Archive

Archive for February, 2008

IKEA hacking + door handles

February 15th, 2008

After weeks of saying “I’ll install the cabinets in the master bathroom tomorrow” I finally hunkered down last Saturday and did it. The reason it took so long was because we had a bit of a technical challenge: the IKEA legs were too tall and the cabinets couldn’t rest on the floor because they would have been too low. That, and like the rest of the 85-year-old house, the floor isn’t quite level.

I decided that the best course of action was to use a ledger board to hold up the back of the cabinet on a level line and find some shorter legs for the front of the cabinets. Skipping over the fact that it took me almost four hours to attach three cabinets to a wall and get them level.

I’m also lucky that the kick plate will hide my jury-rigged leveling system for the front of the cabinets…

If you look closely at the bottom you can see some of my “handiwork”.

The door handles.

Our floors are shiny.

Our House

New Auntie & Uncle

February 10th, 2008

We’re happy to announce that tonight at 8 PM we became Auntie & Uncle to Avery Lopez Moad. Agnes’ sister added the first grandchild to her side of the family tree.

Agnes’ sister was still recovering so we couldn’t get any pictures of her, but Sam just couldn’t get enough of his son!

Congratulations to Lee & Sam!

Blah

Smoking around newborns + The Floor Fiasco Update

February 7th, 2008

So it had started very badly:

Our floors were the wrong color, our baseboards were trashed, and the same crew that did the bang-up job was back again to fix their mistakes. That foul-up meant our kitchen was still incomplete, further delaying our final electrical stuff and countertop installation.

Then our countertop and appliance supplier shocked us with the news that AMEX was not an acceptable form of payment — just as we were making the deposit.

While those were big problems they weren’t anything that couldn’t be solved with some more research, a good attitude, and a malted milkshake from Powells Dairy Freeze in Starke, Florida.

I snapped this picture as nonchalantly as I could. The young mother was sitting directly across from her newborn baby…smoking a freaking cigarette and blowing smoke (inadvertently, I hope) right back into the baby’s carrier.

The reason for the stop, other than the fine milkshakes at Powells, was because we found an alternate countertop supplier in Gainesville, Indigo Green Home store. We were incredibly excited to go because the perfect substitute for the CaesarStone we had chosen was the recycled glass countertops from Coverings Etc.:

…that is, until they rung up at $4600 $ a slab (and we needed 3). $14000 for counters was a little bit out of our budget for this project.

The trip wasn’t a total loss. We put in an order for a bamboo counter for our master bath. That should really add some nice spa-like qualities to the room.

Continuing our upward trend was the flooring company’s surprising 180-degree turnaround on the floors. They went from mismatched, discolored, and dull to deep, mysterious, dark, and glossy. We are extremely happy with the results of the second run at the job.

The living room

Dining room (temporary table)

The kitchen with ADEL birch cabinet doors

A view of the APC Cork plank floor. It’s soft!

Agnes’ studio

Our House