Oooh, Wavy Glass

I bought these at my local Habitat Restore a while back. Both of them! They are very tall. I have big plans for them... There were several units available and various pieces and parts, too. I bought a couple extra glass doors. I was told they came out of an apartment building that was scheduled to be torn down. Many layers of paint to strip. My plan is to put the large one up in my sewing studio. I will have to remove the upper portion with the solid doors as it is about 10 feet tall. The smaller one I plan to use in two pieces. I will use the lower base cabinet for an rolling island and hang the upper cabinet on the wall above my stove to add more cupboard space. My fiestaware will be on display at last.

Plaster repair

I did some work in my dining room repairing several areas of plaster that needed attention. Here is an outlet that was poorly patched. Can you see the large divot? This outlet was in a bad location, is not wired to anything and there is another outlet on the same wall 2 feet away. I decided to close the hole entirely.
















There was also some failure of the plaster below the window due to some previous water leaking. I took the opportunity to open the space below the window enough to add insulation. The walls were insulated from the attic above and the areas below the windows had no insulation.
I removed lath and put loose cellulose into the wall then replace the lath. There is also an opening for a new outlet to be added one day.

The area pictured below had a poorly done drywall patch. I imagine it was due to the removal of a beautiful old cold air return that was replaced with a small ugly metal grate. Argghh. There is another opening on the other side of the wall and the grate is visible. I filled in the area with scrap lath.
I am using the "Worley method" of plaster of repair that I have read about on several housblogs. It is a three layer system using different mixtures of 2 types of plaster-- Structolite and Diamond Finish plaster. It was a bit of a challenge to work with but I finished the first two layers.
The other ongoing project is stripping the paint off all of the baseboard trim.

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!!