the hole in the wall gang

At least that is what mom said she was going to call us, given how many holes we like to put in walls. Speaking of which, see below for pictures of our latest endeavor. We figured we ought to get the messy part of cutting the wall apart done before we have a floors replaced. And, we really wanted to open up our kitchen to the living area for entertaining etc. So here are some before and afters.

First set of three pictures below show the progression of the wall from the perspective of the living room.



We will be adding a bar to this side, and then some built-in shelves/cabinet to the left of the hole and bar area.

This set of 4 pictures shows the progression of our hole in the wall from the perspective inside the kitchen. We tore out those cabinets completely as you will see below.
This is the space that was above the stove before.
And here we are, as far as we are going to get for a few weeks. The plan is to finish out the living room side so it is a bar, with our new barstools.

I think it looks great. And while it means that right now we have less storage, once we get the built-ins on the other side, we'll be fine on storage.

Happy Birthday Matt!

Happy Birthday Matt!

Just for you I had them blow up this big balloon. I hope you have a great birthday! Enjoy those pre-30 years. You start to feel old when your body can't quite do as much as it used to!

do you tri?

That is, do you do triathlons? Well I haven't, but I'm going to. I've signed up for the Danskin sprint distance triathlon which happens in Seattle during August. This means I've really got to get my butt in gear and start training. I chose to be part of the mixed age group, which shouldn't be quite so competitive, but you still get an individual race time. However, I know that sometimes the competition is really what makes me motivated, so I guess I'll just have to see how I feel when I do it. Part of me wants to do it in as little time as I can, and the other part of me wants to just do it so I finish it.

Who am I kidding, I've never done something just to finish it. I'll be racing myself that day, I'm sure. Go Lizzy!

A better picture

Here is a much better picture of the wall remodeling we did this weekend. Looks much better without the stove in the way!
;-)

It is not a weekend

It is not a weekend without some good old fashioned wall demolishing! Yesterday, David and I decided we needed to open up a doorway a bit, so we tore open the wall. Here are the before and after pictures. We obviously still need to put on the drywall on the opening and then mud it, but we got pretty darn far in just one evening. Fun!


What used to be the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room....

The new door way between the two rooms. This will make entertaining so much easier. Of course, the stove needs to be put back in place before any entertaining might begin...

It's Birthday mania!

One more birthday to celebrate this week....Carolyn's!

Happy Birthday!

Hope you are having some fun today!

Happy V-Day

To all my loved ones, and especially my sweetie--Happy v-day!

Spread the love!

Happy Birthday and good news-we're going to Hawaii!

First and most importantly,

Happy Birthday Will! This is for the "old" Will, not the young Will ;-) Seriously, I hope you had a wonderful birthday and that the coming year is even more marvelous than the last.

Secondly,

I don't recall, but I think I mentioned somewhere along the line about submitting 3 papers to a conference in Hawaii. Well, two of those papers we've received notification on that they are accepted (with some revisions), and the last paper we haven't heard on yet, but I think even if they accept it, we will have to decline to present b/c the data we have in the paper is not correct, and there is not enough time to get the correct data in the paper. In any case, I'm going to Hawaii! (and so is David!) Yea!

a little late better than never

Seems like I'm always saying that. We got a letter in the mail this week with some photos from thanksgiving in KC, and I realized I never posted any of my pictures. (or did I? Now I'm doubting myself) Here are the four best ones that are representative of our time.

I really liked this statue at the Kemper Art Museum. I'm not sure I was supposed to go up there under it, but I never touched it which is what the sign says you are not allowed to do!

Here is Dad and Suzanne in Front of the Kemper. The spider is their "logo" you could say. In the top right corner you can see Jodi and David doing their own exploring.

David trying to figure out the spider. This image is kind of like a movie to me--like revenge of the spiders or something. It is about to jump down and attack! Yikes!

And here is jodi, david and me in the scuplture area of the more traditional art museum in KC. (I can't remember the name). David was tall enough to be able to fit his head over the top, but Jodi and I had to improvise. I have a picture of him straight on where you really just see the statue and his head. Funny! It is even darker than this picture, so I didn't want to post it.

decision made

Well, we finally made a decision. Thanks for everyone's support and advice on the floors. It has been a difficult process. The decision we made was to get a new floor. by the end of the first week of March (or so) we should be living with new floors. I think it will feel like a whole new house then. I've just got to get David in the habit of sweeping or vacuuming the floors. It feels kind of weird to vacuum a hardwood floor, but it seems to work pretty well, and our vacuum has a bare floor setting, so that probably helps.

Just wanted to let you know the decision. Now I guess our next step is to get in touch with a plumber for the bathroom.

more tests

So we decided to try a new spot with a lighter dye, same stain on top, and we bleached some of the spots and not others. So here we go....

Above you can see where the spots are.

After the sanding

Using the bleach. The people at the stain/paint store said to use oxalic acid on stains. So this is what we used above.

This is after bleaching. I'm not so sure that it looks that much lighter. Just slightly. I suppose we could have done another round of bleach, but we were so tired, we just wanted to get to the dye and stain.

The light/orangish brown is the lighter dye we decided on. The Stain is still the "Java Bean". It seems to have masked the stains pretty well. However, I'm not sure David is sold on the color. The big stain that we didn't bleach you can kind of see at the right angle with the right light, but probably wouldn't be visible otherwise.

So...some decisions to make...

oops here are the long promised bath photos

We tore down the tile wainscoat-- looks bad huh?



I'm sure it will look better when we mud it.

floor issues

So we decided to go buy a aniline dye and stain to see how well it would mask the stains.....

This is the spot as it originally looked before we sanded it all off.
After sanding, you could still see the stains, but they weren't as bad.
last night we put the water based aniline stain (dye) on it (above)

And this morning this is how it looked. Can still see the wood grain, but not really the stains. They said you are then supposed to put a coat of stain on it do deepen the color and complexity.

So this morning, we put the stain on (see above). I'll show you what it looks like after it dries. But this is definitely promising. It isn't black dye--so it still has warmth, but it seems to be covering the stains without losing the interest of the wood grain.

We are cautiously optimistic and may go back to the paint store and see what other colors they have and maybe do another test spot with a lighter dye/stain combo.