While we wait for the plumbing and venting to be finished  we have moved on to the old kitchen.

After ripping off the bead-board and drywall from the outside wall we pulled all the old insulation out and put Roxsul in.    There was no insulation in the bottom half of the wall.  Since the bottom was not touched the only stuff there was what could be pushed behind the plaster walls.  No wonder it was so cold in that room.

We still chose Roxsul over spray insulation.  In our opinion if you ever have to go back and fix plumbing or electrical having  spray insulation will be a nightmare.  Besides the cost of the product makes us chose a product we can install ourselves.

It is still amazing to see the building in its original hand hewn log state.  Sometimes we think it would be nice to leave a wall exposed but that will not be possible.

Now that we have the room partly done we are moving on to the bathroom upstairs and leaving the old kitchen the way it is for now.

The walls were wet here like the ones in the dining room.

Just stuffed it down as far as they could.

Such messy work.

They added to the original house to make the ceiling higher while adding the second floor.

E/B

We are in the middle of a few projects right now.  This post is about the dining room which will take us some time to finish.  But at least we have started.

We needed to take the ceiling down for a few reasons.

One, which Mike Holmes would hate, is that when they plumed the bathroom upstairs they cut through the joists.  One had only 3" of joist left.  So to properly repair these we had to take some of the ceiling down then realized it all had to go because it was drywall put on lathe and trying to match the depth when we re-drywalled the ceiling would be very hard.  So ceiling down.
This ceiling was so poorly screwed to the joists a 4 by 12 foot sheet fell on us and the ladders.  No one hurt.
After much research Brian sistered 2by8s to the cut joists and we should be okay.

Two we are going to have to move the pipes in order to avoid cutting into joists again.  This gives us the opportunity to completely redo the bath upstairs with very little trouble when it comes to re-plumbing since we have great access to the space.

Third there are no vents in the upstairs of the old house.  It was heated by convection or air rising through square vents in the floor.  We need to change that and again having this kind of access is going to make that easier.

We had already removed some of the ceiling last year.

The old vent.

The old stove vent.

It was fun taking the lathe down.

Never liked safety glassess and masks because my glasses always fog up.

The sistered joists and the plumbing will move so we can repair the rest.





E/B

Here is the almost finished kitchen.  As always there is something that will have to be done later.

In this case when we are finished the island will be either a green or yellow colour.  Brian will build new old looking doors for them.  There will be lots of bead board around the kitchen as well.

It was just nice to get the kitchen to the point where we knew how it would look and put things away.  We were very surprised at how big the kitchen looks even with an island that is longer than the plastic shelves were.  It must be because everything is now lower.

With such a nice shiny counter we do see every speck of dust when the sun is shining in.  I'm still okay with that.

Nice to have a sink.

We still need to finish around the sink but that is a custom build.

When these are antique looking it will be beautiful.

The back wall where the china cabinets are will also be built in .  It will be a bar and display units with bead board backing.

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The coffee/breakfast centre so there is nothing much on the island

The microwave needs a shelf .

E/B

The counter tops!   Always an adventure when building a house.

We could not decide on a counter top so went looking at our options.  Quartz is a popular option right now since corrian seems to be out of style.   Granite has both good reviews and bad ones some people just don't like it.  It now has a 25 year seal on it.

Off to our local building store to get a quote and after picking out something I could live with but was indifferent to we asked for a quote for this Quartz counter.  Our three pieces add up to 92 square feet of product.  The quote came back at 12,000. dollars.  Yikes, I didn't really even like it that much.

When we went to order kitchen taps the ladies there told us about Canyon Granite so off we go to see what they have.  I found some slabs in the yard I loved and Jim made us a deal that was amazing. Less that half the cost of quartz.

They book you for a week, come out on Monday to template and it was installed on Thursday.  Took them half a day with just two guys.

Love it!!!

The pantry at the end of the counter is the china cupboard.

Everything was so well levelled before hand install was a breeze.

One seam in the whole kitchen .

16 feet of bliss.

E/B

All the plastic shelves are long gone and so is the laundry tub sink.

It has been so easy putting these up Ikea has certainly streamlined the process.  Still the sink is the hardest part of the build.  It is a very large three sink copper sink.  It is very heavy and 42 inches long.  I am looking forward to using it.

Ready for cupboards.

Yes wine goes along with the build.

This makes me happy.

It is important to sort beforehand.

The very large island which is 16 feet long.

See how nice the back corner looks.

The old dish pantry has been moved to the end of the island.

Makes the lights look better too.

Plywood counter until we decide what we want.

Yes I have a working dishwasher.  

Have not had a dishwasher since 2012.


E/B

So much to catch up on.  We had decided to get the kitchen at least partially done and started just before Christmas so it would be ready for the holiday.

Because Brian will build doors for the cabinets later on we decided on the cheapest Ikea door we could get so we would not feel bad when we get rid of them later.  It took a few weeks to get the order from Ikea and once we got started the cabinets were so easy to put together.  We have done these before so we knew what to expect.  One thing we found helpful with such a lot of boxes stacked in the garage was to mark the cabinet size on the outside of the box facing us so it was easy to boxes out of the piles. Even with them sorted it made the job faster.

Once the corner was fixed we got right to installing and had it mostly done in a week.  Levelling the older corner was the hardest part.  I must admit the sink was also a problem since there are three drains it was hard to plum and carry around.  It is lovely though.

Not easy to level hand hewn logs.

Had to rejig the electrical one we had the cupboards in.

Yuk

Will be glad to see this gone.

I have been using laundry tubs for so long.

This is so hard to keep clean.

E/B