My Kitchen

This is the kitchen. It is quite small and there are things that I love and hate about it. It is small. This is fine with me. My dad keeps suggesting that I tear out half of this wall behind the stove to open it up to the dining room. Why would I want to see the kitchen from the dining room? I am more interested in letting the house be.

Come for a tour!! If you stand in the middle of the room and turn around 360 degrees, this is what you will see. If you reach your arms out in front of you as you turn, you can touch everything you see.



I hate that portable dishwasher, It was there because it gave me some counter space next to the stove. It is gone now. I hate that stove, well not really. It is also gone now because it did not work well.



I love, love, love these cabinets. I love the hinges, the handles. I love the small cabinets that reach to the ceiling. I love the little venty things below the sink. I hate the countertops. There are more cabinets behind the dishwasher.
I hate the plastic green tiles.



I love the two windows that bring nice light into the kitchen almost all day. I hate that there are only two outlets in this kitchen. The toaster oven is plugged into one, the other is behind the refrigerator and oh so accessible.... I. Hate. The. Floor. It is bad, it is wearing off and also has a big scar on it from the time I used the sawzall to trim the bottom of the Christmas tree.



This door goes to 3 steps that lead to a landing to the back door and to the basement stairs. I hate that this area takes a large chunk out of the square footage of the kitchen. What do I think of the salmon color? Eehh.... I wonder about taking the silent paint remover to these walls to remove the paint because there are so many layers here. Rolled on with a high texturized roller, it seems. The lower walls are plaster with a fake tile pattern pressed into them. I like them but they have been painted over so many times the detail is diminished.



I love my new freezer on the bottom refrigerator. I hate that the whole unit it is so large. It was the smallest one I could find locally. I need to find something a lot smaller. See that little opening that one goes through to get to the dining room doorway? More space here would be nice.
I like the size of the freezer space but I tend to shop a couple times a week so I do not need that much cold storage. I covet those smaller fridges in some of the tiny New York City apartments. One like that would serve me well.

This is the look I am going for in my kitchen. Bad snapshots from a magazine photo.



I love this vintage look. I would keep my upper cabinets definitely. No soffits, no fancy plates on the wall, no room for a table. I like the cabinet above the stove.
I need to figure out what to do about the lower cabinets. Ideally, I would rebuild them to include a corner cabinet like the one here while keeping as much original as possible. It is that old dilemma, keep the original or change for something more functional and user friendly? The purist in me says keep the original but, but, but.... The bottom cabinets are in bad shape. There are false fronts on the drawers that were added to keep them from being pushed in too far. The cabinet interiors are painted bright orange and the paint flakes off into my kettles.



I like this little shelf



I love this stove. WOW.

Inner Light

I have been working on insulating my attic for the past year. (My house is a 1 1/2 story cape cod) Of course there was some wiring to be done while access was available. That stalled the insulating progress. I am so ready to be done with this side of the house. Today found me rewiring the light above the sink. That light has been out for about 4 years when some the original knob and tube wiring was cut and I lost power to the fixture.

Today my plan was to run power from the center kitchen ceiling lamp to the light over the sink. I cut a hole in the cabinet (ignoring that famous advice of "don't cut old wood" but there was was no way around it that would be safe). I guess I could have screwed a pancake box on to the surface but went the other way. How do you like that bright orange paint inside the cupboards?

I cut the hole, inserted the box, snaked the wire through and then tried to figure out the connections. The main kitchen ceiling light is a three way. Power comes in at one of the switches at one side of the room and there is another switch at the other side of the room with a light in the middle. My thought was to join the above-the-sink light to that loop. The above-the-sink light will temporarily have a pull chain (as it did originally) until I do the big kitchen remodel and can get into the walls to install a switch.

