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Miscellaneous Outstanding Projects

November 11, 2008

Every homeowner will know these projects- the miscellaneous projects that aren’t big or too difficult, but there’s about a million of them and you just need to 1) remember that the project is outstanding, and 2) have the time and energy to take the 5-10 minutes to carry them out. They’re small enough where they don’t really interfere with your everyday life, but just annoying enough to get annoyed about.

Well we finally tackled one of these miscellaneous mini-projects – the drawer dividers! Back when we were looking for them it took us a minute to find suitable drawer dividers that would fit the size of our drawer. There were some that were plastic and could be extended to whatever size the drawer was, but we weren’t too crazy about those. Leave it up to Ikea to get what you need – we spotted some decent ones that happened to match our drawer color pretty closely. And when combining three of them they filled the drawer space pretty well. Only when we got them we couldn’t be bothered to cut the dividers to match our needs…so ever since we got them however many months (years?) ago the cutlery compartments looked fine, but the back space was totally wasted and the extra items we had in the drawer were sticking up and got caught just about every time you opened it. Well they will not get stuck any more! We took the 5 minutes to cut the divider into a better size and voila everything is great.

Yay for miscellaneous annoying project getting completed.

Before:

Cutlery organization

After:

Cutlery organization

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Butler's Pantry Doors

March 7, 2008

We’ve been working on small projects here and there. Some more pleasant than others. One exciting one was installing the second butler’s pantry door on the bottom. It’s been kind of funny having one attached door and the other one missing. The first one was such a pain that I think we’ve been procrastinating on the second one. To our surprise the second one was soooo much easier! I guess Patrick has become a better chiseler. Additionally he tried out a sanding drill bit to cut out the area more evenly. We still have some adjusting to do, but here are the attached bottom doors. Voila!

Kitchen butler's pantry

In the meanwhile I was running back and forth between the kitchen helping Patrick and working on removing paint in the bathroom. Nothing too exciting to report from the bathroom yet. We’ve just been removing a bit more paint from the built-in and from the door and molding.

Then we’ve done a few more things like hanging up artwork. I know, it’s been like what – a year, year and a half since we’ve moved in? And we’re only now hanging up art? I suppose this is the part where I don’t mention that we have about 10 more pieces stacked in our hallway collecting dust. I don’t know how we do it…every time that hallway is free of crap more stuff seems to appear in its place.

The more unwelcoming house work was a roof leak in the dining room. We had it when we first moved in and we thought it got fixed. Of course after that Atlanta’s been suffering a drought, so if there was a leak it was a bit hard to tell! In any case, the leak came back. It was sometime before Christmas when we actually found it. I guess it’s a bit hard to miss when you suddenly find a huge puddle of water on your floor! Initially I thought I spilled water after watering a plant, but it was too much and of course we soon noticed it dripping from the ceiling. We finally got it repaired and have had a few downpours since. So far so good. *Fingers crossed*

Oh, and in other unwelcoming news – our gas bill! I think some people pay as much for rent as we have for our gas bills. So we started getting attic insulation quotes. One of those boring projects that costs money and doesn’t do anything for us aesthetically!

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Built-in Fairytales

November 8, 2007

Once upon a time there was a sad butler’s pantry…

But we slaved for hours and hours and hours stripping paint and have almost completely restored it!! The only thing left is to add the doors. (The new hardware has been ordered and is on the way!)

Check out the short video we made to follow its journey through the restoration process. And yes, we did make some improvements along the way – it’s deeper than the original size to accomodate more food (and alcohol) storage and we added a granite countertop that matches the rest of our kitchen counters.

[jwplayer mediaid=”1668″]

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More Progress

August 6, 2007

Exterior:

Our little “garden bed” by the stairs had been overtaken by weeds (all that rain doesn’t only help the wanted plants after all!). A short while ago we had to remove the lavenders because they were drowning in that location. Lavender likes a dry, sunny location and based on the flooding in that area the earth was generally very moist. At first it flourished, then it wasn’t doing to well, so we moved it. In place the weeds grew ever so quickly…

Fountain grass

Since we knew better than to place dry-loving plants back into that spot we went on a hunt for moist-loving plants. We found a variety of Hostas and covered the general area with mulch…in hopes to keep some of those weeds from coming back so quickly.

Fountain grass

In the meanwhile we have also harvested our first batch of home grown veggies- all of two squashes and one green bell pepper! We proudly cooked a veggie pasta dish for one of our friends (with the aide of a store bough red bell pepper and zucchini).

Harvesting

Another area we tackled was by the shed. While purchasing the Hostas Patrick discovered another ornamental grass that he had to have.

Daylilly

So we moved what we assume to be wildly growing lilies (they never bloomed this year, so we’re not 100% sure) and extended the rose bed. In the fall (or spring?) I’d like to plant a few more roses to fill the open spaces.

Shed foundation planting

Interior:

In the meanwhile we’ve also gotten around to a little bit more interior work…

The kitchen built-in started looking out something like this…

Butler's Pantry Door

…progressed with the comfort of the dining room floor, starting out with the scraper/razor blade, getting frustrated and moving to the heat gun (which is dangerous in itself because it can make the glass break, but broken glass is easier to replace than damaged wood)…

Butler's Pantry Door

…and ending with something like this (for the moment).

Butler's Pantry Door

We then worked a little bit more on the dining room door. This is where we had left off January 6th. Wow, look at that floor too! Not quite refinished yet.

Dining room door

And this is where we got rid of the majority of the remaining paint. We are still struggling to find the best solution of getting the paint off the detail work – anybody have any suggestions? Pleeeeaaaase? :)

Dining room door

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Kitchen Built-in Drawer Pulls

June 24, 2007

Last week we installed the drawer pulls on the new kitchen cabinets, so this week seemed the appropriate time to also install the drawer pulls on the old built-in. As with most things in this 90-year old house that included some (or a lot of?) prep work…

Step 1: Remove X layers of paint and sand it down.

Butler's Pantry Drawer

Step 2: Put on fresh paint.

Butler's Pantry Drawer

Step 3: Attach pulls and put drawers back in built-in – ahhhhh, isn’t it beautiful!

Butler's Pantry Drawer

I won’t show the rest of the built-in because we really haven’t made any other progress on it. As other old house homeowners will know these little project go one itty bitty step at a time. Next up should be the bottom doors. We’ve already removed paint a little while ago and sanded one of them the other day. We’ll see when we get them done and back on the built-in!

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