed, bits of trash...).

Sisters in the sunshine. What more can be said?

Enjoying the wildlife at the Flamingo gardens. The astute reader will recognize that the girls are posed next to a Peacock, not a flamingo.

Those are just a few photos and if we don't get sucked into 'normal' life too quickly we will post some more later.

It was a little harsh coming back to cold and snow, but comforting just the same. It's good to be home and know that at least we're not stuck in Minneapolis with 14 inches of snow.

Elisabeth, Coffee, and Matches

Here are a couple photo sequences that I found interesting.

Her fondness for coffee:

The joy of birthdays and matches:

Sowing the Seeds of 2009

Some of you may recall my attempt to garden last year. Don't be fooled by the photos. I think I got about four ripe cherry tomatoes off that plant, total. I started the plants from seed...in July. That was the problem.

Vowing not to make that mistake, I put down my first set of seeds about a month ago. Last summer, I found a cool tip for starting new seeds. Get an old egg carton, fill the cups with dirt and plant a seed in each. The problem is that the dirt dries out so quickly. It needs almost daily watering, and any mishap casts genocide de sécheresse upon the fragile little things.

This year, I enhanced the growing environment by picking up a cheap plastic container at the hardware store. By closing the lid, I can pretty much lock in the moisture and keep the plants from drying out. It's a balancing act, though, since you also don't want them to be perpetually soggy and rot.

So back to the story. About a month ago I was chopping up a red bell pepper and decided to keep the seeds, which I planted in two egg cartons:


About a week later, I could see the little heads coming up, and another week later, the seeds were looking pretty good:



Today I gently peeled each sprout out of its shell and put most of them down in a more permanent home in a planter tray. The dirt will give them more nutrients than the seed starter in the egg cartons.



So this year will be different. I expect to have the bell peppers in full swing just in time for a surprise May snowstorm to take them all out. Now that these seeds have left the egg carton phase, I've got the next round already underway.

Orange tree

Rosemary