Kitchen And Bath

Breakfast nook area. Finally got it all primered, painted and once we get the window sill painted, it will be finished. This tiny room was a pain in the ass to do. High ceilings, a fridge to work around, and very high built in shelving made taking off the wallpaper up there, primering, and painting quite the task. Thanks to The Steve Miller Band, which gave me the perfect amount of mellow vibes, and "let's get this bitch done!" attitude, I produced a finished product without a single cussword! Bliss!

Before. Bad mold problems, bad..well just about everything.

Already 10x better! New walls, mold free, and out with the old and in with the new.

Freshly painted walls. Still needs work but definitly stepping into the light!

My problem kitchen wall. In the end we were forced to put up new drywall.

Freshly painted. The kitchen still has a ton of work. I still need to primer all the cabinets so they can be painted and I'm still trying to figure out what to do about a few little things. You can't tell in the picture, but the kitchen and bathroom are a very faint yellow.

Fun House Stuff - Week 2

An interesting "stamp" we found on the chimney up in the attic.

Old wallpaper, like seriously old, that we found in the attic on a dividing wall. This won't be going anywhere.

Apparently, the ceiling in the second bedroom was lowered. There's still wallpaper on this part as you can see. Good hiding spot though, huh?

My time capsule. "This home proudly renovated by Mr. & Mrs. Johnson and Mr. AmericanHorse April 2011". This will be under the new flooring going in in the bedroom. One day in the distant future when one of our daughters decides it's time to renovate again, they'll find this and see the hard work mom and dad put into the house that came from gramma. I hope.

New ceiling and walls in the small hallway. Like my spackle job? I do! Once it's good and dried, I can sand it down and paint this baby!

Chicken Tetrazzini

A simple, easy, quick dinner that has so many flavors, it's like it cooked on the stove for hours. This only took about 30 minutes, which I'm a huge fan of right now because I've had next to no time to really cook much but stuff like this! I did make a fresh batch of artisan bread, a couple loaves of english muffin bread and I made no bake fudge cookies. For a couple of hours that morning, I felt normal. I felt like I didn't have anything else to do in the world but cook and bake. It was good!

My Least Favorite Part...And Food On The Brain

Back entry/laundry room. This wallpaper is on really good, it's not coming off. So, I have to paint over it. I put some primer on a spot to see how bad it would leak through because it is pretty colorful and it's also kinda glossy. After my test, I determined it will take 3 coats of primer to cover this puke like stuff up.

Part of kitchen and breakfast nook. Tedious and annoying but in the end, totally worth it all. Everything you see except the cupboards, has been primered so it's all white right now.

Tedious - adj; tiresomely long; wearingsome.

Annoy - v.; cause slight anger or mental distress to; be somewhat angry.

This is how I feel right now. I didn't take pictures of what I did today, but I started the detail on the kitchen, kitchen nook, and am not to far from starting the back entry/laundry room. This is by far, the most tedious thing I've done in a very long time. There are really high ceilings in this part of the house, so I'm climbing up and down the ladder constantly. I have a fridge I'm working around, a washer and dryer I'm working around, an electrical box, intercom system, utility sink, heaters, and numerous light switches or outlets. It's very slow work, and probably 50% of it has to be done with a paint brush, making it that much slower.

I knew this would be my least favorite part, which is why I saved the bulk of it for last. None of this work includes the trim, window sills, door frames, or kitchen cabnits that also have to be painted. I have a lot of work ahead of me and my personal goal of getting this house done by the 1st, is not going to happen.

Of course, whenever you work on a house, especially one this old, you have to expect delays. The floor was a huge delay and is still a work in progress trying to get the glue off without damaging the hard floors. Having to put up new drywall was a big delay as well, but all this is necessary and the results are gonna be amazing I think. A good friend of ours has been helping us, so today he was installing a bathroom fan, which was non-existant before causing serious mold problem. So he was up in the attic a lot. He found some interesting things up there like a dry erase board..?? Also an old ceiling fan, seriously old lanolium, rugs, and some weird coat rack type thing. I was kinda hoping for someones old money stash or a few gold bars, but oh well...maybe next time. Have I mentioned that I finished up an entire 5 gallon tub of primer and need about 2 more gallons? That's some serious primering.

Food? I plan on making dutch oven chicken tetrazzini tonight. Plan being the key word, I'm sort of beat after my busy afternoon.

Easter Baskets

The girls' Easter baskets, can't wait to see their faces light up in the morning!

Casita Project - One Week In

The second bedroom wall that I tried to fix...it just wasn't going to work so we...

Put up new drywall! I'm glad I have a husband who knows how to do this kind of fun stuff. I also got all new walls in the bathroom, and some in the kitchen.