I got the light installed and wired and then worked to make the connection to the ceiling light. Ground-to-ground, got it. White-to-white, OK. Now where do I connect the black? I want the ceiling light to continue to run by the switches, no changes there, and the above-the-sink light to operate by the pull chain. I have three choices for connection. Black-to black- nope, the above-the-sink light is on and off with the switches. Black-to-red, no- same thing. Then black to white- funniest one here- when I flip the switch the ceiling light goes off and the above-the-sink light goes on. Ceiling light goes on and the above-the-sink light goes off. Cracked me up!! Not what I want at all. Believe me, I have a healthy respect for electricity. I check my book of wiring diagrams, I can find nothing close. I call both brothers (master electricians) for advice, neither are home.

In the end, I settle for three way switches controlling both lights. It will have to do until I can get some advice from my brother.

Edit: Brother said it can't be done. Power comes in at the switch. I need to run a separate line that is not switched.

Water Baby

The reason for the house addition became quite obvious several months after I began. I did not know it at the time but apparently, I was nesting.
Take a look at what my newly added sewing studio loft turned out to be. Some kind of nursery.... the little water-baby never slept there but it was nice to have room for his stuff.

I don't have many after pictures of the inside of the boathouse and those I do have include a picture of the baby as well. This is the food prep/baby bathing area... The ladder leads to the loft above. One side was the baby's room and the other was the sleeping loft. Notice the upper walls/ceiling are unbleached cotton muslin sewn together and stapled to the rafters. This was done to keep the total weight down. No heavy drywall here. Probably not up to the standard building code, especially with the wood stove, but code? what code?



















Here is the boy looking out the back window. Soon the time came to move to dry land. I worried about the baby starting to walk and I wanted him to have a safe outside play area. So two years after adding the addition I sold the boathouse and bought a house in town.
The time living on the river was magical. The cheap cost of living made it possible for me to spend more time at home with my baby. He survived. He did not fall in the river as many people warned me he would. And he did not get his head caught in that accordian style baby gate!! Can you guess what his first word was?? "da"- for DUCK



















NOTICE: Objects in the viewfinder are closer than they appear.

An Artist's Rendition

When the loft addition to the boathouse was finished, I commissioned a local artist to do a painting of it.


It was a real stretch to come up with the money to pay for it but I have never regretted it.

Before....

The Island

A local free paper ran an article about the boathouse community and I thought I would include a bit here: The article is not by-lined so I do not know who to credit it to... excerpt from the Monthly Journal of Mutual-Aid July 2008 ( but the pictures are mine)



"A closer look at the island, perhaps from the top of the Wagon Bridge, will reveal dozens of unusual homes floating along its northern shore. These are not merely boat garages, used for storage and weekend recreation, but homes to a "hearty" breed....To some they constitute a counter culture or a novel throwback to the 60s. Others consider them outlaws and a nuisance.














Many choose not to have a car, most have no electricity, phone, or plumbing. They haul out what they haul in, and they are always hauling. They cope with nature's wild mood swings with firewood and ropes. A handful of times a year, they can only get home by canoe or wading through frigid water..














...And while life on the river seemed quaint and serene, the residents were toughening up with the endless chores of hauling wood, water, and waste. There was always a day-to-day grind enhanced by freezing and flooding, and each resident found that the simple life was a grueling as it was rewarding. It was not easy."

Its me!!! An unidentified woman!!

Boathouse loft addition

More about the loft addition... I finished the roof sheathing and some of the roofing. I used rolled roofing to save on weight. That is an important consideration when constructing a boathouse- weight and balance. I needed to keep the house balanced from front to back and left to right. I needed to be careful not to add more weight than the barrels supporting the house could hold. That floating platform in the lower right of the first picture actually attached to the back of the boathouse. It attached with hinges and was not very stable. When boats went by it flapped up and down. But it did give me a nice area in the back.

