!%$#%$@# Grout

So.

Our grout FINALLY got delivered, and we finally had a night to grout the floor.

We read the directions meticulously, added the exact amount of water, stirred in the grout as directed, waited the allotted time before remixing as called for...

and ended up with some variety of grout soup. An utterly useless slurry.

*&%^&*^%!

The bag had called for 5 pints of water. So we went to the manufacturer's website for an faq section on grout soup, and THERE the directions called for 4 pints of water, with the allowance of an additional pint only if necessary.

ONLY IF NECESSARY.

We now know the fifth pint was reeeeeally not necessary.

So we had to go back to Home Depot (who, may I remind you, does not stock this particular color of grout) to re-special order more grout.

Only no one was there to help.

We will try again today.

And maybe by the year 2525 we will have our kitchen floor finished.

I make no guarantees.

Friendship

Do you remember when you were little and friendship was effortless? There was nothing more important than being with your friends, and there was never a time when you were apart. Whether it was one friend or a group, hanging out and talking was just so easy and felt so right that you thought it would surely last forever.

And then you grew up. And they grew up. And everybody moved away from each other and got new friends in their new towns. And they say absence makes the heart grow fonder. But distance just separates people. Not because we care less about each other, but because we simply are not involved with the minutia of each other's daily lives. We are certainly not going to call our friend over a stupid little thing that happened to us that day, even though when we look back at every single inside joke between us and our friends it is over that same type of stupid little thing.

And everyone is so busy. Busy with work, or their house, or their new friends in their new town, or the big one-their husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend. And if said husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend does not like you, or you do not like them, your friendship suffers.

And your friends change. Or else, you change and they stay the same. And there is nothing either of you can do about this because change is inevitable. It, though, is not always good.

And so we fill the voids of our old friends with new friends, and we try to create new bonds, as strong as the old ones. But we know they never are. They can't be. Because when we were little, our friends were our first priority. There wasn't ever any job, or house, or anything else to distract us from what was truly important. That's what made it so easy.

But as we grew up we managed to unwittingly fill our lives with these other things, these higher priorities, and our friends fell further and further down the list of things with which we chose to fill our time.

So again I ask, do you remember when you were little and friendship was effortless?

I really miss that.

4400

So there's a really cool show called The 4400 and it's basically about people who discover they have abilities after being returned from an alien abduction of sorts. Trust me, it's way better than I'm making it sound. Anyway, on their website you can take a quiz to find out what your own 4400 ability would be.

The quiz told me that I am a Mind Control Master.

Finally. Somebody gets me. :)

And I thought Joe and I had fun with OUR first dance...

Nothing in our house is level.

This goes for the hearth as well.  

Of course.

When we ripped up the stamped concrete, we found another layer of concrete underneath.  We need to build up this recessed area so when we lay the tiles (which match the kitchen floor) they are level and flush with the base of the firebox.  To do this, we will stack layers of plywood, on top of which will go the wonderboard, and then the tile.  But we can't do any of that until we create a level base for the plywood.

We were originally going to use self-leveling underlayment, but after doing some research we figured out we could just use some mortar.  So we layed some into the "deep" sections and tried to level it off the best we could.

Now our hearth looks like this:

We put the mortar base down last night, and we can't do anything until it dries.

So now we wait.

Bye Bye Brick.

So this is our fireplace, complete with dirty, ugly old brick and paleolithic era sconces.  It's one redeeming quality is the mantle.  Eventually, even the mantle will be replaced, but for now, it serves us just fine.



Anyway, we both hate the brick. Eventually we are going to reface the fireplace surround with stacked stone, but for now we just decided to paint it.




Ta da! We painted it a light grey (Timberwolf Grey, or something like that, if you ask Behr) which matches our silvery grey curtains that are opposite the fireplace. It really makes the room feel a lot brighter.



These sconces will be gone soon hopefully. Here's one in all it's broken falling down glory.



The next part of this project was to redo the hearth. I mean look at it. It's stamped concrete that is very dirty and stained. Not to mention the fact that the front is way lower than the back.




It had to go.  We thought it was one solid piece of concrete, but lucky for us, it came up in two parts.

Joe loves when I take pictures of him while he is carrying heavy objects.  He doesn't mind standing there at all.  :)

So this is how we left the hearth.

One step at a time.

The Windy City

Joe and I spent the last weekend in October in Chicago!  One of our friends was getting married that Sunday, so since I had never been to Chicago, we decided to make a weekend out of it.  We got there on Saturday morning and went straight to our hotel.  Our hotel had this pretty tree.

