Perhaps...

Have I found a suitable lighting compromise?

Polling people through my previous photoshop efforts, led me to the conclusion that perhaps the top set of lights was too old-fashioned, but the bottom set was way too tall-- I even had to lower them in the photo so they fit on screen, and they still looked too tall. However, I think all liked the vertical lines. I'm still back and forth.

But maybe these are a sort of compromise:Sorry-- I didn't even begin to have the patience to get the perspective right on that cabinet. And we'll hang a towel bar from the bottom of it...That's the plan, anyway.

Thanks, POs, for at least this one thing!

A post this morning by Nate over at Nate's Fargo Fixer-Upper reminded me that I do have a few things to be grateful for from my POs. Nate made an awesome find of a slew of doorknobs on eBay (BTW-- has this been super-fabulous-deals-deals-deals January in blogland or what?) and it reminded me that pretty much every doorknob and hinge in our house is period. They may not all be original, but they're antique and mostly suited to the age of the house. Some are really plain brass (these are mostly on the retrofitted closets), but most of them are a mixture of crystal knobs on art deco plates and stamped brass on rectangular stamped plates.

Some of my favorites:


But it's not just the fact that they are still in the house. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but there was some panic during the bidding process. It's a small town and we do happen to know one of the previous owners (2 owners ago). The family was interested in buying back the house and they looked at it during the bidding period. They didn't end up bidding. But I did find out that while they installed some of my least favorite things in the house-- like the Berber carpet-- they took the time to remove all the doorknobs and hinges, strip them of their paint and polish and restore them. They also installed the brick patio in the backyard-- bricks that came from the street when the city tore it up ~15 years ago to put in modern paving. That was a feature that almost sold us on the house all by itself.

So thanks Previous Owners.

Sometimes, ok, a lot of the time, I bitch and moan about all the shitty things you've done to this house. But you're not one big blob of a PO-- some of you did some really nice things that I am ever so grateful for.

We owe you one. But just this one-- 'cause that carpeting was a bitch to get up.

A sinking suspicion we're screwed

Ha! Sorry...a "Dad" joke. I couldn't resist. You'll see what I mean...

I mentioned yesterday that we ended up with a bit of a sink dilemma when we were putting the new countertops on the cabinets. I'm hoping someone out there has some ideas (perhaps from personal experience? C'mon-- help me out; I want company in my misery).

A couple of weekends ago we put the plywood base down on the existing cabinets. Two things happened. One, is that we cut the hole for the sink so that it was flush to one side-- this left no lip of counter on which to screw our sink clips. Secondly, the vertical partitions of the actual cabinets were a little too thin in some places to really screw the plywood into place.

Our solution: One by one strips of wood. We screwed 1x1s to some of the sides of the partitions to have a base to receive the screws, and put one on the inside of the sink cabinet to create a lip. We put the sink in to make sure it fit-- it did-- and went on our way.


You can probably see where we're going with this.

After we laid out the tile for positioning, we put the sink in its hole to make doubly sure it fit and to see how it all looked.

And it looked good. Except, when I looked under the sink, I noticed that the clips seemed to be up awfully high. Adam got one out of the box and tried to hook it on. That's when we realized that we hadn't taken into account the added height of the backer board, tile, AND mastic.

We considered taking this piece out; however, its matching piece on the other side of that partition/wall thingy is screwed into it. And this doesn't solve our problem on the other side of the sink, since the actual counter is screwed into that piece. And then we'd still have nothing to clip to.

So here's what we're thinking: We looked around online for sink clip extensions or extra long sink clips-- this is where I discovered that we are NOT the only people this stupid and that no one has taken on the task of inventing such a thing. I'm adopting these as my new million dollar idea-- so don't steal it from me! We then considered fabricating something just like these clips, but longer, out of...something...metal...?

Or, we're likely to use a wood spade drill bit to rout out a space just deep enough to handle the clips.

Any solutions/anecdotes/miracles?????

Bought this light...

...for the office. $25 and not too nipply. Can't really complain.

Our Sunday ups and downs

Literally, figuratively, emotionally. The kitchen counter was probably the project we've most anticipated and most dreaded.

The day at least started out on a good foot; our screws trick worked well with the hardibacker (see previous post) and Adam started laying out the tile while I picked up my awesome laundry room floor slate. When I got back to the house, we started cutting. Instead of buying a tile saw (if we'd known we'd be tiling the laundry floor, too, we might have purchased; lessons learned, I guess), we rented a big one from our neighborhood friendly equipment rental guys; of course, we took advantage of the awesome weekend, 2 days for the price of one, rental special (~$45). I made Adam do all the cutting.

We started out with one of the chipped corner tiles as a test run for our complicated sink corner pieces...And would you believe it? We got it right on the first try!

Emboldened by our shocking and unexpected success, we laid out the rest of the counters and got all the tiles cut. Fit like a glove.

