100 happy days :: day 99

the final coat of red paint on the kitchen floor.

another step in our long process.

we're getting there, slowly but surely.

100 happy days :: day 81

these are a selection of the little quotes and drawings i'm working on in the new kitchen. they will line the baseboards and have meaning for us in various ways...either because they are favorite sayings, or were said by our respective fathers or because they amuse us in some way. i've limited the palette to only black, red and a few gold or silver accents here and there, which has been both restrictive and a good thing. i love how they're turning out.

the cool kitchen :: an update on the progress

great strides have been made in the kitchen since our last update. i've shown you this red door before, but now it's hung up and the chalkboard has been painted next to it. i just love it!!

husband carefully crafted this 4 meter long kitchen island and he's putting it in place before the final coat of paint goes onto the floor. it's magnificent. and it's made from scrap wood from the harbor, so it's also upcycled. he's incorporated some very fine details. he's getting pretty good at this working with wood thing.

the sink, the dishwasher and the stovetop will go into this and leave plenty of counter space for rolling out cookies and such.

fitting in the panels. husband actually chose to use MDF for a very smooth surface, as we're going to have them painted with whimsical chicken art by an artist friend.

and the painting of the chickens has begun. we had a lot of fun, laughing and talking and listening to music. people should really consider having custom art done in their homes more often. our friend loves the project and we love having something very special. and it might not be as expensive as you might think.

here's where it stood at the end of the first day of work. it will probably take a couple of weeks to be finalized, but this is an ongoing project and we're not in a hurry.

as for me, i'm writing quotes and drawing little doodles on the baseboards that line the room. husband wanted to have those in place before he does the final coat on the floor. he's also given the floor a treatment of filler, as there were many little bitty holes showing up in the floor, despite 5 coats of epoxy paint, so that's why it looks dusty all of a sudden.

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rem koolhaas' cool thoughts on architecture

and more specifically the hermitage in st. petersburg.

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jill lepore takes down disruptive innovation.

it's so good to see someone taking on trendy business theories 

(tho' whether it's still trendy after 20 years is debatable).

and clay christensen, originator of the innovator's dilemma, answers back

(with a bit of the wizard of oz's "don't look at the man behind the curtain" air about him).

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and now on a lighter note...this cute little video is clever and spot-on.
(if websites started dating.)

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overheard at whole foods is my current favorite FB page.

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have you seen the little post i wrote over at #stuckinplastic?

progress on the kitchen project

it's been a long time since i showed you any progress on our kitchen-to-be. we've had a real bricklayer here for the past two days and now it seems like there's really been a lot of progress, so i had to share some snaps. this is one of those interminable projects because we do it as we have money for it and husband is doing much of it himself (all those beautiful wood beams you see are him). but it feels like things are finally moving in the right direction. there's heat in the floor, so husband has worked faithfully all winter and has done a beautiful job with the wood. tho' he bricked up a bit in our brewery, he's not really a bricklayer, so we hired one in. it only took him two days to brick the whole thing and man does it look great! it's looking less and less like a pig stall and more and more like a home. and husband is pleased because he says it's starting to match the picture of it he has in his head.

the brewery

i've not shared any house progress photos in ages. mostly because things happen so slowly and incrementally around here that it never feels like there's anything significant to share. but that changed recently.

husband recently his old workshop space (and a space that was a garage with the previous owners) into what he calls the brewery. it's a room dedicated to big, messy jobs, like pressing apples for cider, spinning honey out of their frames, and eventually yes, even making beer.

he painted the walls and ceiling white and the floor grey. and i can tell you that paint makes a huge difference. to divide the space up a little bit, he built a little brick wall (to practice his brick-laying skills for the bigger job in the kitchen). he also built several shelves - mostly to house the beekeeping supplies - frames, boxes, wax, even buckets of honey.

we got this old scale at a flea market ages ago and it really works and is quite useful when you want to weigh how much honey you harvested.

an old cupboard that was one of the first things we bought together way back when houses our flag collection down at the far end. we inherited the flags from husband's father, who was crazy about flags, especially the nordic ones.

the wood-burning stove isn't hooked up yet, but it will be and then i intend to spend lots of time out there, as it's much nicer than the house! i love the brick pedestal husband built for the stove. there to the left, there will be a sink, as a brewery needs a water source. we're scouring the markets for the right sink and haven't found it yet. but we will.

husband made a new top for an old green table that was here (one of the few good things), so there's a nice work table next to the honey centrifuge.

that little green bench was in sabin's room until yesterday. i'm not sure it's going to stay there, but it's always good to have another surface.

on the right is the cider press husband made. he's making modifications to it after this year's cider pressing, so it's not intact at the moment (if you're looking at it, wondering how on earth you can press cider in that). i love how he has no qualms about taking apart something he made and remaking it. i could really learn something from that. down at the end, more shelves with the beekeeping supplies on them.

my favorite feature is the meaningful stones he bricked into the wall. the three bricks are from a favorite beach in sweden. the second stone from the left is from crazy horse monument in south dakota. the heart and the stone with the eye are both from møn's klint, one of our favorite places in denmark.

i want to grab my book and a cup of coffee and go relax out there right now.

when rivers of ideas begin to flow

here's what happened with my green felted stone - in fact, in this shot, it's not even dry yet.  if you recall, i used lisa's stone felting tutorial. and i fussed about worried about over-thought pondered how to make it my own. with a little viking helleristning (petroglyph), i think i managed it. i'm not done with this idea yet.