This is the living room window bench. I'm sort of bummed that I didn't get a very good before picture. It was paneled. I primered that today but I'm not sure what to do with the cushions that go there. They're perfect for the window but the fabric is pretty old. I have to look into something that I can do to recover them, I just don't have money to have it done professionally. We shall see what I can come up with. Can't wait to paint this and pull it all together.

My new wall in the kitchen. Primered and ready for paint. This too has paneling that we are painting.

Master bedroom. This was gold wallpaper and panel. I primered that today too, so next time I have a good day to work, I can get this painted. The floor is still a work in progress. We have managed to scrape most of the glue and padding off, but left some in hopes that the heavy duty sander that we will be renting to sand all the hard floors will take the rest of this off. If that works well for us, we would have saved ourselves about 3 days worth of scraping inch by inch by hand. This is back breaking work for sure!

I tell you, as soon as I get Miss Mia to bed, I plan on having a good drink to top off my hard work today. Thank you Closterkeller for keeping me company.

Casita Day...I've Lost Track Now

Bedroom. Marks old bedroom to be specific. This has been scraped to death, sanded well, and holes have been patched. Today, since my spackle will be good and dry, I will run the sander over it once more, texture this baby, and will be ready to paint. New trim will also be necessary for this room. Coming along well I think.

This is the floor that we found under the "pile" of carpets. Can you believe it? It's in near perfect condition and once it's been sanded and refinished, this is going to look like a brand new expensive floor. And to think these were dime a dozen decades ago. I should have taken a picture of the green carpet that was under the yellow/orange carpet. The padding that was under the second carpet has to be scraped off inch by inch and by hand. Blood, sweat, and tears baby!

Peruvian Chicken

All in the pot and ready for the long, slow cook in the oven.

Out of the oven. I had to remove the chicken here so that I could thicken it a bit with cornstarch. A step not necessary, but optional.

The chicken. This was yummy, but SOOO spicy! A few weeks ago, I realized that I've never even thought of attempted to make an authentic Peruvian dish. I know, right? My husband is Peruvian, so I'm not sure what took me so long. Sorry dear! So I got to searching and found a ton of recipes. They're so easy! This one took me a whole 10 minutes to prepare before shoving it into the oven for a couple hours.

The spice was...WOW! Milk was definitly needed at the dinner table tonight. So I just poured some olive oil on the bottom of my dutch oven, then placed a bed of thick sliced onions, then the chicken, then the salsa, 1 TBSP ground chipolte, 2 tsp cumin, 1 tsp garlic powder, salt & pepper to taste, topped with fresh chopped tomatoes, and a bit of white cooking wine. Throw the lid on, toss it in a preheated oven set for 300, and slow cook for 2 hours. Serve over rice. Easy. Will do this again for sure AND this is one of those recipes that's perfect for those days you just don't want to cook, and all the ingredients are staple. Dosen't much better than that!

Haven't worked on the house today. I'm anxious to get started tomorrow, I'm starting to feel restless about it.

Casita And Strawberries

Breakfast. A good way to start a long, productive day.

The bathroom in the Casita. The light fixture is being replaced, I've already got that but need my husband to remove this old one for me. I don't do anything with electricity. In this picture I had started to remove the wallpaper, but didn't finish. As you can see, it started coming off differently than the rest of the walls. I also had this problem in the kitchen which is on the other side of the wall.

Wondering why I couldn't seem to get to the "bottom" of the layer(s) I finally investigated in a hidden corner. There NO drywall. Is that one word or two? The house is old enough that when it was built, with real wood and from top to bottom, they simply stapled or nailed a thick paper type layer onto the wall that could either be painted or papered. In this case, I think it was painted light blue and then wallpaper has been added over and over and over again creating a very different wall to work with. This is why they have "texture". Highly toxic crap in a spray bottle that makes the wall look like it should, with a nice orange peel texture to it. A bit on the spendy side, but still cheaper than gutting and putting up drywall. I just need to be careful with a few walls and all should go well.

Another angle. I plan on leaving the bottom half the way it is. It's actually pretty recent, and with a good cleaning, it will look nice with fresh paint and better fixtures. The window however, needs a lot of love. I took off the really old window shade and valance, and took a good look at the sill. As of yet, I have never refinished any kind of wood and have always been turned off at the idea. It just seems to easy to ruin. But, after a few thoughtful moments I figured what the hell! Why not? It's small enough that if I do ruin it I can always sand it down again and paint it white. So, in case you haven't guessed it, I'm going to sand all the crap off of it and re-finish it.

A different angle from the living room and on into the dining room. The blue that you see is the really old carpet padding, from the 50's I think, that dosen't come off easily. If we weren't attempting to preserve the original hard floors underneath this, I personally would take a snow shovel to this and be done with it.

