Kitchen Space Ideas

Our kitchen is super tiny...I'm not talking about wanting a super big eat-in show place kitchen...this kitchen is not even big enough for all of our stuff...Or as we affectionately call this project,

Trying to fit 10 pounds of cr@p in a 5 pound sack.

Its not that the kitchen isn't nice, its nice enough....its just not big enough. We've never not had an eat in kitchen...that was a weird thing to get used to...HAVING to use the dining room....

Here's a shot of the sink wall.

Like the missing door on the sink cabinet.  I've got a theory on that...usually when you get cabinets on the inside of one of the sink doors is a sticker that shows the manf, the style and color for in case you want to order new cabinets to match...ours is missing...I've checked all over the kitchen for the manf sticker and there is none...I bet the PO's took it outta spite? I mean they appear to of taken the wall outlets when they left???

How do you get matching cabinets when you have no idea what you already own???

That space between our humoungous microwave and the dish drain is our main prep area! At least I got the knives up and out of the way.

Take a look at the lower cabinet door to the right of the dishwasher. Its a huge blind corner cabinet that is completely useless!!!

But we added these super cool multi-action sliding shelf things that let you access stuff waaaay in the back.

Because of the need for the shelves to clear the small door opening we have a net loss of space...but the space we do have we can use completely.

Now lets look at the West wall of the kitchen.

Believe it or not I think they actually did one thing right on this section.

The lower corner cabinet has a lazy susan!

We can actually use all that space.

Here's a weird thing about this section..

Its a weird corner-angled cabinet with no shelf that we've just sorta piled stuff into...not really a good use of this space...cept, I can't figure what would be a good use for it???

Here's the stove wall.

Little tight right?? It gets even better...

We want to remove the current stove and actually install our stove..

Problem is, its a 36" stove and the current stove is maybe 30"...we're going to have to remove that bank of drawers on the right and but in a skinnier unit...which actually works out for us as we don't have drawers for two of the bays anyways...

But that's a net loss of storage space...

A quick trip to IKEA yielded a pot/pan shelf which we put in over the doorway.

It's a little high but I can reach it okay.

So, even with the pot shelf and the cool sliding shelves we're already using all the space we got...

Well, except for....

This blind upper cabinet.

How can we use this space more intelligently? There is like 12" to the left of the door that's just completely useless...whoever designed this kitchen was really asleep on the job. A real corner cabinet with a lazy susan would of made this space actually useful...

This uh, nook?

Right now we put the recycling in it and the garbage next to it..and it looks kinda fugly....

What we'd like to do is turn this space into some kind of fabulous pull out pantry type of thing. I would love to get the garbage and recycling inside it AND have room for other things.

Anybody have any ideas on how to use this big tall space please let us know.

Cause we still would like to fit all of this stuff into the kitchen proper.

Our baking supplies.

The rest of our random appliances

oh, and the beer and soda too....

I'm having the suspicion that the cabinets came from one of the several uh, shady cabinet places in Oakland...you know, the kind of places where every things written in Chinese and they only accept cash??? I might just pull off the other sink door and take it around to all the cabinet places and see if they have a match.

And no we don't have any budget to 'blow out walls' and expand the size of the kitchen....

I also replaced the bad, bad, incandescent ceiling light.

With a good, good CFL model..

Wow, big change right?? Nope, The new model only uses 40W and it is slightly brighter than the old one.  With that and the addition of the under counter fluorescent lights I believe the kitchen is now title 24 compliant. I just need to change out the exhaust fan duct with rigid smooth wall ducting and I think all the code issues with the kitchen will be taken care of...

Why didn't they have the cabinets go all the way to the ceiling? In a kitchen this small every inch counts...

Happy Bday, Happy 4th, Happy End of Escrow, Happy House Warming

PaaaaaaarTaaaaayy!!!!!!

So, we had a ton of reasons to celebrate over the 4th of July weekend so we decided to have a big ole cook-out. We where celebrating a birthday, the 4th of July, the end of escrow on Chez 2.0 and well, we hadn't officially had a house warming party yet....annnnnd it was decided that I should finally get a 'grown-up' hair cut....

First Off, Check Out The Menu!!

Yummmmm, Tasty!


It was about a million degrees outside. Or at least it felt that way with me working the BBQ all day...

You can just see me in the corner at the grill...

Lots of ice water was drank.

We borrowed several pop-ups for shade for the food, and people.

There were cakes.

and cool kids...

And the main event...

It seems like we have 50 million good friends who are professional hair stylists...you know the type that work in fancy saloons and it costs like a million  dollars to get your hairs cut? Well, they've all been vying for the honor of whacking my 'do for a while now...cept that all of them were out of town for the holidays except one...so she got stuck doing it...I was really hoping for like a cage match to determine the winner but no dice.

Looks like someone cut off a horses tail or something...

