Vacation TODO: Day 5

Today was the fifth day and midpoint of my 9 consecutive days off from work. I’m tired from working 10 hours a day in the shop, but tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I’ll only work a half day. I need to regroup a bit as well as it is apparent that I wont be completing all of the items on my list. I need to prioritize what to work on.

That said, it was a pretty good day. In addition to working on three list-specific items, Trissa and I did one more thing that’s been a TODO: for a while - we went to the bank and refinanced our mortgage to a 15 year loan from a 30. We saved ourselves a boatload of money. (We won’t be buying a boat with it though.)

There is one glaring part of the new kitchen that has sat in the 100% non-completed category for quite some time. Our old kitchen had a breakfast nook in it that we wanted to preserve in the new design. We ended up moving it to a different wall and changing it a bit, making it wider but narrower, with plans to make some cool benches with drawers in them.

Today I built a mock up of the new bench and set it in place to test the design. Specifically I needed to know that it was going to be comfortable for everyday use. It would be tragic to construct a a heavy-traffic built-in if it wasn’t comfortable. And our old nook wasn’t very comfortable.

I found an article in Fine Homebuilding by Sarah Susanka talking about ideal proportions and dimensions for breakfast nooks. There’s an irony in this issue in that there is a picture in a different article of a beautiful breakfast nook, which if you read between the lines of Sarah’s article is completely the wrong way to build a comfortable nook. It had straight benches, a non-overlapping table, a seat back that was angled too much, etc. etc.

In any event, by noon today I had built the test bench (totally usable, btw.) and also a table at the appropriate height. I was able to salvage the table from our old nook. I was surprised when I looked closely at it that it was made of fir that had been covered with formica. I peeled the formica off and sanded it up, and it will be great as our new nook table. In my new design it is anchored to the wall and has an angle brace down to the floor. I may get fancy and try to incorprate a hinge which would allow the table to fold up and out of the way for cleaning / sweeping. We’ll see. The next step is to design and build the actual benches with their incorporated storage, using the dimensions of the test bench I built today. I doubt this will all happen this week. Here’s a picture of me eating lunch at the new nook table. The seat-back isn’t yet complete:

Okay. Let’s talk about lighting. Specifically #15 on the list, and the subject of my post the other day “Chandelier Help!”, which brought many comments to the blog (thanks everyone for your feedback!) Tonight we went over to my sister-in-law’s house for dinner. She had the used chandelier for us to see and take home if we wanted to try it out. We did, and I installed it about an hour ago. Right now we’re both sitting at our well-lit dining room table thinking that this is the chandelier for us. We’re going to make an offer on it. In my book, that’s firm enough that I can cross off #15. Here’s how it turned out:

Here’s where I am on the list. The three items I worked on today were 4, 7, and 15.

1. Kitchen cabinet doors. 11 total. 4 important ones for the base cabinets.
2. Kitchen cabinet drawers. 7 total.
3. Upper cabinet crown.
4. Kitchen nook seating and table.
5. Kitchen island trim and panels.
6. Kitchen under-cabinet lighting.
7. 3 interior doors: sand, varnish, install with hardware. (Important baby-proofing item…)
8. Paint kitchen ceiling and walls (already primed).
9. Paint foyer ceiling and walls.
10. Electrical panel - re-order the breakers and document them all.
11. Strip and sand baseboard for the living / dining room. Determine if it can be re-varnished.
12. Cable TV to the kitchen. Forgot this when we had the walls open (DOH!)
13. Window sill for kitchen nook. Started this but is incomplete.
14. Exterior lights by the back doors.
15. Dining room chandelier (choose, purchase, install).
16. Dining room speakers (purchase, install - I prewired for them before we drywalled…)
17. Cat door platform (ask Trissa…)
18. Clean the upstairs hall closet - it’s a MESS!