We are also discussing the benefits of removing this old wood burning stove. Now, this is a hot topic right now. So many pro's and con's. No rentee is going to go somewhere to chop wood and do that whole thing, it's a major fire hazard in such a small house, and it dosen't have a proper hearth. On the flip side of that, taking it out would mean a lot of work towards patching the holes that it's going to leave.

The pro's are that it would slash electricity bills by half. Really? That's it? So far, we are leaning towards removing it and calling it good. We'll see.

Old Pictures Of Our Yard, Just For Fun.

One corner. Ugh, this brings back memories of being overwhelmed.

Side yard. See the wonderful rhubarb? See the 10' dill?

The pond and overgrown bushes. You can't even see the "waterfall" that goes into the pond, and would you believe that we had already done a ton of work here? The path to the far right of the picture was competly covered.

Day 2 Of Project La Casita...And Sausage Rolls

Sausage rolls. I made these a few days ago.

Most of the kitchen and breakfast nook. Today I finished pulling most of the wallpaper off throughout the whole house. Except the bathroom, that's when I decided to switch gears and help out my husband with the carpet(s) Anyways, I managed all this and even got the wallpaper off the cupboards...who does that? I'm also thinking that the paneling needs to come off. I was going to paint it because painted panels can look pretty descent if done right, but this is starting to fall apart. I'm scared to see what's behind it. Dare I?

We started pulling up carpet today. I mentioned once before that there was another carpet under this one, guess what's under the second carpet? Hard wood floors! Score! Time will tell if they're damaged or not and if we will need to go ahead with the new flooring...that's sitting in my garage. It would be nice to have original floors, just sand and polish them up and just maybe the original charm can be put back in the house.

Second bedroom walls. After I tackled this pain in the ass wall a bit more today, I found a third wallpaper. I'm so tired of wallpaper. Thanks to all the wallpaper in this house and the number it's done to the walls, I have to re-texture the entire house. I also shopped a bit for the house and bought some new bathroom fixtures including a new light. Will be finishing the bathroom wallpaper removal job tomorrow. Without giving any details, this job will require a mask and seriously heavy duty gloves. And loud music. I spent about 2 hours pulling nails out of the walls, and taking down window "fixtures" of all sorts.

The breakfast nook has high ceilings, I need a bigger ladder to get all the way up there to remove the rest of that wallpaper, which will only take about 5 minutes once I'm up there. I also want to do this with someone else in the house, it's an awkward spot and falling is a possibility. Safety first I guess.

Project La Casita

This is my new project. I can't stop til it's done and if all goes well, it will be done and ready to be rented out in a few weeks. Until then, this will be my life. I won't be gardening, I won't be baking for fun, and I won't be sitting around reading cookbooks. I will be ripping down wallpaper, tearing out carpets, painting, fixing, perfecting. This house has a special place in my husbands heart I think because he grew up living in this house. There's also a mother-in-law house in the back, or a studio, whichever you want to call it. I have a ton of before pictures, but will slowly put them up depending on which room I will be working on. This is the dining room.

This wallpaper is seriously thick and for some reason, they put 2 layers on it for me. Thanks. Lucky me if came off pretty quickly and easily once I got an edge off. I don't have to use any chemicals or anything, just some elbow grease, blood, sweat and maybe a tear or two, because I will be sanding the hell out of these walls. There's also a few holes to say the least.

All window "treatments" will be coming off. Im sort of nervous about that. It's such an old house that the window sills are very different and I'm not sure they will support the blinds that I bought to replace everything I'm taking down. The blinds will be the last thing I do so until then, I can only wonder.

This room has nice hard floors, so they are just going to be cleaned and polished. The flooring throughout the rest of the house will be replaced with hard floors. I think the biggest and hardest job will be removing the carpet. I pulled up a few corners yesturday hoping and praying that there would be original hard floors under it, only to find ANOTHER carpet underneath the one that had been there at least 35 years. The padding under the second carpet, at least around the edges, crumbled when I touched it. Silent yayy...

Vodka And Vodka

The vodka I used for cooking tonight...and I poured myself some. Nice and crisp out of the freezer.

Vodka cream sauce simmering.

I made some chicken with tarragon for my husband. How dare I ever serve him a dish without some form of meat on it. Mia and I just had the pasta. My white russian went well with this.

My Rhubarb. It's at least tripled in size and I've been doing good at keeping slugs and snails away. Very soon, the area around this will be tilled and weed free and ready for the vegetable garden.

Bye-bye horseradish! This little garden has hydrangea, trillium, some sort of small lily, and really cool ferns that are almost dainty, I found a tag once and it was some sort of Japanese fern. I cleared this out a few weeks ago, but just a few days ago went at it again with a shovel. I pulled one horseradish root out that was almost 3 1/2 feet long! The smell of the root almost knocked me out. I've been trying to geted rid of it since we moved in. It's proven to be quit the fighter! I don't have plans to plant here, when the ferns and the hydrangea are in full bloom, it's all perfectly situated.