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i have spent a couple of very energizing days with a friend with whom i feel very much in synch. so many ideas surfaced and best of all, it feels like there is action and impetus behind the ideas, so some of them may even materialize. i had the strangest feeling after we met last friday (what i thought would be a 2-hour meeting turned into 5 because we were so crazy in flow)...it felt like a dam had been released inside me and all of the pent-up ideas and thoughts i had had in recent months just began to surface and tho' they were coming quickly, it feels like it's at a pace where i can grab and examine them. some of them had been there for awhile, but some were entirely new. it was positively elating. it's odd how you can get all blocked and not even realize it until you're not blocked anymore.

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things i'm pondering:

what it might mean to be a social artist

community gardens.

art walls.

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i think my keyboard may be menopausal - the period is getting pretty unpredictable.

sorry. bad joke. couldn't help myself.

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what's your type?

find out here.

apparently i'm architype van doesburg (a brutally fair typeface).

play the game, if only to hear the narrator's awesome accent.

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the p boards on pinterest: patchwork. peacocks. personal style. photos that make me think.

future kitchen progress

it seemed like time for a little kitchen project update. when i first showed this to you back in march, it looked pretty impossible that it would ever be cleared of all of the old cement flooring, pig bones and 2800+ buckets (husband didn't count, but he calculated) of dirt. but this weekend, husband hauled out the last bucketful and it's now ready for the next stage - which is fixing the foundation and preparing the flooring (structure, insulation, heat elements, pouring of cement).

march 18

march 25

april 1

april 8

april 9

april 15

april 15

i find it quite unreal that husband did all of this by hand and mostly by himself. i kept him supplied in coffee, various cakes and lunches. it was impossible to get a machine in any of the openings to do it with a small digging machine, so it had to be done completely by hand. pretty amazing, don't you think?

where all that dirt and rubble went.

husband hauled trailerload after trailerload down to our lake, where he built a little road (not shown) and this small peninsula, from which we'll build a little dock to tie up our little boat and generally from which to enjoy the lake.

project pizza oven

and because he can never stop, on sunday, he worked all day on bricking up the pizza oven and foundation for a little smokehouse so that when we get our pigs and it's time to make sausages and bacon, we'll be able to pop them in there to smoke.

project smokehouse

i hope also to be able to use the smokehouse, without smoke, to dehydrate fruit, veggies and herbs.

under the old oak tree

this is placed out the door of the new kitchen and will eventually be a large patio area. there will also be a small sauna. that's something we wanted at the old house, but didn't get to because we decided to move. the pizza oven is also a long-desired feature and it's nice to see it starting to happen. just out of this shot on the lefthand side is a gorgeous old, majestic oak tree. it's gonna be great!

pinspiration no. 4 - in progress

lest you think i forgot...this is my pinspiration no. 4 work in progress. i picked up this sweet little easter-themed cross-stitch in a second-hand store last week and i'm making something quite different (for me) from it. it took some daring to cut into the fine, even work, but at last i did it. i'm making something to decorate that stick that i hung on the wall in the living room the other day.

i didn't get it finished due to the excitement of the arrival of the new baby chick - i had to run around getting a heat lamp and special baby chick food, plus make a spot for her (him?) and her (his?) mama separate from the other chickens, so they don't hurt the little sweetie (after reading on the all-knowing interwebz that that might happen). but i will show you more tomorrow. it is rather fitting, in light of being distracted by a chicken that this little cross-stitch is of chickens, don't you think?

believe it or not...

this is going to be my new kitchen.  husband began digging it out and tearing down the old in earnest mid-February. in order to have a proper height to the ceiling, we have to dig down more than a half a meter. and by we, i mean husband.

sabin was allowed to spray paint a bit of graffiti on one wall. it doesn't matter much, as everything has to go. the graffiti says "far is cool, and mom is too." she's not a teenager quite yet.

this was part of the barn and we've heard tales from the neighbors that those who lived here before kept a boar in here. when we moved in, we could see that they'd had chickens inside. we've just had things stored here. with some straw bales and a smoke machine, its natural cobwebs made for a wonderfully spooky room for a halloween party.

the bearing beams in the room are metal and were salvaged from a little old railway track that once ran down to our lake, from back when they were digging out peat for fuel. it's really the only nice historical detail in the room. otherwise, husband is running into a wide variety of materials - apparently whatever they could scrounge to cobble things together over the years.

he found a lot of perfect round paving stones when he dug down about 40cm, so it once had a nice cobble floor (you can see a few of those in the foreground on this shot). he's saved them, so we can reuse them somewhere - perhaps in the patio area that will be outside this room when it's finished.

husband's working on the foundation for a new pantry - that's what all this nice brickwork is for. he's never really bricked before, but this is good practice and since he's such a perfectionist, it looks pretty awesome.

he wants to see the new pantry go in, because he says he needs to see some progress. i have to admit that i will be happy to see some as well.

the plan is for this to be a rather industrial kitchen - i've called it the curry kitchen in my head all the way along - as in the kitchen where you make your curries, to keep the rest of the house from smelling like curry all the time. but ultimately, it will be for canning and processing juice and even butchering the odd hog or perhaps even sheep. we'll tile with white subway tiles, have a stainless steel sink and countertop and everything will be easily hosed down and rinsed. i'd like it to be ready to have approved as a restaurant kitchen if we decide to go the bed & breakfast/café route someday.

it is going to be our real kitchen for some years - and as soon as it's in, i can get rid of the horrible pink one and we can tear down that part of the house. eventually, we will build an addition that will have a big new kitchen, heated by and built around an Aga. but this will be pretty good in the meantime. there will be room for a big island and for our kitchen table, so i'm certain it will become our favorite room in the house.

husband wanted me to include a closeup shot of his pretty brickwork. so please praise him! i will keep you posted on how it's going. as you can see, it's a rather big undertaking. and we've only found a few pig bones (at least i hope that's what they were) along the way.