I used salvaged windows in the loft. There was also a skylight on the roof. The window on the back was a 16 pane window that came from a building at the state university in town. I also built a small deck outside of the window. The window was on a piano hinge on top and it swung out for access to the upper deck. I did not use this deck much as it was not very convenient. The window was not very practical for air flow and I had to make a big screen in order to keep the mosquitos and fish flies out.
Living in the boathouse was wonderful but it took constant supervision. Winds could be troublesome. The house would sway back and forth. The river would get rough and the house would bounce up and down and some times that might cause a barrel to pop out. One side would be lower and that would raise the otherside and put the barrels at risk of popping out. The barrels held the house up and the wieght of the house kept the barrels in place.
During the time I lived there I was working at a knitting mill on the east end of town. The factory was right next to the river (well, the whole town is). I could see the river from my office window and there were many stormy days that I kept my eye on the river and hoped that I did not see my house go by. The red house next to mine broke loose once. Luckily someone saw it an jumped in a boat and was able to tow it back to its spot.

Boathouse pictures

I found some more "before" pictures to post:

This shows the flood that occured the second year I lived there. Remember the h0use rises with the water.

One inside view of the house.

The cooking/eating corner. A very small living space. These pictures are over 20 years old. Eek, I'm old...

The view from the river. Some of the boathouses were in rough shape. Most pictured here were inhabited year round.

Adding the loft

I wanted more living space in the boathouse so it was time for a major change. Over the course of several weeks I built the framing for the second story. It was not really walls but a different style of roof that would give me a loft area for sleeping quarters.

I tore off the roof myself. One big challenge was making sure the debris did not fall into the water. And a dropped tool was often irretrievable. The house was tied up to the riverbank but it was quite a steep drop off. I believe I lost a half a dozen hammers to the river bottom. I spent a bit of time fishing with a heavy duty magnet trying to retrieve tools but had little luck. When it came time to hoist the new framing, I hired my friend Joe, a carpenter, and together we raised the roof.

It was fall of the year, I did not have much time to get things closed in before winter arrived.

Just When Things Come Together...

...You have to tear them all apart again. The decision was made to tear the top off the boathouse and build up for more space. I had been living in the 12x20 space for over 5 years and it was time to add more.

I moved most of my belongings into various vehicles parked on the river bank (I live in a van down by the river!!) then began tearing things apart. I had little to no construction experience and there was no building code applicable to boathouses in my town so I just tore into it.

Soon we were open to the sky and stars.

My First House

I bought my very first house when I was just barely out of high school. I had done a year at university but it did not go so well so I took a job as a waitress/cook. One fall evening, my roommates invited me to a progressive dinner party- you know, where you go to one house for appetizers, the next for salads, etc. Well the main course was at her boyfriend's house. This was a unique house, I was amazed. He gave us the brief tour of his home and then took us to see the house next door that he also owned. I walked into that little house and immediately fell in love with it. "Can I rent it?" I said. And the next breath I said, "Can I buy it?" He said yes. I gave him $100 down, I think and made arrangements to pay $50 a month for a total of $600.

What a deal. It was a small cottage, one room, approximately 12 x 20 feet.

OK, so it needed some work.

So, that is not my stuff in there but what the place looked like when I first saw it. What was I thinking?!?

But the best part was the location...
Yup, a boathouse on the Mississippi. My place is the second from the left. The spring thaw brought the river over the banks that year and many years after that, but luckily, the house floats. Unfortunately, so did the woodpile that I kept on the bank and used to heat the house.

The houses are held afloat by 55 gallon barrels. The metal barrels rust out over time and fill with water and need to be replaced. The house had spent some time partially submerged and so there was A LOT of bad wood to be replaced. I think the boathouse was about 40 years old when I bought it.

Most structures were boat garages converted into living spaces, but mine had no evidence of having ever housed a boat. I had electricity, but no running water...inside. I spent a couple years rebuilding the space from the inside out. Replaced the floor, the wall studs, added insulation, updated the electrical. After a time, it was kind of sweet.

Seattle is known for their floating homes and my community is one of the few others that still allow people to actually reside in them. I lived there year round for over 7 years.

Hello

I have been reading house blogs for the past 3 or so years and l have wanted to start my own. I live in a 1935 cape cod type home in the Midwest that I am restoring / renovating / trying to maintain. I hate to say that it is likely in worse condition that when I moved in because I have the habit of starting projects and not finishing them.