Adventures at The Bunny Manse

We planned for months to work on the kitchen in March. Welp. We went ahead and did it. Nights, weekends, after I finished my paid work, while the girls were napping, while they watched their 4pm tv, while they played in the yard, stolen hours to create a whole.   For the past 6-7 years of living in the house, this is what our kitchen wall looked like. Not bad, not amazing.  And wait until you open the door to the other side.  March I say WE but Harris did all of this. He took what was a messy and dangerous and dark/cluttered cramped section of the house that used to be a porch and utility room and turned it into our breakfast nook/solarium/kitchen annex/glorybeautiful light filled space. We don't even have to turn the lights on most days. The first part of the project focused on deconstructing the pieces/rooms and salvaging almost all of the wood to be used in portions of the project or in other on-going projects. If I had let him demo it he woul...

There are often little details in old houses that go unnoticed. These never make it into new houses because it costs money to do these things and 'no one is going to see it anyway'.  For example, this is the inside header, trim, and casing on the doorway of a small closet off the kitchen. You only see it when standing inside the closet which is almost impossible to do. And yet, when building the house, they wanted it to be beautiful and consistent throughout. One of the reasons I love old houses.  We used this small closet as a pantry since we moved in. Some crappy plastic shelves and viola! all of our dry good storage could be dumped in here. It was fine.  However, with the advent of the pantry, we decided to move the washer and dryer here and make the former laundry area the temporary cat home. It's fine.  So here's the empty space with the gas, water, and vents all hooked up, and then as Harris started stacking and hooking up the machines. Luckily...

This Sunday we took a day trip to Charlotte but really IKEA. While browsing the 'scratch n dent' as-is section for linens, Harris pointed out a fridge. Yeah, ok, so what, I'm in a bin. No says he. That's the fridge we were looking at upstairs. And it's half off making it $900. It's a side by side counter depth fridge with ice and water in the door. We need to buy it. So I go stand by it to claim it - three other people realized what it was while we were chatting about it. Then ask about the warranty stuff - 4.5 years from manufacturer and yes they will deliver it to your house for $100. Why in the world do we need a new fridge? Because the one we bought in 2013 has been a PITA. Currently the ice maker is broken (again) and will cost over $500 for us to fix. So we bought the fridge and sold the other one as is on CL costing us less than the repair cost of the old fridge that has had multiple problems.

 I have this problem with kitchens. If it's in a cabinet I either forget that I own one (or several...) or cannot find it when I need it. I also often get confused as to which cabinets hold which items, so go randomly opening doors to find things like cups.   Our kitchen window and door placement did not leave many options for upper cabinets (the kind that normally have glass doors) so Harris agreed to make me some floating shelves.   My requirement: They not be cabinets. His requirements: TheyNOT look cluttered, be oversized, be too high, or be made of metal.   I came across an idea on This Old House for floating shelves and Harris improved upon the method. Over the course of the past couple of weeks we've measured, planned, and then forgot to finish the project. That happens when pipes break.   My smiling proud bearded man.     These are the metal screw rods drilled into the studs at some Harris determined angle. ...

Yesterday we woke up to the pouring rain and decided to go to the Pottery Barn outlet in Gafney. We had some free money to spend there and wanted to use it toward a rug.  We looked through rugs for what seemed like hours, almost rationalizing ourselves into a huge purchase of a gorgeous rug that was WAY TOO EXPENSIVE. We ended up selecting this one in a 8x10 version, paying about $200 for it after our discount.  The other very beautiful rug would have cost more than 3 of these.  So this now lives in our living room and is being positioned, vaccumed, and adored by Harris and the cats. On the way back, we took a bunch of remnants back to Ikea. Life lesson - do not buy handles or knobs at Ikea...we never use them/always take them back. There we picked up a scrap piece of wood from the As-Is section that Harris will turn into at least two floating shelves for the kitchen. We also got pot holders because, well, we had zero pot holders and some candles for the house. A...

Harris is putting knobs on the cabinets today and organizing pots, pans, cups, plates and all that in our amazingly huge space. We picked these out from Anthropologie this weekend. They work perfectly with the cabinets and counters and really pull everything together. Harris also made a huge rack to hold spices, tea, and other small things using the doorway that will go away one day and the remnants of the header boards from downstairs. What's that, yeah, Harris installed headers in almost all of the places they are needed downstairs. This weekend I both went to the dump and metal yard to get the yard cleaned up a bit. Harris and Madeline will most likely to going to the metal yard today to get rid of some more appliances that are taking up space in the house. I've been cleaning and buying presents for Christmas. Just finished Madeline's stocking - she'll be getting lippies and nail polish in her stocking as well as some candy. If I could find blood o...