We happened to run into the bride and groom just as we arrived at our hotel, said our hellos, and then took an hour nap.  :)  (We had been up since like 3am, so we were exhausted.)  The good thing was that because of the hour difference, we woke up the same time we went to sleep.  My one goal for the day was to see the original Playboy mansion, so we did. 

I met a woman out front who said she lived there for four years (about 30 years ago!) and told me all about the inside.  I wish I got her name, I could have looked her up.

Then we went to Navy Pier for a late lunch/early dinner.  They have a gigantic ferris wheel that I could not convince Joe to ride with me.

We had hotdogs here:

Joe thought their accomplishment was amusing...

After hanging out for a while at the Pier (and paying $24 to park!!!) we went to hang out with our friend Tracy and her husband to be, Chris.  Here are Joe and Tracy in her kitchen.

We were only able to hang out for a little while though, because Joe and I had tickets to see a Chicago Blackhawks game.  They play here:

This was very exciting for me, since that is also where Michael Jordan played basketball with the Bulls. 

The hockey game was sort of terrible.  The Blackhawks weren't doing so well at the beginning of the season (when we went), and that night they were playing the Atlanta Thrashers, who only had one win on the season.  
We had fun anyway, and at least there was some good fighting at the end of the third period. :)

Since the game was less than great, I looked more forward to seeing the zambonis clear the ice.  I really wanted them both to reach center ice at the same time, but they just couldn't pull it off.  Talk about having a cool job.

The worst part about the game was that THIS GUY sat in front of me.  His gigantic melon head took up almost the entire neutral zone.  

And as you can see, if was not a great end for the Blackhawks.

Chicago was awesome, and I can' wait to go back.

*&%$$#!!@&*

Blogger is my enemy.

I swear I keep trying to catch you up on what Joe and I have been up to lately.

After three nights in a row of trying to compose a post, I have completed exactly half it.  :P  Every time I try to upload any pics, it just freezes.

Sigh. 

Busy little bee

Hey.

In the past few weeks I have not been great at keeping my blog up to date. Just so you know, there are many posts coming. I think they will be entertaining, since in the past few weeks I have been to Chicago, gone to a Blackhawks game & a wedding, been curling (yes, curling, like in the olympics with the rocks and the brooms), and become She-Ra Princess of Power.

I am dead serious.

Joe was He-Man.

We also managed to cut all of the remaining tiles for the kitchen, although we have yet to grout. I have been steadily adding inventory to my online store. Also, I have picked up a new addiction to caramel steamers from Starbucks. Those Halloween decorations I started? Yeah, I never had time to finish them. Maybe next year. The Giants lost to the Cowboys, somehow, which is bad. But a shiny new Taco Bell opened right down the street from me, which has me stoked.

That's pretty much it.
As if that weren't enough.

I promise new posts soon, complete with pictures.

Who says a lateral can't take you forward?

Or maybe you need fifteen, like the Trinity Tigers of San Antonio Texas. Losing 22-24 to the Millsaps Majors of Jackson, Mississippi, with only 2 seconds left on the clock, the Tigers snapped the ball on their own 40 yard line.

Watch the video to see what happen next.




Easily the most exciting and unlikely 62 seconds of college football, regardless of division.

Bionic Ani!

For you Aniheads out there, you might be interested in knowing that two Ani songs were featured in the 10.24.07 episode of Bionic Woman.

I was stoked, since I love her music and would gladly hear it everywhere, all the time. But it seemed a little strange to hear her someplace so mainstream.

Similar to hearing her version of wishin' and hopin' in My Best Friend's Wedding.

As if I haven't been busy enough...

Oh yeah...did I mention that the website I've been working on for what seems like eternity is now, officially, an online jewelry store?!! All of the necessary steps have been taken to take orders, process credit cards, and provide trackable shipping, among other things.

Inventory posting has been slow-going, since a) I have only small blocks of time to devote to uploading photos, and b) I have to work around the house and my full time job.

But I am totally stoked that my business is finally, officially up and running.

You can check it out by following the link at the top right hand side of the page that says Allie Perry Designs.

Here are some of the pieces you'll find there:





Please check the store often, as I will constantly be adding new pieces. If you have any suggestions for pieces you'd like to see, please let me know.

And if you like what you see, tell your friends!

Pumpkins!!!

Joe and I went pumpkin picking today!

