shelterblog

chipping away

Just a quick update on the kitchen project for our own house: We are starting to see the finish line, or at least a point where we'll have a fully usable space again. Over the last two weekends we've painted, installed a window, hung the hood, and started to install cabinet boxes. Nearly all have involved snafus of varying degrees, reminding us why there are competent professionals who should be hired for these jobs!

 

Paint

Trims and crowns are not installed yet, but we wanted to get the walls painted before cabinets were in the way. I rented a sprayer on a Saturday planning to paint Sunday, but alas the hoses were clogged. Steph's dad was kind enough to help me get the first coat on with brushes and rollers. Then Monday morning I was able to get a new sprayer and knock out the final coat in a snap. With all the grooves in our wall siding, the sprayer was really the way to go. We went with Miller's "Winter White" in a satin finish, with zero-VOCs. Hard to tell in this photo, but it looks really crisp.

 

Window

With all the trim pulled off, we decided to replace our sink window with a sash-replacement kit. (This could also be done without removing the window casings if needed.) Marvin's Tilt-Pac is a great option, but we went with a similar product from Weather-Shield to save about 15%.The snafu in this case was in the window ordering process: The width and height of our window got transposed on the order, which was discovered right after I had ripped out the old sashes. This happened in part because I didn't do what architects usually do: provide the supplier with a scaled drawing and a window schedule. A simple step that I wouldn't skip for a client, but somehow overlooked for myself. So we sat back and waited a few weeks for the replacement replacement window to arrive. Now it is finally installed and we have warm double-glazing, smooth operation, and an etched lower sash to hide our neighbor's garbage & recycling. With the window in place, cabinets can start going in soon.

 

Range hood

We went ahead with the hood so that we'd have a nice datum point for locating the range and surrounding cabinets. For now we are not hooked up to the exhaust or electrical, but it is amazing how much more "kitcheny" it makes the space feel. This is weird because neither Steph nor I can remember ever living with a real hood.

 

Cabinets

Just getting started on this part — we're using Ikea cabinets, and I'll try to post in more detail about these soon. I have slight misgivings about using these, but for a DIY solution they are a decent choice. So far the biggest hurdle has been working around the walls that are bowed or out of plumb... and we have a few of those in our 100+ year old house.

 

One more thing: With the ceiling finally finished, we have the lights installed once again. Woohoo!

restored antique lighting

Rejuvenation has been restoring vintage lighting for as long as I can remember, but now they are offering these great antiques on their web site. As you might expect, a lot of the selection consists of highly ornate pieces of the leafy and floral variety. Beautiful stuff, but our tastes are a bit more simple and understated.

Luckily there are some great mid century pieces to be found too. I suspected the pendants section would be the place to start. I should note that most of these items are available in limited quantities – I'll provide links, but these lights may be gone before long.

Here's a great matte white pendant from the 1950's. One of these would be great over a kitchen sink, or pair them up at an island for task lighting:

This unique pendant with a flat disc shade hails from the turn of the 20th century:

 

My favorite is this industrial shade converted to a pendant. Love the white enamel, with just a few chips to let us know this fixture has been around:

 

How about this fun 1960's pendant? Built from nesting black and white cones, there is a cleverly hidden gap allowing light to shine through behind the black section:

 

And finally some whimsical choices – A schoolhouse igloo and a green fire escape shade:

 

open shelves

Searching through some photos of my past projects, I rediscovered these custom open shelves. I thought it would be fun to share some of the inspiration and concept drawings. These were designed for a small media room, part of a whole-house remodel in NW Portland.

It is a 1922 house, but the clients wanted a more contemporary look for these built-ins. Ideally they wanted all of the shelves to be open (no cupboards) and able to accommodate a 42" flat-screen television.

Stephanie found this great inspiration shot, scanned from Martha Stewart Living:

 

I really love the mix of different cubby proportions in this photo. The short spaces are especially fun, and work great for stacking oversized books. Instead of Buddha as the centerpiece, we'd plan a wide space for the TV (Attachment jokes are welcomed in the comments).

The ceilings in my clients' space are shorter than in Martha's photo, so I wanted to play down the horizontal nature of such a wide built-in. I thought it would help to add in a few truly square shelf spaces at the outer edges. I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

 

framing complete at Alberta house

Framing is mostly finished up at the house near Alberta street. I love this phase of construction — you can visit every day during framing and see lots of visible progress.
 
Along the south side there will be a shallow bio-swale. Nearly all of the water from the roofs will pass through this planter for filtration before running into the City's storm drains. Think of it as a ground-level alternative to a living roof:

And what's up with the embedded beer bottles? The plan is for these to be broken and then removed, leaving a smooth cylindrical void in the concrete wall. Then a metal post will be inserted and grouted, which makes a sturdy guardrail post.

Here's the view from the backyard, looking towards the large corner window of the kitchen/dining area:

siding choices, and some progress

We honed in on two choices for the interior siding in our kitchen. Really it is just paneling, but our choice was inspired by older homes where enclosed porches were eventually repurposed as interior space, allowing original exterior siding to become a fun interior finish.

We briefly considered shingle siding, but the wall surface needs to be flat so that shelf brackets can be easily mounted.  T&G siding is a good fit — it is mostly flat but still provides some nice relief at the v-grooves. We were aiming for 1x8 (roughly 7" tall) boards, but these were tough to find in small quantities. The products we found instead are sold as 1x6, but are actually just a hair above 5 inches tall.