Harris installed a ceiling fan in the bedroom this weekend which is amazing awesome.  The upstairs is hot - we have only indirect heat up there and you can walk around in short sleves. We're going to have the HVAC people come back out and experience this so they can modify their HVAC quote.  What they were proposing before was incredibly oversized considering the heat retention in the house. Anyway, heat rises, so our lovely warm morning heater was pushing all this lovely air up to the ceiling. The fan pulls it back down making the room feel centrally heated. It's amazing.     This morning our kitchen looked like this     And now, it looks like this....     Remaining for the kitchen   1. Tile or otherwise fix the chimney so it's pretty. 2. Install kitchen sink faucet 3. Install knobs and pulls for doors and drawers. 4. Install trim around windows 5. backsplash? Back...

3CM EXODUS WHITE GRANITE Kitchen w/ Back Splash - L-Shaped Section Left of FSStove 69x25 and 37x25, Right of FSStove 37x25 and 70x25, Farm Sink Area 140x25, (1) Farm Sink Treatment, CPSink, 4" Splash, Half Bullnose Edge... Template & Install Incl. Deposit paid to Custom Stone & Marble! Template scheduled and installation on the calendar. We're going to have countertops by Christmas!

The kitchen a week after moving in... Harris has been putting the IKEA cabinets together at night and whenever he has free time.   Our new fridge is awesome and fits the space nicely! I even used the fancy ikea microwave with it's non-standard control system. Ikea cabinets GE, Kenmore, Bosch, IKEA appliances Countertops TBD Obvious things we need to do 1. Get counters. 2. Close those holes in the chimney. 3. Replace the glass in the windows- the panes are currently paitned. 4. Add trim to the top of the windows 5. Figure out what we're doing with that door into the laundry room. Me thinks... a spice rack? 6. Put handles on the cabinet doors and drawers Not so obvious stuff left to do 1. Find a way to insulate 2. Install the range hood 3. Add a place to eat for the duration that is not the couch.

Plans change: 1. Bought stove because we can't get counters templated without. 2. Bought fridge because the other one started leaking. 3. Let Jazz inside because damnit it's cold out there and he's such a skinny little mouser.   He spends most of his time curled up on the Freedom isn't Free blanket. We're in, but we're still fixing things, moving things, and some things are unpacked and others are not. There is a serious lack of insulation in the house that we knew about, but now have to figure out how to deal with for the next couple of months. oh, and it might snow tonight. Up until this point everything with The Bunny Manse has been much easier than we expected. From Friday until today if it could go wrong it has gone wrong.  

so very much to get done this week. The legs did not arrive with our cabinets. This is incredibly frustrating. I spent an hour on hold on Halloween to get them, but instead, I got an email asking for my credit card number two days later. I still don't have my damn cabinet legs. IKEA I AM SCOWLING AT YOU. This delays : sink installation, cabinet finishing, countertop templating, moving, using the kitchen, etc, etc, etc.  Very much not happy about this. We have appliances that need to be installed so we can use them, but of course, see above. We have to clean. A lot. We need to put the wood window trim back up in the rooms we're going to be living in. We really need to do this like, now... Hook up the rest of the heaters because, oh em gee it's cold in there without them. It's all very achieveable stuff that we knew we needed to finish. But now we're all sick so it's like, the end of the damn world to cut a board. Next week will be nice. We'll be m...

  We're cleaning out the storage unit so that currently our stuff is in our apartment, in long term storage, or is at the house. Soon, it will be with us or long term storage.   Madeline's room will be used to store things from the apartment, once we're moving things up there. Bill pulled many nails and swept up in here. Now begins the battle against dust.             this is the bedroom across the hall from Madeline's room. Storage unit is being emptied into this room right now. Surprisingly less in the storage unit than we thought.         Here's our kitchen!         That will soon enough live here. Yes, I know, need to touch up some paint there...         And another gratuitous floor shot!             This will be our bedroom when we move into the house. Madeline calls it th...

  We drove down to Ikea on Saturday to finalize our kitchen order. Alice was awesome, figured out cabinet placement and told Harris what extra to build and how to hack the kitchen. Because of their current promotion, we're getting the side cabinet and the microwave basically for free.  Spend $3500 get 10% off, spend $4500 get 20% off. So if you're already at 3500, anything else you add is free.  Math is fun.     All of this is getting delivered on Saturday, so we should be good to get it installed after the floors are finished.

We have, at most, 21 days to get the house ready for us to live in. To this end.... Thursday : Accent Hardwood did the rough sand in suite and kitchen. Here is Madeline feeling the floor in the suite Laid 70% of new dining room floor. Madeline being a silly monster ballet girl Then David Glick, Rob, and Alvin prepped, primed, and painted the remaining two wood rooms we found downstairs. While wandering around I saw this little bit of graffiti. Wonder who Black Chicken Billy (or perhaps Boy) was/is. Today, Friday Accent Hardwood is there finishing the floor in the dining room. Century Slate is there fixing the flat roof leak and patching the two remaining holes in the slate roof at the ridge. On Saturday Harris will be laying the subfloor in that giant hole in the kitchen while I take Madeline to the Farmer's Market and Cameron's birthday party. While she's at the party, I'm going to sears to pick up the applianc...