This is one of the front gardens. Mia and I spent 3 hours clearing, pulling, raking, and trimming this area. This is where my peonies are. At this moment I have a tomato cage helping them train, but think I may go get some real peonie cages today so I can sit back and watch them grow. I also have a ton of blue bells, a pink dogwood tree that is gorgous during summer and a few lilies that do still bloom (at least I think I kept the right ones) This is where I pulled countless "dead" lily bulbs. I have some tulips in another garden that need to be moved and I think this is where I want them. There are a few open spots that would do good with a nice hearty flower.

We also just got the tiller fixed so we are about to seriously rock' n' roll with gardening and I can't wait, we have veggies to plant!

I haven't done much cooking lately. I've been battling a migraine, no sleep, and a busy schedule. We've spent time outside in the yard, time away from home, a dinner out with friends and last night we BBQ'd. It's been a nice break for sure. Soon I will be doing a lot of experimenting with white cakes. I've had trouble with this in the past and I'm not stopping until I find a good white cake recipe that comes out perfect because I want white cake for Isabels birthday. Stay tuned!

Dare I?

I've been researching cakes for Isabels 1st birthday. I want butterflies all over the big one and found this. Minus the fondant. This could be challenging and I'm honestly a bit scared.

The Good, The Bland, And The Ugly!

Fish taco's. I debated whether or not I would even mention these sad, little pathetic taco's but decided it would be a good outlet for me to get over the distress I went through with these. I has this recipe I had been wanting to try forever. So finally, I had all the right ingredients. I also bought masa mix to make my own corn tortillas. I recently watched the girls at the last dinner party do it, and it looked so easy so I thought there would be no problem at all. Wrong. I don't know what I did or didn't do, but for the life of me, they just wouldn't come out right. After the first batch was a bust, I went online for reinforcements and tried a new recipe. Bad, just bad. After trying a third time with a third recipe, it too, came out bad. Now my feelings are hurt and honestly a bit embarrassed and by this time, I had used the whole bag of masa. Shit, lucky me, I had corn tortillas on hand and just heated them up. My husband once told me a long time ago "you fail at the most basic of tasks (cooking) and master the most difficult." He gently reminded me of this again. Now my kitchen is in complete disarray, my brain is annoyed, and I'm thinking Taco's Guaymas for dinner. But I sucked it up and started my fish taco's. I followed the recipe and did everything as it said with the exception of the mango salsa. I added cilantro and a bit of sugar. That wasn't bad at all, even the cabbage mix wasn't bad. It was all the fish. I was suppose to slice the fillets, drizzle them with a butter and spice mixture and then bake them for 6 minutes or until they flaked. Well, it came out very bland. You could definitly taste the fish, but not the flavoring. Who wants to eat unflavored Cod? Not I said this momma. If I did it again, I would have tripled the spice called for. Anyways, now my kitchen is a real mess. Like the mess that takes an hour to clean type of mess and I'm frazzled and running in circles. So I put that damb things together and maybe they look good in the picture, but I was disappointed. My husband didn't mind them and Mia did the usual mess of her dinner plate, but with all the time I spent on these and the gigantic mess I looked forward to not cleaning, maybe I was being biased and refusing to allow myself to enjoy them. It was a good call on adding cilantro and sugar to the mango salsa, that really helped close up my wounded pride of failed tortillas and bland fish. Last summer at one of our dinner parties, we had fish taco's. Baja fish taco's to be exact, and they took a ton of work and even more ingredients, but they were hands down the best I've ever had. Next time, I will go that extra mile to relish in success and end up with a full belly. I crossed this recipe out of my cookbook that I used and wrote - NOT GOOD! I made dinner rolls yesturday afternoon, not sure what was for dinner but knew it would need to be something to go good with these. Mia helped me roll some, she had fun.

So I made spaghetti. I didn't do the usual slow cook like I like to, I just got it done so I could eat. I was hungry.

Tagliatelle Carbonara

Carbonara. A traditional Italian pasta dish. For this to be authentic, it must always contain bacon pieces and eggs. This was so simple! You heat oil, add chopped bacon, cook for a few minutes, add finely chopped garlic. Cook until bacon is crisp. Remove from heat. While doing the bacon, your pasta should be cooking. Place cooked pasta in colander. Scrape every bit of bacon, garlic, and fat into pot you just cooked the pasta in. Return pasta to pot. Put back on heat but do not cook. Take your 3 very well scrambled eggs and pour over pasta. Mix well immediatly and do not stop until it's well mixed and eggs have begun to set. Serve immediatly and garnish with fresh grated parmesan cheese and fresh chopped parsley. This dish is not for anyone being cautious of what they eat. It's almost sinful.