FAN-TAS-TIC!

I would like to take a moment to comment on our kitchen fan. 

Our gas cooktop is located on the island and it required a downdraft fan. We were able to locate a nice GE brand fan for about 800 bucks.

Susan is making Split Pea Soup. She is currently boiling the hambone left over from Easter.

The pot is on the burner, simmering away, and I was noticing how the steam was gracefully being sucked into the fan.

The fan vents on the back of the house.

I went out on the front porch to enjoy a beer. While sitting on the porch…at the front of the house…I distinctly smelled ham.

That’s quite a powerful fan. I’m feeling better now about spending that 800.

Steinway Come Home

After five months and three days, our piano has returned.

It left us last November 25th, for sound board repair. It was now returned all shiny and new. Unfortunately, it is completely out of tune. I mean, it is not even close.

The Tuner will come on Friday and try to clean it up a bit and then will be back in another couple of weeks to finish the job.

The strings have to acclimate and stretch a little before they can be properly tuned.

Anyway,  she’s back.

Almost A Wrap

 Okay! We are going to attempt (again) to finish getting all the tiles up on the kitchen ceiling. After that there is some caulking that needs to done but that shouldn’t take long.

The wall has been patched and painted. 

We only have three tiles to go. It’s 2:43PM.

2:53 PM: There’s one tile up. It’s a really tight work space. 

3:05 PM: There’s the second tile in place. We’re down to the last one. The final corner piece has to be cut on two sides, so it’s a little trickier than the others. We starting with a cardboard template.

3:39 PM: VICTORY! That last tile took some ciphering. The corner is totally not square.  Here’s a picture of the last placement.

But, the tile portion is done.

Me happy! Susan says it’s not done.

Five Tiles To Go

 We are working on the last five tiles for the ceiling. We really want together this finished. It’s been going on since January.

This is how the last unfinished space looks. It is 12 noon right now. Let’s see how long this takes.

It turns out it won’t take so long. But we’re not finished.

I’m on my way to Sherwin-Williams to get a quart of the wall paint that has hardened up on us. So that took us 20 minutes to get to this stopping point.

1:10PM: I’m back from the paint store and I was able to get a quart of the paint we need. Susan has filled in the gap on the wall above the cabinets and now we need to wait for it to dry. 

So, unless we finish this tonight, I think we’re done for the day.

I’m going out to do my first mow.

So Close

We completed another row of ceiling tiles today. Just one row left. That last row will probably take longer because every tile will need to trimmed and some of the spots are going to be difficult to access. The oven cabinet and the one above the fridge are 36” deep which makes it hard to get the tile measurements and work in the tight space.

I still have a little prep work to do too. This final row is where the soffit was for the old kitchen cabinets. There are some uneven areas on the ceiling where the soffit connected to the ceiling. I pulled out a putty knife and started scraping. It’s making a horrible mess of drywall chunks and dust. I tried holding a dust pan to catch the debris but it’s still pretty messy.

This and That

We have both been pretty productive over the last couple of days.

Yesterday I did a little yard work. I cleaned up the leaves in the front gutter, I emptied the pond in the east back yard of all the water and leaves, and I emptied some unwanted paper stencils from the top floor of the Carriage House. 

Back when we painted windows, we would make stencils if there was a logo or lettering we had to do. I always saved them and that actually paid off a couple of times. 

But we are now done painting windows for the holidays so it’s time to get rid of these stencils.

I backed my truck into the alley, positioning the bed under the alley door, and tossed all the stencils down into my truck bed. I have some other crap I’m taking to the dump so that trip will be in a couple of days.

I took my scissors to the chive shrubbery and cut it way back. I want to see how quickly this thing will recover

I also got a shot of my Sterling hops. I have documented it here before but it’s really amazing to watch how fast these things grow.

I will bet that little sprout will be up to the decking on the back porch by May First.

Susan got out her mud bucket and did some spackling along the side wall of the kitchen where the ceiling meets the wall. We had substantial gaps that would still be exposed once we tiled the area. So, just to make sure, she filled in this gaps. She will do a little touch up painting tomorrow and then we will be ready to finish the last two rows.

Let the productivity continue!

Closing In On the End

We got up another row of tile on the ceiling. And this row is momentous because it was the last row we had to contend with obstacles. We had to deal with two lights and I’m happy to say that everything went quite swimmingly.

We only have two rows to go but I think we have a little work to do where the south wall meets the ceiling.  There are some sizable cracks that the tile is not going to be able to hide.

We’ll get up one more row and then try to figure out what our next move is. The crack shown in the picture above is probably the biggest problem we have to deal with.