We went to Jone's Family Farms, which is where we've been going for several years to cut down our Christmas trees. Their pumpkin patch is on Pumpkinseed Hill and is covered with thousands of beautiful pumpkins!

They of course have bright orange pumpkins, but they also had pink squashes that looked like pumpkins and were covered in things that looked like warts! They had white pumpkins and green pumpkins, too!

I got an orange one.


Joe got a sort of striped white and yellow and green one.


We also got four tiny little mini pumpkins and some of the craziest gourds I've ever seen!

And some little white pumpkins with orange and green stripes. Crazy!

I can't wait to carve them and make pumpkin seeds!

I'll post pictures soon.

Halloween Decorations

A few weeks ago, Joe decided that "we" should decorate the house for Halloween.

As it turned out, "we" meant "me" and I have spent the last few nights making tombstones for us to put in our front yard. I also made a sign that says crypt, although I'm not exactly sure where that's going. I copied the method from a guy online.

I carved the pieces out of pink foam insulation board that is really cheap and easy to carve.

I started on Friday night, carving the crypt sign. I first carved the edges to give the appearance of stone blocks. I had Joe find a creepy font for me to copy onto the foam for the lettering. I used an exacto knife and tried to make the letters look like they were chiseled out of stone. Once I was happy with the way it looked, I misted each piece of foam lightly with water. I then took a small propane torch and lightly went over the surface of the foam. (Joe stood by with a fire extinguisher, just in case.) The heat distorts the surface of the foam, giving it the appearance of aged stone. Then I painted the sign with grey paint. It dried over night and now I'm going to go back over some of the areas with black paint for some low lights.



Tonight, since we still couldn't walk on the kitchen tiles, I carved out two tombstones. I followed all the same steps. They are also painted grey, and will receive block accents.

The first one is carved with RIP...



This skull will be attached to the empty square on the RIP tombstone.



This one is supposed to be a tombstone with a scary, halloweeny, arched-back black cat carved into it. I think I managed to pull off a look that more strongly resembles a postage stamp.



Once they are all finished, we will attach dowels to the back of each tombstone and stick them in the front yard. Hopefully by the time they are all finished, I will be able to post some photos.

They are definitely worth the time and effort, and considering what stores charge for cheap plastic decorations, these are DEFINITELY worth the money. One 3/4" sheet of foam is about 2 feet by 8 feet (I think) and only costs $7. I already had exacto knives and leftover paint, and the propane torch was a small bernzomatic plumbing torch that cost around $12, plus $5 for the striker to light it.

The best part is that you can make whatever you want. These projects were only practice for me, since I had never used these techniques before, but hopefully next year I will have time to make more custom designs.

Lights!

Somewhere in this timeline, we got lights in the kitchen! I'm sorry I haven't managed to post all of this in order, but as you can tell my the series of house-related posts, I have been damn busy.

A few weeks ago, our electrician was finally able to hook up the brand new electrical that ran from the kitchen to the panel in the basement. New plugs, new switches, and most importantly, new lights! Pretty blue glass pendants and fancy under cabinet lights.

The under cabinet lights have sort of given us a lot of problems. Two of them malfunctioned immediately after they were installed. One more just had the same malfunction recently. Boo. But for the most part we love them, and they really add a nice touch to the kitchen.

The electrician only installed two pendant lights, at our request, since we didn't want to worry about hitting them as we installed the remained crown molding. Yesterday my dad and I hung the rest of them, so now our kitchen is nice and bright.

Woo hoo!

So here's the dramatic dark shot of one of our pendant lights.



And here's what they look like when you can actually see them. :)



I didn't take any shots of the under cabinet lights because they don't really look like anything in pictures.

Who knew our plates were so big?

Ha. I am laughing already as I type this post. I can't help it really. This story makes Joe laugh, too, but most other people just think we're nuts.

The one thing Joe really wanted in the kitchen was one of those open cabinets that you store your dishes in. So we installed one opposite the dishwasher where it would make Joe happy, but I wouldn't have to look at it as I initially walked into the kitchen (I think they are little too country looking).

We initially installed the cabinet with no problem. Or at least, we didn't think there was a problem...until I went to install the dowels that hold the plates up. They only work in one direction...not the direction we had the cabinet hung. We had it upside down. This meant the dowels, instead of resting securely in place, sort of just loosely sat in the bottom support and just flopped around.

As annoying as this was, it was really good that I figured it out when I did, because at that time- before the molding and the faux panel that later hid the joint on the side of the cabinet- it wasn't a big deal to take the cabinet down and flip it over.