The first option was authentic cedar siding:

 

Cedar has a natural ability to resist rot, so it is a great choice for exterior siding. For our kitchen this seemed like overkill, and we would hate to use a limited resource for a strictly decorative purpose. But the thickness of this material makes for a bold v-groove and a great shadow line, so it was tempting to go this route. Tight-knot pine is another option at this thickness, but the knots would easily show through our white paint.

The option we chose instead is a pre-primed radiata pine, meant for use as a ceiling board:

 

This material has a slightly thinner profile — about 9/16" instead of 5/8"— so the v-groove is a bit more subtle. This should be okay since it will be seen from close range, but you'd want the bolder groove for real exterior siding. Here you can see the profile of each board. The thinner pine paneling also has a beadboard pattern on the back side, so it can be installed either way: 

 

It is starting to feel like a white kitchen again!

weekend project

Finally we are back to making some progress on the kitchen remodel. We've been putting finishing touches on drywall for weeks now, and clearly losing steam in the process. So it was nice to move on to something new, especially something manageable over the course of a weekend.

We'll be painting the kitchen floors (at least for now), but that means sanding them first to even things out. Before the sanding could begin, I had to replace some banged up boards at the kitchen/dining passage. A few boards on the dining side were also screaming for replacement — we could plow ahead with the kitchen and ignore these, but it makes sense to do this work all at once.

First step was to rip out the offending boards, plus a few more to make the finished patch look more original:

The time consuming part is the chiseling, to get crisp and square edges at the short ends of the remaining boards. Also I was trying to leave the painted door casing intact, which made it quite difficult to extract the old boards from underneath. Bad on the knees to say the least. If you are trying this at home, then the best advice I can give is to put on some Blind Pilot and promise yourself a cold gin & tonic at the end of it all.

Our unpainted fir floors are dinged up throughout the house, kind of embarrassingly so. But people always comment on the rich warm hue, and they seem to overlook all the gouges and stains. So we've grown to love the color, and will probably leave it to some future homeowner to sand them down. Luckily I salvaged some old boards with a similar finish and patina:

I'm quite pleased with the result — we couldn't ask for a better color match. Once the old floor is cleaned up and the nail holes are filled, I think it will look like these are the original boards.

Next steps: Sanding the kitchen floor and putting up interior siding.

before & after: bathroom

A client sends along photos of a just-finished bathroom remodel:

This modest sized bath serves a family of three, and replaces a small bath which had a separate room for the water closet. 

(plan before)

 

(before photos)

The old plan afforded a bit more privacy for the W.C., but we quickly realized this was worth giving up in exchange for a more spacious and brighter combined bathroom. For plumbing economy, the toilet was kept in the same location. Eliminating a window to the east allowed the shower to move to the tallest part of the room, replacing the cramped tub/shower.

(plan after) 

A pair of new skylights fill the space with soft northern light, but are high enough to provide privacy from the neighboring houses. The homeowner tells me, "I really like stepping up on the shower bench and checking the outside world".

 

To keep the space uncluttered, a new linen closet was carved out of a nearby space (not shown here). Daily bath supplies will be kept out of sight in a custom beech veneer cabinet that is recessed into the short attic wall. Below this cabinet is a matching bench with a pair of deep towel drawers, also extending into the unused attic space.

progress on Alberta house

Yesterday I stopped by a project currently under construction while I was in the Alberta neighborhood. This is a new house I've been working on in collaboration with architect Chris Eberle. Vacant lots in the city's close-in neighborhoods are few and far between, so it is quite fun to see this one taking shape.

The concrete forms have just come off, so it is possible to start getting a feel for the size of the basement and garage. This shot is from the back of the lot, looking out towards the street:

 

And here's a drawing showing how things will look from the street:

 

The house will have traditional roof forms – basically a simple gable with shed dormers, much like the older houses in the area — but we'll be finishing it out with some more contemporary details to make it distinct. More photos to come as progress continues.

From under the drywall dust.

We're so sorry we disappeared. We're still here, plugging away. With each of us working our other jobs and having kids home full time, it's been hard getting the work done by ourselves (not to mention the extra work of living in a construction zone). I think that we hit a point where we were suffering from remodeler's ennui—no matter how much we worked, it always seemed that there was so much more to be done. Now that the drywall is nearly up and finished, I think we've passed that hump and are regaining our enthusiasm.

In the past few weeks I have been doing a lot of mud and taping of drywall, and while I will be so happy to be done (I don't think I'll even want to frost a cupcake for a few weeks), there is something meditative and rewarding about the process. Making bumps and gaps disappear—this is not something I've had a great deal of success with in the rest of my life.

We plan to finish up the drywall this week after which we hope that things will move along a little more quickly as we attack the floor and begin bringing in the cabinetry. We will certainly be back in this space with more regularity both to show our progress and to share our inspirations. Thanks for hanging in there with us!

kitchen sketches

Just a quick post with some interior elevation sketches for our kitchen. Looking at these again should give me some good inspiration to plow ahead with the drywall work this week.

To better understand these drawings, it might be worth clicking back to the floor plan for a reference.

First the west side elevation, looking at the fridge and range:
 
And next, the north side, showing the kitchen and adjacent mud room:

The horizontal lines in the kitchen indicate painted wood siding. It will be a v-groove siding which should still have a flat vertical face, allowing us to mount shelves and brackets. I love siding as an interior wall treatment, and I think it will give the upper portion some visual interest and texture without the expense of tile. I can't wait to see this on the walls – I think then it will feel like we are getting close to completion.