Kitchen!!

So the idea of installing the perfectly good stove has been placed in my head by my mother. Since my dad is doing all the work, I feel that it is unfair to pressure him into doing any one thing. I mean we did share what the kitchen facilities looked like before, but I have the electric skillet, everything was OK. Apparently, mom nagged dad enough that he finally gave in. He cut out the old stove, counter top and all (we are not planning to remove the existing counter anytime soon) and we ran into problem #1.

You see the existing range was a gas range and this is the gas line protruding 6" out of the wall. The new electric stove will not fit into this space with the gas line sticking out. Dad looks at me and says, "I don't do gas. You're going to have to call someone to do this." I call someone, they come out for 5 minutes & cut this line down. Another $55. Sigh.

Problem #2:

The electrical to support the oven does not exist. We had to buy the 6-3 wire and wire it into the fuse box. And by we, I mean my dad and Bob. Dad did most of the work, Bob pitched in here and there. The results are marvelous, and have encouraged me to make some appliance changes in the kitchen.

See how pretty it all is together? Yes. That is a double oven that you see! Some of the classics are still around:

• Picture of dad with incredible amount of food on the microwave
• Orsi's Olive Oil
• Cereal Dispenser from work
• Tea kettle

Things that don't work yet:

• Dishwasher. Yeah it's dirty, but apparently it also sucks!
• The water dispenser in the fridge
• The window on the right hand side
• The lazy susan

Things that are still incredibly disgusting:

The exhaust hood fan used without a grease filter for YEARS!. It's only vented to somewhere in the attic, so it's really not that useful anyway.

Landscaping...

So Bear and I are not the gardening, lawn mowing type of people. In fact, we have outsourced our lawn mowing, which makes our marriage a happier union. How do we maintain the exterior of The Pitt? I have a co-worker and friend that loves gardening; loves it so much that she has volunteered to come over and garden. Garden the 2 acre Pitt. She made an appearance this weekend with her Subaru and a Pickaxe. We had to remove the bushes right next to the house so we can install the new windows, replace the rotting framing, and change the siding. I didn't like the way they looked anyway, so I'm not to upset about it.

So you can truly appreciate the amount of work we put in, check out the before picture:


See all the bushes? This weekend they are GONE! FOREVER!

Step One: The Subaru



Step Two: Pull




Step Three: Pickaxe

Step Four: No more bushes!!




We weren't the only ones exhausted in this process. These guys ate dinner and went right to bed:

Looks Can be Deceiving

As many of you know I love to cook, bake, and generally spend a good amount of time in the kitchen. So what's the kitchen like in The Pitt? Well it leaves a lot to be desired. Let's focus on the appliances:


This is where looks can be deceiving. The dishwasher? Not hooked up. Now many have pointed out to me that the dishwasher is probably one of the cleanest places in the house. I mean, it's only used for washing, right? I just don't trust it. It looks OK on the inside, but take a look at the range below. Would you trust anything that came from a house where the range looked like this?



They were using this to cook food on people. FOOD! FOOD THAT WAS MEANT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION!!! OF COURSE I DON'T TRUST THE DISHWASHER!! I have to admit that I have been considering it. Did you see the clean dishes above the dishwasher? We do a lot of dish washing and it's getting old.

I don't have an oven, so baking is out. Although I did briefly experiment with crock pot baking, I decided that waiting for the real oven may be worth it. Let me introduce you to my kitchen cooking tools:

The Cuisinart Electric Skillet. This is the BEST thing ever if you don't have a real kitchen. It's an extra burner - the only one I have right now that really works. I make a lot of potatoes here. Roasted potatoes, onion potatoes, slightly boiled potatoes, potatoes and cauliflower. This is my #1 recommended cooking appliance for those of you without a kitchen.

The hot plate. UL approved. This means that my house shouldn't blow up if I use it properly. It also means that it takes this thing 45 MINUTES TO BOIL WATER!! Those sweet potatoes? They've been on there for 1 hour. SWEET POTATOES?!?!? Sigh. I try to avoid the hotplate as much as possible, or if necessary I'll pre-heat for 30 minutes.

The good news is that if we can successfully cut out the nasty range, remove cabinetry from underneath, run the correct 6-3 wire to the kitchen, and situate the oven - I may have one sooner than later. Maybe the Kitchen Aids will make an appearance again!

Let there be a Toilet

Today is truly a happy day. My friends, today I have a toilet in the same room as the shower. This means that in the middle of the night, or right before bed, I will no longer have to travel four miles to the other side of the house to do my business. The days of contemplating squatting in the shower are over, and peeing before showering in the morning is once again a reality all because of this glorious toilet.

Toilet Before Installation

See how pretty it is? See how it shines? Yes. I know. It's the most beautiful thing we've ever seen too.

Living in the Pitt

We usually get one reaction when people walk through the front door of the Pitt,

"Wow," big pause. "Wow."

Now this wow means usually one of two things. "Wow. This place has got a lot of potential," or "Wow. What were you guys thinking?" People have openly expressed that it stresses them out to walk through our house. They have no idea where they would start, because there is so much to do. As they sit in one of our couches their eyes never settle, they are constantly looking around at yet another thing that needs to be done. These are the people that suggest we paint a wall or fully decorate a room to make the "situation better." It never fails that these guys try to focus on the positive things in the house, "You guys have a really nice washer & dryer, " or my favorite so far, "That's a really nice faucet." And those are the two new things in the house that we bought. The problem is, everything we've done to the house so far cannot be seen from the inside. The roof, plumbing, electrical is all invisible, but makes the quality of our life so much better. And everything we've tried to do on the inside (the bathroom) has been a bit of a disaster.

