Little House on the (ex)Prairie

I’ve been planning to blog how life is in our little rental house. “Cosy” is one way to put it. I had to measure the size of our one bathroom the other day: 5 feet x 5-1/2 feet. Interestingly, just as we are expanding our storage space at our home, we are learning to live with less in our rental. Hmmm. Hopefully we won’t forget that lesson anytime soon.

Here’s a picture of the outside of our rental house. I had to do just a bit of contaniner gardening. Steve enjoys reading the paper on the front porch. The cats also love the porch – there is plenty to watch between birds and squirrels in the trees and cars and people at the convenience store next door.


Two things are getting Steve through the summer: Baseball and Zuma.
Here is Steve parked in his chair watching the Twins take on the Yankees.



And what is Zuma? A highly addictive computer game we learned at Aunt Mary’s last winter. We all play it now, but Steve is the only one to get to “Sun God” status. Here’s the boys, emulating their father, sitting at the counter between the living room and kitchen.

Christopher and AJ have the expansion attic space, with a skylight and a window at each end of the attic. It’s a “bachelor pad” for the younger set with beds, train table, toys, bean bag, and absolutely, hands-down, the best of all, a TV and DVD player.

We are a little less than 2 miles from our house, but there are new parks and restaurants to discover in the neighborhood. Christopher and AJ have been zooming around the block on their scooters, and Christopher has learned to ride his “new” bike (it’s an original Schwinn Dragster).

And lastly, we are escaping frequently to the cabin on weekends. Here is a photo of Steve getting some help trying out his new hammock next to the lake. Aww.

Oh, You Doorknob!

It is amazing to me how what seem to be small details can consume so much time. For example: the humble doorknob. There are people and entire companies who spend way more time than I do thinking about doorknobs. (And I have been stunned at what some of them cost.) But now I am fixated on doorknobs, and trying to find 2, or maybe 3, sets of doorknobs that come close to matching the existing ones, original to the house. Below is a picture of what is turning out to be a hard-to-find item. Doesn't look that special, does it? Any suggestions?

Where to Stuff It

It almost makes me giddy to contemplate the places we will have to store things properly. The closet system in the mud room was installed last week from Scherer Brothers (we went with closets instead of cabinets to keep the cost down). Carrie helped us design places for shoes, boots, and hooks for coats with cupboards up high to stash the out-of-season gear. We ended up with a high shelf in the mud room due to the way the built in buffet in the dining room projects into the space, providing more decorative storage opportunities. We also have a bench under the window for taking off your snow covered boots.

Shelving was also installed in the new pantry across from the powder room in the kitchen. Sliding doors will be installed here – rather retro, but we were so tired of having the hallway blocked by an open door, they made the most sense in this busy hallway. A rather boring picture, but thrilling for us! Above it is another open shelf area, this one with recessed lighting.

And presenting – the kitchen cabinets! We had tremendous help from Pete at Cabinet Concepts and Interiors in making the multitude of decisions around the cabinets. They look great and it’s starting to look like a kitchen. In both corners we will have lazy-susans, we hated crawling into our old corner cabinet trying to dig out a pan. The lower cabinet on the right is for my mixer. It has a pop-up shelf - I couldn’t pass up that feature. (The cabinet for over the microwave is sitting on top of the stack of drawers.) Oh, the cabinets are cherry, with butternut finish, from Durasupreme in the Homestead panel if you're shopping.

Here’s the sink cabinet going in. We had a small amount of space between the sink and the “super-susan”. We put in a skinny cabinet/open shelf for storing trays.

Exterior Accomplished

The new siding is up and looks great. Here are a few shots of it from last week. Painting should begin in the next week or two. As expected, my garden around the house has taken a beating, creating new opportunities for landscaping in the fall and spring.

Underfoot

Inside the house, it is getting a little more colorful. The tile installers and the hardwood floor guys (Blue Canoe) are getting busy. Below is the ceramic floor tile that will greet you when you come into the mudroom. A top consideration was how well it would hide the mud and melted snow. The 12 inch square tiles have a lot of red along with grey, blue and brown.Not the best photo for color - but this is the ceramic floor tile in the master bath. These 6 inch tiles are a mix of blue, green, and grey.

In the upstairs main bath, the floor was extremely uneven, a big problem in a bathroom. Several bags of leveling compound were poured on top of the sub-floor - here it is drying.

Tile was laid on top of the leveling compound. In this bathroom, and in the main floor "powder room" (1/2 bath), we picked white 1 inch hexagonal ceramic tile - very probably what was in this bathroom 95 years ago.

In the master bedroom, the old wood floor is being extended to fill the room. Here's some more fun power tools, along with plenty of sawdust.

If the lighting were better in this picture (we still only have a few outlets working), you could see the old and new floor come together. (The old and new floors in our house are maple.) They will be sanded down together, then varnished. The new wood floor in the kitchen is also installed and will be finished next week because... (drum roll)... the cabinets arrive on the 17th!

These windows face west, and you can get a feel for how nice this room will be in the afternoon and evening! It looks out on the backyard and our small maple tree and larger crabapple tree.

On the Side

Two weeks ago, we had the opportunity to make another big decision. When we first talked through our remodel, we had discussed re-siding all of the house, not just the new part in the back. The cost was significant, and we took it out of the bid to be done in the very near future. Originally - we think - the house was either stained or painted with an oil-based finish which didn't breathe. Large chips with many layers of paint have been coming off the siding, even shortly after we had the house repainted about 10 years ago.

As the work drew closer, White Crane had the siding re-bid and it came in 1/3 less than the first bid. We debated over the weekend, decided to do it, and within days the old siding was torn off and the guys were stapling up the moisture barrier (that's the well marked Tyvek) and nailing up the hardiplank on all sides!

Below is the south side partially done. The siding here was especially bad with the sun exposure.

The front with shakes and not-quite-all the lap siding. Yes, it will get painted, the same colors as before because 1) we like it and 2) we can't manage to make another big decision!

Sheet Rock Happens

Yes, sheet rock happened! The other (thing) that happened was my hard drive crash and replacement. So these photos are now about 2 weeks old. Everything was "rocked" during a weekend, then mudded, sanded and primed to keep the dust down. The difference was dramatic, we can really get a feel for the rooms now. The photo above is of the stilts (or whatever you call them) that the "rockers" wear to mud and sand the ceilings.

Even more progress is being made, and I hope to catch up with it this week. For now here are a few photos of the whiteness. The first one is the ol' hallway from the kitchen into the living room. The door with "Do Not Open" is to the dining room. The space next to it will be the new pantry - formerly home of the refrigerator.

Behind the plastic is the kitchen window above the sink. This corner will be the "baking center" since my mixer will have it's own special pop-up cabinet. Whoo hoo!

Kitchen windows looking into the backyard. The booth will go under the window on the left, then fridge, then counter under the window on the right.

Two views of the Master Bedroom in stunning white primer. You can see the doorway to the hall and master bathroom below.