Baby madmadscientist doesn't know what to make of daddy's new hair do.

I was completely prepared to have my head shaved clean but after the big whack was made all the woman in attendance liked the new 'do so much it was decided to just clean it up and go with it...

Couple thoughts on the new 'do. I feel so much lighter!! Showers go much quicker!! And I'm hardly going to use any shampoo...

Women have this irresistible need to play with it.. ;)

Anywho, good turn out for our first big party. Lots of people, and cute kids and cute babies...and lots of people who think we're absolutely barking mad for buying this place with all its many, serious issues....

We Have Tree!!

And it looks super healthy!

Y'all might remember when we were first looking at Chez 3.0 we were pretty worried about the huge, huge tree in the yard that looked dead?

Here's a shot

 

Looks pretty horrible don't it?

 

Well Take a look at it now!!

It does in fact appear to be a black walnut tree. The squirrels are having a field day eating the little proto walnuts...wonder if they are safe to eat for humans?

I just wish that the lower limbs weren't hacked off....those big branches are pretty high up for a tree house...we'll have to see what we can come up with.

There are several little girls who recently moved into the 'hood and who are our back fence neighbors, about the same age as baby madmadscientist, I'd love to do some sort of group family tree house thing.....hmmmmmmm

Ya I know, a post about a tree...but look how healthy it looks!!!!

We Need An Exterior Paint Job Badly...

Let's face facts...the exterior of our house is looking kinda fugly...

Well, not the entire exterior of the house but the South and West sides are looking fugly.

One the South side the paint is peeling off like its, its job. It's peeling off right down to the bare wood which seems kinda odd to me. I would think the old lead based paint wouldn't be budging...

Long shot of the south side of the house.

Closer up view.

See? Right down to the wood.

South front of the house.

This is the front corner from the house that everybody can see from the street...nice!

Here's what the window sill looks like in the front of the house.

But hey, check out the new curtains Mrs. Madmadscientist put up.

I forgot to take pictures of the garage doors but they look just as bad...

So far we've had one painting contractor come out and give us a bid on repainting the house....

How Not To Impress Us.

1. Miss the first appt.

2. Miss the 2nd appt.

3. Show up 2hrs late for 3rd appt.

4.Then walk around the house with me constantly trying to down sell me on the type of paint job I want done. 'You don't really need 3 colors do you??'  You don't really want me to scrape off all the old paint do you?? 'Restore the trim?? It'd be a lot faster/cheaper just to remove it!'

5. Take a phone call while I'm with you and proceed to argue about not paying a bill to a supplier for like 10 minutes!!!

6. Spend all of 5 minutes actually looking at the house..don't measure anything...and then come up with a price right there on the spot!?!?!?!?

Argh!! I swear the dude just pulled the biggest number out of his ass that he thought he could get away with... When he said it he even kinda looked at me sideways to see if I blinked... Like he was calculating in his head what the up charge would be because we're in a fancy neighborhood....

Any who, we will not be using this contractor. We need to find someone who is respectful of old Victorians and their special needs.

If anyone knows of a good, quality local painter I'd appreciate hearing about it.

We Need A New Roof!!!

And Now For Something Completely Different.

An entire post about roofs!

We've been talking with roofers recently about getting Chez 3.0 re-roofed....

Here's the situation.

The roof on the garage looks totally shot to us and you can even see where the cap shingles have disintegrated....

We've had two roofers come out so far and look at the house and they both said that the garage roof is completely shot. That the roof was most likely a cheapo 20yr 3 tab shingle that got cooked to death by the lack of venting. I have to admit the garages are SUPER freaking hot even when its not really hot outside.

Here's some shots of the roof of our house from space (don't you just love google!)

The West or front side of the house.

I didn't realize our roof line was so asymmetrical.

Do you see on the front of the house on the second floor between the two sets of bay windows what looks like a flat walkway? It's odd it a little flat roof that is tongue and groove!! Like a floor! Here's a pic.

It doesn't appear to be leaking now but wow, how to insure that it lasts a long time and still looks good?

Also, if you look closer at the little roof over the porch on the left hand side of the picture above you see some more interesting issues.

The north side is quite mossy.

The metal drip-rake edge is put on wrong. Its not supposed to be on top!

Here's you can see the built-up layers of roofing against the fish scale shingles. With no flashing in between. If water runs down that wall where's it going to go???

Here's another shot of the porch roof showing the condition of the shingles.

The East or back side of the house.

Looking out the little window in the gable you can see the shed roof. Which looks like this.

You can also see in the above the weird little flat roof the PO put on the house in the lower left corner. They enclosed an exterior stair well.

Here's a shot of the flat roof from the deck.

Here's a shot through the window.

Both roofers who have seen this say that its a piss-poor job and they are surprised that it doesn't leak.