The people that really love the house spend a lot time making suggestions about what we can turn the basement into; bowling alley, shuffle board, shooting range, or swimming pool. They think the windows are great, the layout is awesome, and the property is beautiful.

So what is it really like living in the Pitt? It's totally normal to us. Yeah, I have to walk to the other side of the house to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, the hotplate takes 40 minutes to boil water and I can't safely walk around without shoes on, but it's OK. The Wii works, I have hot water, and even better I don't run out of hot water if I'm the second to shower, I don't feel cramped, the dogs have a long hallway to chase a ball in, the rabbits have a huge condo, someone else is mowing my lawn, things magically happen while I'm at work - I can't complain. Let us assure you. We really love the Pitt, we know it's going to take a while to get it to a place where everyone walks in and says "wow" in the good way, but the important thing is, is that we see that "wow" now.

Bathroom fiasco, etc,

Things have been going pretty well overall. We ordered a vanity and counter top for the guest bathroom. That order was going to take a month, so in the meantime, we did a few other things. We installed the new washer and dryer we bought when we first got the house; they work great. We also did the part of the roof over the garage (since we had the materials, we decided to do that now rather than wait for the fall; I took a day off work to help get it done). We also finished the peaks and valleys, so the roof is 100% done now. Tile has been installed on the floor of the bathroom, but not the walls (we wanted the vanity and counter top in first so we could tile around them).

So the vanity and counter top arrived. The vanity is great shape; we're happy with that. The counter top, on the other hand, had at least 3 major problems. First, it was the wrong size. It should have been an inch deeper. (Note, the people at the store did the sizing for us to fit the vanity, so not our fault). We could potentially work around this by putting a block of wood between the backsplash and the wall and painting or tiling it. Second, the left edge should have been unfinished so it would go flush against the wall, but it was finished and thus slightly rounded, so it didn't go in properly. That is unfixable. Finally, the left side backsplash (a separate piece) was the wrong height, and the edges were finished when they shouldn't have been, so there was no way to join it with the countertop.









This all may actually have worked out for the best, though. The counter top just didn't look very good, especially considering how much it cost. The color combined with the matte finish came out pretty cheap-looking. So for the replacement, we'll be getting a Corian counter instead. It's a bit more expensive, but hopefully we'll be happier with it.

Finally, there was a sale on Anderson windows, so we ordered replacement windows for the whole house (probably won't arrive for a month). Windows are expensive; it'll be almost $11k. But the house desperately needs them, and it will allow us to fix the rotted framing under many of the existing windows. With that stuff fixed, we may even start painting.

Moving In

Since we got the place, we'd been moving stuff over so as to avoid a huge effort at the last minute. This was fairly successful, as we have a ton of stuff that we really should get rid of (but are too lazy to go through -- and with all this space, why bother :) But there were still a lot of things that couldn't go until the very end (e.g., furniture, dishes, food, clothing, etc.) So we got help from some friends (both physically and vehicularly), and got it all in as of Wednesday night (the first night we spent in the house). Frankly, it's amazing how much crap we have.




But let's back up for a minute. Our immediate goal since getting the house was to get it "move-in ready." We did the roof, but we also needed a working bathroom. To recap, the original plan was to keep the fully-functional (if somewhat nasty) guest bath (for the next year) and demo the master bath. However, in the process of demoing the master bath, a lot of rotting was discovered, and in order to fix it, we had to demo both (they share a wall).

So we found a tub/shower, tile, toilet, vanity, countertop, exhaust fan and fixtures -- everything you need for a basic bathroom. Unfortunately, the countertop and vanity wouldn't arrive in time for move-in (in fact, it'll be a couple weeks yet), and the plumbing needed to be replaced (we switched from plastic to copper). The plumbing took longer than expected, resulting in a working shower/tub at the last minute -- but no toilet (there wasn't time to put the tile down), and still no sinks. But father in-law was able to jerry-rig the toilet in the bathroom off the kitchen (which is currently doubling as a tool and materials storage area). For a sink, we had to replace the kitchen faucet because the hot water knob was broken.


View from the corner. Note the missing drywall above the shower.


View from the door. Sink hookups visible. Like our towel rack?


Jerry's toilet in the storage area.

So the move-in situation was: tub/shower in guest bath, toilet in kitchen bath (on the opposite side of the house), and sink in the kitchen. As if all of this wasn't enough "fun," it turns out that the bathtub faucet that we picked out has an "anti-scald" feature -- basically, there's an internal knob that determines how hot it can get at the hottest setting. This was not adjusted when it was installed, so our first shower was...very lukewarm. Orsi's dad talked her through how to fix that over the phone :)

For now, we have a number of tasks. Bob basically finished cleaning up the shingles outside (finally), while Orsi's been organizing the kitchen and clothes. We also washed a couple carpets and floors, and put a small Ikea island in the kitchen. We have the fridge plugged in in a temporary location, but we can't install our other kitchen appliances until we replace the countertop (we're thinking of going cheapest possible for now, e.g., pre-cut formica). And we have to clean out the basement room that the previous residents vented the dryer to before Orsi's dad will install the new one (which will require working in that room). It's actually pretty amazing how much better the place looks with a little cleaning (and we do mean a little).





Pets are settling in. The dogs love the ginormous backyard.


The yard is blooming.