Falling In Love With The Floors

I hope Pete understands that its a different kind of love, but its definitely love. The floors are beautiful. Perfect. Gorgeous.

White pine, 14' straight stripes of tongue and groove flooring, stained black (Ebony).

Love them!

Breeze Be Gone

It was like our own tropical paradise ... sitting in a cabana with a strong breeze going in one end and out the other. All is perfect, except ... its our house and its cold.

While we love the nostalgia of the old wood windows, irregular glass and pulley weights, they weren't working. Unfortunately, ours rattled with every move and the strong breeze became less and less desirable as winter approached.

So, we bit the bullet and purchased Harvey vinyl windows. And, the vinyl was the toughest bullet - but, now, we couldn't be happier! The Harvey don't look too vinyl-y; they are tight and clean, keeping unwelcome noise, breeze and smells out. The Harvey were by far the best choice for the money, over Pella and American, and come with a lifetime warranty. Did I mention "for the money"?? ... that becomes very important when you're replacing18 windows!

Love them!

Inspector Is In

Less smiling and more working, boys!

Air in Force

The crackle, snap and pop, that one of my favorite little guys (Brigg) calls "scary" is scary no more! We have forced air, including air conditioning, and we've started to tear up the baseboards. Don't ever believe a northeastener when they say you don't need air. I spent a couple summer months in this 3rd floor 1890s home, and I'm so happy to not have to drag the portable air conditioner from room to room next year. And, no more scary noises!

The system is in the attic:

A Case of Spaghetti Plumbing

Personally, I prefer to eat my spaghetti, but when the walls were opened we discovered that the plumbing resembled a plate of noodles.

If you shut off the water at one point, it came out another way ... cap it in a place and water came out another. One hundred years of adding and updating and making pasta!

Ahhhh ... after the plumber worked his magic. Like Holmes on Homes always says ... "do it right the first time."

Accommodating a visual learner

If you take your measurements to Home Depot or Lowe's, they will turn them into a 3-D mockup of your room. In a matter of a couple hours, we had our entire kitchen laid out and in a visual-learner-friendly format.

Then we picked and chose what cabinets we wanted where.

Special features of our kitchen include:

• Floor to ceiling 12" deep pantry - to maximize the space we added storage by using cabinets in between the windows
• Shelves in the corner - instead of a large corner cabinet we chose open shelving to break up the cabinet-heavy walls; cheaper than glass cabinet doors
• Corner sink - by putting the sink in the corner instead of within the island, we were able to fit a hidden trash cabinet and a stack of four small drawers against the knee wall
• Wine cooler shelf - a base cabinet with an open shelf and lower drawer will provide a place to tuck away our wine cooler
• Microwave cubby - a cubby with a cabinet door that flips up was a more attractive option to us than a garage door
• Big drawers - on either side of the range, we chose drawers instead of cabinets for easier access to pots and pans
• Cabinet moulding - small decorative moulding in between the two upper cabinets will add a little texture and break up the cabinets that go all the way to the ceiling