We bought the white mastic that was specially labeled for granite and marble; it also had the added bonus of being advertised as thick and strong enough to build up to 3/4". That way, we could try to work out some of the unevenness that we couldn't solve in the previous several layers of leveling. We mixed it to a pretty loose consistency and started on the left where we had the least amount extra leveling to do. We laid them up to the sink and then wiped them down with a wet rag to get rid of thinset smears. Then we moved into the inside corner of our L-shaped cabinets. This is basically the location that dictated where everything else sat on that side of the sink.

We laid those corner tile and worked to the right; but by the time we got back to the area just left of the inside corner, the first tiles we'd laid were set-- and set too low for the tile we were trying to lay. I don't know if that makes any sense, but the end result is an uneven spot that we couldn't fix. I've talked about the "Oh Shit" moment of a project; this was the, "Not much we can do about it at this point" moment. Most of our joints are pretty smooth, except for this one. I'm not happy about it, but we're not trying to fool anyone into thinking it's solid surface. Obviously that's not an excuse for screwing up, but, as I said, short of tearing up the entire counter top, "not much we can do about it at this point."

Anyway, we put the blue tape on it to keep from sliding; really we put it on there because that's what we've seen other people do ;-). I had nightmares about the tiles sliding off the counter last night and cracking in the middle of surface.

Here's the way we left it Sunday night:


Overall, I'm pretty pleased at this point. We had to trim 2 pieces in the middle of laying the tile-- some grit from the thinset had crept in between the tiles and shifted things a bit. We also have a sink issue that I'll detail later. Maybe someone can help us. Until then, I will revel in the fact that we can grout next weekend and, fingers crossed, move in by the end of February.

We'll start with backer board (and a puppy!)

Since the backer board day was so depressing, I'll start with a picture of a puppy on the porch...



He's 13, so not really a puppy...but he spent the afternoon checking out his new backyard digs and sniffing about the house. When the project got ever more tedious and tragic, I could glance out the back door and see him staring back watching us work. A happy little moment...

Ok, on to the backerboard fiasco. We spent all last weekend getting the plywood on and as level as possible. Weather kept us from getting to the house midweek, so Saturday morning was devoted to backerboard. We cut the boards-- no real problems there. Mixed up the thinset-- it looked a little thick, but we've never done this before; and anyway, the directions on the box were in Rebus puzzle, and I'm a words kind of gal. We slopped it on, laid the boards and went to lunch.



We got back, and the boards didn't really look like they were sticking very well. But we went ahead and screwed them in. Then we started laying out the tile to see where we wanted it all to go. Left of the sink looked good. Everything to the right of the sink acted like it was on a teeter-totter. Nothing was even, the backerboard wasn't sticking any better. It was all wrong. So we removed everything to the right of the sink, scraped off the mastic, bought some thinset with WORD directions, and started all over again with a better, runnier mixture.


This time we got the backerboard in place, threaded the screws part way and used them to raise and lower parts of the board until it was as even as we could get it, and then left the screws only partially in. That way, the thinset could dry right where we needed it without us squishing it around with the screws. When we did finally screw everything down Sunday morning and laid out the tile, everything rocked quite a bit less and we moved on to the scary part of our project.

My biggest deal yet and other tales of the Home Depot

So I've mentioned the bathroom wall cabinet at 30% off...the Moen shower head at 80% off...the stainless steel trashcan duo for $10...our labor day sale granite tile and appliances...our Overstock.com faucet...the chandelier on clearance...We've found some pretty good deals. Well, folks, my bestest bargain so far came along over the weekend.

I almost never shop at Home Depot-- they're a little too expensive for poor little me. But they happen to be the only people we've found that carry our base shoe in the lengths we need. So we trucked on out there Saturday night to stock up on base shoe and grab a few other odds and ends we needed for our tiling project (which will get its own very special post, ugh.) and happened upon...



That's 92 square feet of Rajah slate bought at the reasonable price of $0.49/ft2. And it doesn't stop there. Remember I got a little tip that Lowes would be putting a lot of stock on 50% off clearance? After we got that information, we decided to put the search for laundry room flooring on hold for a while, at least until we had a chance to view the upcoming bargains. But when I saw this big stack of tile, I counted it and found that there was much more than the 77 ft2 that I need. I am NOT an impulse shopper, so I had to "sleep on it." Except that sleeping on it meant that before we even got to the car I decided I'd come back the next morning. So I did. And the flooring guy who loaded it up for me said that there 90 tiles, plus 2 broken ones (there were a few more broken tiles than that, but I can use them for edges if I have to) so he only charged me for 84 tiles. I can't even get nice ceramic tiles for that, and I certainly can't get half decent sticky tile at that price. It'll be more work, but I'm so happy.

Now, on the not so nice side of our trip to the depot...We needed about 20 lengths of base shoe. We see the station with a big sign that says, "CUT IT YOURSELF," in all caps, just like that. We think, "Great, we don't have to find someone to do this for us." Well, let me say that the sign should read, "Cut it your DAMN self." It is a tiny ass little hand saw. That kind of ridiculousness gets old after 5 boards, much less 20.

But the slate made it all ok. And the tiling guy was actually very helpful and seemed knowledgeable-ish. Overall, a good shopping weekend. The actual tiling project, however, is another story entirely.