Fast forward to when all the cabinets are hung and almost all of the molding is done, but before we have hardware...

Joe and I started unpacking our kitchen supplies from the attic and the dining room and putting them away in the kitchen where they belonged. We get to the dishes with Joe standing behind me, I attempt to put the first dish into Joe's fancy rack.

ATTEMPT.

I say this because as I tried to put the dish into the rack, it got stuck between the supports that hold the dowels. Our dishes are too tall to fit into the rack.



Joe and I looked at each other...looked at the dish...looked at each other again...and died laughing. We laughed so hard we cried. I almost dropped the dish. If either of us had been drinking milk, it would have shot out of our nose. It was the sort of rediculous last straw that could send an otherwise normal person off the deep end. Just one more exhibit of Murphy's Law, come to curse our shiny new, increasingly dysfunctional kitchen.

For now we just decided to put the bread plates in the rack.



Maybe some day we will go buy new dishes that fit in the rack. Or maybe I will dismantle the dowel supports and modify them to accept our current dishes.

But for now, it just makes us laugh. Really hard.

Shiny Hardware

There were several days during which we had food and supplies in our cabinets, but no way to open the cabinets because we had not yet installed the hardware. :) On most of the cabinets you could just grab the bottom edge and pry the door open. But there was one cabinet on which this method failed...on this particular cabinet, you had to thump on the edge with your fist and try to bounce the door open enough to catch it with your other hand. Ha. This just happened to be the cabinet in which we originally kept the snack food. A very effective dieting measure, I assure you.

But since then we bought a nifty little plastic jig and installed all of the hardware. Well, almost all. There are still two drawers and a pantry that have no handles. But we'll get there. :)

I forgot about the faucet!

Our faucet.



It's beautiful and shiny and elegant and when our plumber went to install it, an improperly soldered factory joint cracked apart.

:P

We had to return it to home depot and have them exchange it for us with the company who makes it. Just one more thing in the kitchen that went wrong. Did I mention that when we initially had the faucet installed (pre-joint breakage) we figured out that the style of handle that is on the faucet does not fit between the faucet body and our back splash? Right. But we had to make an even exchange, so now that we have the new, unbroken faucet, we have to try to contact the manufacturer to see if they will let us exchange our handle for a different handle that is compatible with our faucet and will fit in the allotted space. We know they make one that will work for us, but we have no idea how nice their customer service is. We shall see.

Anyway, we didn't have to wait for our plumber to come back, because my dad helped me install the faucet yesterday (Saturday). Yay for running water in the kitchen!!!

Here's a close-up of the sprayer. Normally I don't like sprayers, because they always seem to be made of cheap plastic and they don't have enough weight to them to counteract the twisting force of the hose that attaches them. But this sprayer is nice and heavy and you don't have to fight the hose at all.



If you're following the timeline of this remodel, you will notice that the faucet was finally installed...and we tiled the kitchen like three hours later. We finally have running water in the kitchen, for the first time in over a year, and we can't even get to it because we cant walk on the tile. It's really enough to make a person crazy, but Joe and I are so far into this project, and have hit SO many snags, that at this point we just laugh. It's better that way. :)

And I'll bet you guessed it...pictures to follow.

Montauk Black Brazilian Slate

That is what we installed in the kitchen. 12x12 tiles that vary slightly in texture, but are mostly even. So far we have only installed the tiles which did not need to be cut to fit in place. We borrowed a wet tile saw from our plumber, but Joe refuses to let me set it up in the house. We just started laying the tile on Saturday and we couldn't walk on it today because the thinset (mortar) needs 24 hours to set up before you can walk on it or grout. Right now (11pm-ish) is 24 hours, but I'm pretty sure our neighbors would not like us very much if we started sawing tiles in the driveway right about now. :) So hopefully tomorrow we will be able to get all the tiles cut before the sun goes down, and then come in and install them. Another 24 hours later, we will be able to grout the entire kitchen.

I can't wait. Joe and I spent today dancing around the edges of the kitchen in the untiled spots, trying to get the toaster oven, or (more importantly) the oreos. :) It will be nice to walk across the kitchen in a straight line.

Here they are...the full tiles we installed, and the four out of the billion little spacers maintaining the width of the grout lines.

Wonderboard!

For those of you who don't have any idea what I'm talking about, wonderboard is a cement board underlayment which is installed under tile to provide rigidity.

It is made of cement. But it really smells A LOT like Play-Doh. :)

To install it, you simple cut it to shape, lay it out on the floor and screw it to the floor with a million screws. Yes, a million.



