Paint fumes

There aren't many large, visible projects left inside the New Old House. A few light fixtures to change out, a window treatment here or there, but it's mostly getting down to the unseen details.

We've done some attic work, including replacing the evaporator coil in the air conditioning unit, replacing the very old HVAC ductwork in the house, and replacing some awful frayed wires in the attic. New cable lines are next on the attic list, since there is a whopping ONE cable outlet in the house, conveniently located in the guest room.

Meanwhile, the bathroom is entering the final stages of done. The last cabinet in the room was gross inside- a mixture of miscellaneous product stains and a wall color the approximate color of bread mold.

There's great storage in there, and with help from a few cans of paint, it's on the way to much cleaner:

Matching painted woodwork helps, too. The shelves are drying, and that will be that!

Of course, the almost-full paint pan had to be emptied, so why not start on the upper kitchen cabinets? The cabinets, in their dilapidated glory, required quite a few coats. The first coat was pathetic:

But luckily, the second (third, fifty-seventh) coats started looking infinitely better:

The insides are going to be done first, then all the doors will get removed, filled, repaired (oh, the repairs), and the outsides of the boxes will get a few coats. Then, doors back on, new hardware, and they'll be done, too! Thank goodness- the oily can stains on the shelves were pretty gross.

Cabinets... and things

It has been pretty quiet around the old blog lately... Mostly because we haven't made much progress on the cabinets. Well, that's not entirely true... We do have most of our cabinet doors and drawers in:

There are some pieces of the dishwasher to install still, toekicks for the cabinets, and you can even see a few granite samples on the "counter" -- a reality that is unfortunately weeks away. But what's that thing on the left side of the photo? Why, it's our refrigerator!

We made a promise to be moved in by Christmas, so we hired some movers and had them help us move the heavy things into the house. They brought the stove, fridge, washer and dryer, and bed frames over. Suddenly, the somewhat-filled house became a livable place. Only two weeks after we had our first guests sover for an evening. They'd be surprised at the changes!

We've been toting things over for weeks, which meant we only needed movers for the really large things. There's a pile of stuff in the old house still, but we're slowly sorting, donating, and filing everything away. We have a huge list of tasks to work through, but we're knocking them out at a decent pace.

For instance, the laundry room needed some storage space. The area above the machines previously held one modest wire shelf. Home Depot had some Closet Maid kits that were pretty inexpensive (and cheaper than buying the individual parts). They're not pretty, but they work:

I may end up sewing a curtain-type cover for the front of the shelf, just to keep everything visually clean.

Oh, and back in the kitchen, we began the process of trimming the window out again, since all the trim was torn out during the cabinet demolition. To get the trim to sit out beyond a tile backsplash, we had to build up the window area a bit. The first step was to cut poplar boards to fit in the area.

Then, some super thin birch plywood was placed on the inside of the window frame. This covered the edge of the poplar boards, making the window frame look like a solid piece of wood. We cut two poplar sills for the windows, trimming them together at the corner:

The whole window was then caulked and prepared for the trim. The pieces are cut, just not attached yet, due to the chaos of moving. I'm looking forward to crossing that off the list!