Posted by Chad on July 7th, 2009 • Filed under Pets, Woodworking •
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Years ago, my wife asked me to make her one of those pet food stations that you see everywhere these days. The ones in the store are overpriced, and I had enough scrap wood laying around to make one for free. My wife bought a few bowls and I cut out some holes in a 1″ x 10″ piece of lumber to drop them in. The piece evolved over the years. After we moved from DC to to our temporary condo in SC, we added feet to the feeder and my wife painted it yellow. During our recent kitchen remodel, my wife repainted it again to match the room:
It came out okay, but it would look better if the mangy animals didn’t spill their half-chewed food all over it.
Posted by Chad on July 6th, 2009 • Filed under Pets, Woodworking •
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Two cats got grandfathered into my marriage. We used to keep the cat food and litter box in the kitchen, but there’s no place for them in the newly remodeled room. I don’t mind the food bowls being out in the dining room, but I’m altogether tired of looking at cat litter. We had some space in the bottom of our bathroom closet, and we decided that was the best place to relocate the litter. The closet door is directly behind the bathroom door, which is a actually a good thing in this particular situation. The opposing door knobs keep the doors a few inches apart, and we decided the cats could squeeze through the gap and into the closet if we just cut a hole in the door. There was no way I was going to ruin one of our original solid wood doors, so I went to the local Habitat for Humanity Re-store and bought a used one for $10. It was in pretty shabby condition, but I figured it didn’t really matter since I was going to put the jigsaw to it anyway:
The hole looks pretty big. But then again, our cats are pretty fat.
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Posted by Chad on July 2nd, 2009 • Filed under Housewares •
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A kitchen isn’t complete without a wall clock. We finally got to rehang our Kit-Cat Klock:
You’d be surprised at people’s reaction to this thing. It’s like taking a shot of nostalgia for most people.
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Posted by Chad on June 30th, 2009 • Filed under Housewares, Woodworking •
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My wife and I have managed to live in places over the years that have few, if any, drawers. We’ve had a knife magnet since we lived in DC, and it’s always been very useful. It keeps our cutlery uncluttered and out of the way. After we remodeled the kitchen, we couldn’t decide what to put above the range. Neither of us wanted to put up anything too decorative that would date the room, and we had to consider that whatever was there would receive a steam bath whenever we boiled noodles.
The space between the upper cabinets is about 30 inches. Since our knife magnet is only 18 inches long, we ordered another 12 inch magnet from Magnagrip and got to work.
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Posted by Chad on June 24th, 2009 • Filed under Woodworking •
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As I’ve mentioned before, we decided to build a pot rack as part of our kitchen remodel. Our pots and pans take up way too much storage space in our new cabinets, and they look too nice to keep hidden. This was the design:
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Posted by Chad on June 24th, 2009 • Filed under Remodeling •
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We don’t have a lot to report. We’ve been hosting people in and out of the house a lot lately, and that trend will continue throughout the summer. After work last week, my wife and I found some time to cut and install the baseboards. Some of the cuts were difficult, especially where the cabinets meet the walls next to the stove. They still need a couple of coats of glossy white paint, but getting this trim work on the walls covered up the last traces of the old room:
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Posted by Chad on June 17th, 2009 • Filed under Remodeling •
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Like I said a few days ago, “The dishwasher is the only appliance that’s not stainless-looking. We can’t justify buying a new one until this one starts to break down, and we couldn’t order a stainless front panel for this model, so I bought some faux-stainless laminate. It self-adhesive and it really looks like steel paneling.” The product is called SoftMetal faux stainless steel film:
I promised to blog the results and give my opinion on the laminate.
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Posted by Chad on June 15th, 2009 • Filed under Remodeling •
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Last week was very busy for us. As you know, the cabinet people came on Tuesday. We worked like crazy on Wednesday to finish the ceiling and the baseboards, but we didn’t manage to get enough paint on the wood on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday morning, the new refrigerator and range hood were delivered:
It fits pretty well into the custom cabinet space. The delivery guys had to take the doors off the fridge to get it into the house, and the right door sags a little since they reinstalled it. I’ll raise it up when I have some spare time.
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Posted by Chad on June 9th, 2009 • Filed under Remodeling •
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The cabinets were installed yesterday. We think they look pretty good:
That light fixture ended up looking great in that space.
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Posted by Chad on June 8th, 2009 • Filed under Remodeling •
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We’ve been really busy since last weekend. After work on Monday, we filled the gaps in the floor with a cream-colored grout. After almost two years with a black and white floor that advertised every speck of dirt, we wanted to go with something a little more low maintenance. I had never done this before, so I was a little intimidated. It wasn’t so much the work that worried me as the time sensitivity. Thanks to a few YouTube tutorials, we managed to do an okay job:
Getting the grout haze up is a pain, but it goes away quickly if you wipe it with a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water.
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