Look how excited Joe is. :)



Generally you would also use some sort of mortar under the wonderboard, but we are installing this tile onto a pre-existing hardwood floor. If we used mortar, the wood floor would absorb the water in the mortar and probably warp. As the wood dried out, it would then try to "un-warp" to it's original shape and this would drastically increase the chances of the grout between the tiles cracking. We do not want that! So no mortar in this particular application.

For those of you who ever want to do this yourself, it goes much quicker as a two person operation. One person can go around and get the screws started by tapping them into the surface of the wonderboard with a hammer in a six inch grid.





The second person can then go around with a drill and screw them all in the rest of the way.



Wear work gloves if you have them, because unless you use a drill full time every day, you are probably going to get blisters. We did.

The funniest thing was when Otter walked across the wonderboard...it creaks slightly when it is first layed down. He would take a step and hear the creaking, and get all freaked out. His ears would go back and he would freeze in place. Then he would take another step and have the exact same reaction. I don't think he ever really figured out what was going on, but whenever he walked across the wonderboard he would try to tiptoe to prevent the creaking noise. It was hilarious.

It stayed like this for a few days before we were able to tile.

Crown Molding is not my friend

We finally finished installing all of the crown molding on our cabinets. It took several weekends and oodles of intestinal fortitude. But it's done. We really wanted to quit several times.

I was the one taking all of the measurements and physically installing the pieces of molding. Joe handed me things while I was up on the ladder, and helped me out with some of the cutting. It should have been fairly cut and dry, but when you are trying to install molding in 45 and 90 degree angles, and the corners with which you are dealing are anything but 45 or 90 degrees, it makes you want to tear your eyeballs out. I'm not exaggerating either. Not even a little bit.

And the corners like these? The 22.5 degree angles or whatever they were? The bane of my existence.



Oh, yeah, and did I mention that the profile we established for the tops of the cabinets consisted of five different pieces of molding??? Yeah. We started by building what would be the center (top to bottom) of each piece. To do this we had to cut a length of 1x6 as well as an equal length of dentil molding and nail them together. To the back of this created piece, we had to nail a strip of thin stock which would provide us with a surface into which we could nail the next piece of molding which was brick. (Brick is typically used around doorways, and not on cabinets, but the profile was jut what we were looking for, so we didn't really care.) The brick had to be cut slight shorter to allow for the difference in thickness between the different pieces of molding. Once we had these four pieces assembled, we would nail them to the strips of stock we had previously nailed to the tops of the cabinets. Have I lost you yet? Once we had an entire bank of cabinets fitted with these pieces of molding, we went back to install the final piece, which was traditional crown molding. To make matters more challenging, the 1x6, dentil, and crown were all pre-finished to match our cabinets. This meant that we only had a certain amount available. If we made more mistakes than we had planned for when ordering our molding, we would have had to special order additional pieces and wait four weeks for them to arrive. :| No pressure. The brick was an after thought...we originally thought the molding would reach all the way to the ceiling...but since the ceiling was not remotely level, and the cabinets were PERFECTLY level, the distance between the cabinets and the ceiling varied quite a bit in some areas. The brick was added to ensure there would be no huge gaps at the ceiling. Unfortunately, the brick is only primed, and we now have to go back and paint it all. There is an additional piece we had purchased to paint the same color as our walls and nail to a flat area on the face of the crown, but now we think we might like the molding without that extra piece. We will decide later. Maybe.

The best part about the whole molding-installation debacle was the fact that I got to use the brad nailer Joe had gotten me for Christmas. I LOVE it. I want to put brads in everything. And I figured out that if you disable the safety with your finger, you can shoot brads across the kitchen! Not that I did, though, of course. ;)

Most of the brad holes have been filled in but I still have to fix some small gaps, and caulk the joint where the molding meets the ceiling. The gaps were mostly caused by the fact that the molding is straight, and the walls and ceilings in our 78 year old house are not, so they should be no problem to touch up. Then, with a coat of paint on the brick, we will be done!



Oh, and we also installed triple bead molding along the bottom of each cabinet. That was not nearly as hard or time comsuming.

Countertops!

We finally have countertops! Yee ha!

They are Silestone countertops and they look awesome! They are an awesome blue color, called Stellar Marine, and they have little flecks of mirror in them so when you walk by, you see a zillion little sparkles!!






The color you see in these photos isn't really accurate...in real life they are a dark royal, almost navy. I love them! They are rock star countertops!