Winter Projects

The kitchen cabinets hadn't been painted since William built and installed them back in 1991. They didn't look terrible, but after 22 years of use they deserved a few repairs and a new coat of paint. It's amazing how much can be tucked away, some of it even forgotten, inside kitchen cabinets. The first job was to empty the cabinets and drawers...and the only place to put all of that stuff was in the living room.

There was more by the front window, but I won't bore you with the details. Let's say you have seen about half of what came out of the kitchen!

At one point it seemed like I had a path to my chair and a path from my chair to the TV. Forget space to water the orchids. Besides, the buckets I soak them in were filled with spice jars and other things.

The new color is a close match to the original color, but a tougher paint. There is one of the old light fixtures that once upon a time hung in a one room schoolhouse here in Belmont. William picked up a number of these lights when they were auctioned off years before I met him. He had tucked them away for safekeeping and I designed them into the house. Notice the pull cord. Cords don't need to be cleaned the way wall switches do. Sometimes, progress isn't an improvement over the way it "used to be."

And that's a bowl from the Blanot poterie in the dish drain. Jake managed to sneak into this picture. The blue dish pan is drying because I had just used it to soak the orchids. The white container on the counter collects compost, the white trash bucket on the floor is for recyclables, and the small clear basket on my step stool is for actual trash.

This is the other side of the galley kitchen. Now there are even more pictures of Blanot on the refrigerator. I'm using the dish towels I picked up in Antebes, France.

That is a marble counter top that I picked up from the reject yard outside the Proctor, Vermont marble company. It's great for rolling out pie crust.

Homemade grape jelly and a squash from last year's garden. It amazes me how long squash and potatoes last. I'm still eating my own fresh produce! And some of it will be around through Spring.

William had leftover rondelles from his work with stained glass and that's how I ended up with port holes, or peek-a-boo bubbles in the cabinet doors.

I purposely went looking for curtain material that would make me chuckle in the middle of a wintery day.

When we built the house, I laid the quarry tile dining room floor. The tiles came from another house and still had plywood stuck to the backs which William ground off with big sanding belts. None of the tiles were exactly the same thickness after that operation. I laid them using 2 long levels and a few pebbles from the driveway to keep the thinner tiles from sinking too far into the cement. I don't think it's an approved method of construction, but it worked.

One job leads to another...

When we painted the attic, I bought deck paint for the plywood floor from Sherwin Williams. Apparently it had too much pigment in the paint so that it never wanted to cure completely. It was always a little tacky, but rugs didn't seem to stick to it the way furniture did.

In the second floor entrance-way to the attic bedroom I placed a pad under the rug. The pad bonded to the paint!

Sanding and repainting still looked awful.

We still had some laminated flooring leftover from the loft so we bought a bit more of it and our solution is shown in the next picture...

Griff uses this space as his storage. Just as I got rid of a lot of things I really didn't need in the kitchen, he sorted through his belongings when it was time to put them back. A lot went elsewhere.

There's a lot of truth in that old adage of "less is more."

For the attic floor we just put a coat of poly-acrylic over the paint. After nearly 3 years we finally have a non-sticky surface!

There were a number of smaller projects as well. An electric outlet was added at what had been the dark end of the attic bedroom...

The futon opens into a double bed when needed. 

Several years ago Griffin noticed a large trash bag in the middle of the road and decided to be a good Samaritan. He stopped his car to pick up the trash. The bag felt very light, too light to be loaded with trash, so he looked inside and found the bear that now lounges on the futon.

He has since been joined by other bears in the attic... By the way, this is our guest bedroom. It is waiting to welcome you to Vermont...

And the loft window trim needed painting. This is Griffin's sitting room. All of the furniture is second-hand, saved while on its way to the dump.

What is on the table has since been put away. This was where Griff had to keep everything he normally stored in the attic entrance-way.

The loft is often the warmest area in the house because the wood stove is right below.