One issue with fixing this roof is how close it comes to the existing window. Figuring out a way to flash this is going to be difficult I bet.

The North side of the house.

The South side of the house.

An odd thing about the south side of the roof. there is this little ledge that is covered in seriously deteriorated metal. Here's a shot of it through the window.

We've met with two roofers so far and have gotten back proposals from each...

Wow, getting this roof done right is going to cost a pretty penny.

I've got one more roofer scheduled to come by and quote the job but so far the two bids are about 10k apart.

The cheaper bid is from an older established roofer using what I think are old fashioned and slightly substandard materials and methods. The higher bid is from a younger guy and he appears to be using modern materials and methods that are more in line with what my research is telling me a quality roofing job should entail.

I told both roofers that I wanted a quality job that would look nice and be in character for the house/neighborhood and would last at least 40yrs.

Even though its more expensive I got a much better vibe from the younger guy. One thing I liked also about the younger guy was he thought the roofs on the house had a couple of years left in them...the garage shingles are dead he said but the house roof wasn't in super horrible shape.

What might possibly happen if we can't swing the roof is we'll band aid the garage roof through another rainy season and hopefully get the entire place re-roofed next spring.

We'll see what the third guy comes up with.

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YAY!!!!! WE'RE URBAN BEE KEEPERS!!!!!!!

Oh, Wait, No.......

Here's an update to the bees in the wall story.

Well have we got bees....we gots lots and lots and lots of bees....

Y'all will remember from an earlier post that we have a bee hive in the wall on the North side of the house.

When we bought the house it was cold outside and there where only like one or two bees that we'd see.  We knew we had to remove it but we didn't think it was anything that big of a deal...

Well, now that its warm outside the swarm of bees outside the hive entrance is quite HUGE!!!

You can actually see the cloud of bees quite clearly in the afternoon from the neighbors yard....if the cloud of bees is proportional to the size of the hive then...we have a fricken huge hive!!!

Turns out its really hard to take pictures of bees, even with Mrs. Madmadscientist's fancy pants camera but here are a couple of tries.

Those shots were taken in the morning when the swarm was still small. 

I think I've figured out where they are in the structure of the house.

Take a look at this pic.

I can hear a clicking/water dripping noise from that area. I think the bees came in at the pipe penetration and expanded horizontally into the joist bay.

But Wait, There's More!!!

A couple of weeks ago there was like a freaky horror movie sized swarm outside the house for a couple of hours....guess what that means??...yep the original hive got too big for its britches and divided!!

Where did the new colony go???

Oh, about 10 feet to the left and started a new hive!! Also in our walls!!!! Hurray!!!!! We're urban beekeepers!!! I don't know if this is normal but the ground outside the old hive was literally covered with dead bees? Maybe it was a bloody coup?

Here's the entrance to the new hive.

That's the exhaust pipe for an old gas wall heater that was in baby madmadscientist's room at one time....somebody removed the heater and patched the wall but didn't bother to remove the venting pipe!!  I guess that they thought that the single layer of duct tape would be a sufficient barrier....

Here's a shot from the inside. You can just make out the ghosted outline of the old wall heater.

If you put your ear to the wall here you can totally hear bees buzzing and going about their work. It looks like they have access to this entire stud bay....Hurray!!!!!

So, now we've got two hives....all we need now is a chicken coop and we'll be super hip urban farmers!! Hurray!!!!

Help!!!

We need to remove these bees ASAP. My neighbor on that side is getting pretty pissed off at us for not doing it sooner. The bees poop all over their car (it's yellow) and they wash it a couple times a week now....

Also, we can't really reroof or repaint until they are gone...

I looked into having them removed safely by a pro.

It seems like such a raw deal for us. Here's how it works. You pay them ~$600 per hive and they will come out and bust into your walls and remove the bees and the comb and the honey. Then you are responsible for cleaning up the rest of the mess (which I've heard is substantial) and repairing the damage yourself!!! We don't even get to keep the honey!!! All told, I'm estimating that it will cost like $3k to solve this issue....

OR...

I can buy some poison and nuke both hives and be done with it for under $100....

I don't want to do that. I understand how important bees are to the survival of the human race. If the bees go, we go a couple of weeks later...

But c'mon bee keepers...do you see why more hives get nuked than safely removed?

My ideal solution:

I'd like to work with the removal team to remove the portions of the house that need to be in a way that will make it as easy as possible to replace. Then I want the dang honey!!!! We could give it away as gifts to our neighbors to make up for the inconvenience. Then, well, I don't want to pay for it of course...

What I find funny about urban bee keeper folks is when you tell them the situation they really, really, pour on the 'don't kill them please!!!!' stuff but then when you ask them to remove them they're like, 'oh we only take hives if they are in a bush reachable without a ladder'!?!?!?!!? LAME!!

C'mon beekeeper save-the-bees types. Put your money where your mouth is!!!