Live, from the last day of summer!

Hello Mars fans! I am here, guest blogger #1, to serve you, loyal readers. I am here at the behest of our mutual friend Bob the Builder, a.k.a Doozer, a.k.a. Oscar the Grouch, who has asked me to keep you well informed of all the goings on here on Mars while she is back east.

The story of this week was waiting. Waiting and waiting around.

Tuesday I waited around for 3 folks we hired for a couple hours to carry heavy things. We actually couldn't figure any better way to get the heaviest stove ever created up into the house.

2 of 3 men showed up so I ended up gloving up and helping lug that gigantic beast up our stairs and into the house. It was touch & go for a bit, but we got it in. Here it is - stripped of anything we could get out or off of it to make it lighter. We'll soon move it back and into that left corner, but we needed access for the repairs and to move the wall mounted heat shield up a wee bit.

On Wednesday I waited around for a man that does rebuilding and repair of stoves like this. I got to work filling the cabinet that had been moved into the kitchen as well. I don't know where everything's gonna go while we build and find the rest of the furniture and I've started rethinking the need to keep things like the electric roasting pan I've used twice in the last 10 years.

The most lovely young man from Apple Stoves finally made it out here at 2 p.m. 6 hours of repair later....fully functional 1920s Occidental stove! Here's the flame to prove it and water boiling for my first cup of tea from this baby:

 

Thursday was all about waiting for Mr. Bunkport. But waiting was worth it, as he came out and finished up some little tasks that were lingering and with those loose ends tied up, things feel a little more wrapped up around here. 

Friday I got up with the intention of taking care of the floor, but the stove needed tending. It needed to have the ashes of ages cleaned out of it and a decent cleaning. Two and a half hours later, here it is shiny and clean and probably looking about exactly the same as it did before from your vantage point. But trust me, she's shining now!

First up, granola in the oven:

Lady Ms. Pickles was, as usual, totally impressed:

Other little improvements this week included hanging the rack for the pots & pans. Of course this couldn't be easy. Hung level, it looked TOTALLY crooked because everything is wonky in here. So I had to try to balance between level and lookin crazy. I think it's fine.

Also time to change out the photos in Gallery Mars. A batch of new squares and shots from Japan went up (along with this lovely late afternoon shadow):

 

Lastly, this morning I scrubbed the holy hell outta the kitchen floor. 

It's been weeks of grime and people coming in and out and stuff moved all over the house. I was so happy to get on my hands and knees and scrub it all away. Now that it's clean, I need to seal the grout later this week. Back to a no shoes house, back to clean feet on a clean floor. And yes, it is officially the last day of my summer. Tomorrow I return to work and gear up for another school year. That means it's time to look forward to actual summer weather in San Francisco. Here's some words that would never come from your regularly scheduled blogger: Bring on the heat!

Grout, paint, & trim

We came home from our relaxing vacation to find this wonderful sight:

The vent hood! Look, it's a thing of beauty:

There has never been a more exciting machine in this house. Except for Mars Master Tile Setter, AJ:

The grout came out very well: 

Still weird looking, but well installed.

After we finished the tile, we hung a heat shield for the new (old) stove, to protect the wall:

And then finished painting the walls:

We decided to bring the red walls on that side of the kitchen down to two stripes and the inside of the window as an experiment. Might do the cabinet doors red, too. We'll see.

The rails we'll hang the pots and pans on will probably go to the left of the window. Maybe with shelves, as well. We're waiting to get the new (old) stove in there, to see how it will all look together. We'll figure out what to put to the right of the sink in a couple weeks, as well -- we know that, whatever it is, it has to be tall enough for the dish drain to sit on top of, but we're not sure exactly what we want to do there. (The dish drain is currently sitting on a piece of plywood over the right half of the sink -- I'm not sure how easy it is to tell what's going on there in the photo.) It's nice to be able to sit back, live with the room for a while, and take our time with a choice, versus having to rush a decision because Mr. Bunkport is at the house and waiting for an answer.

Last job of the weekend was installing trim to finish off the walls:

Funny what an improvement something as simple as trim makes.

Next up: burly men will come on Tuesday to bring the new (old) stove and china cabinet up from the garage, and move the old (old) stove down to the garage. Once upon a time, we would have tried harder to haul all of this up and down ourselves, and probably would have attempted to rope our generous friends into the adventure, but we decided to face facts: we and all our friends are hitting or have already hit forty, and while we're all pretty fit, none of us is particularly beefy. Hey, how about we hire a couple guys and skip the sore backs this week?

Then, on Wednesday, a guy is scheduled to come install the new (old) stove.. I will be out of town that exciting day, sadly, but we may get lucky and have a guest post from Mars Master Appliance Inspector AJ.

After I get back from my trip, we'll move on to finishing touches like the rails and shelves. I'm also going to try my hand at building some furniture for the kitchen, including something that will incorporate this interesting little chest of drawers that AJ picked up on the sidewalk:

Setting tile

This week, the big news is that we set the tile.

Master Tile Cutter AJ ran the Mars wet saw operation:

All told, she cut and trimmed about 40 tiles over the course of three days. They came out beautifully!

Yesterday was the big day. We mixed up the thinset (the mortar that sticks the tiles down) and laid everything out:

Here is the north side (china cabinet side), all set and getting itself ready for a light gray grout:

That side was easy. Weird looking because of the tile mismatch, but easy. The furniture will hide some of the weirdness.

The south side (sink side) was a lot trickier because of the cramped space and because we were using a mix of tiles (with different thicknesses) left over from The Big Project of 2013-2014. I always like to reuse materials instead of buying new, but the main reason we wanted to reuse these tiles is the manufacturer has discontinued them, and we wanted to try to avoid a mismatch in the area next to the sink that won't have any furniture over it.

We ended up having to use two of the new tiles, as well, but the section next to the sink did get all old tile, so hopefully it won't look too weird in the end. The hardest part was getting the consistency of the thinset right. I think I made it too wet -- it caused us some headaches, but we were still able to successfully get it built up enough in the right places to get the thin tiles level with the thick tiles. Big thanks to The Keeper of The Standards, AJ, who wouldn't let me get away with "come on, it's good enough" as I got more and more annoyed with the thinset (& more and more covered in it -- what a mess).

Here is the fully set back corner:

Since this floor is completely oddball anyway, rather than try to get the weird space around the gas line perfect, we added these details:

The A & O are our initials (AJ calls me Oscar sometimes because I'm grouchy).

The spot on the other side of the stove:

What was really challenging was dealing with areas like this, where the existing tile had been cut to fit in around the old cabinets. We just tried to go with it as best as we could.

We also tiled next to the sink:

We're not totally sure what we're going to put/build right there, so we thought it was best to tile it to give ourselves more options.

So, as expected, the floor looks crazy. But I think we actually did a good job with the installation. Despite setting ourselves a completely ridiculous challenge for our first time out -- fitting three different types of tiles, with three different thicknesses, into holes in a floor that had been set around built-in cabinets -- in most places the grout lines are even and the tile is level, so we're actually pretty happy with it. Have you ever met someone with an ugly baby? Everyone knows that baby is ugly, but her parents love her, so it all works out. This is maybe a little like that.

We were hoping to grout today, but the thinset needs until the afternoon to cure, and we're leaving at noon for a vacation a couple hours north of here. So the grout will have to wait until we're back next weekend. So close to being finished with this big milestone!

Another milestone that's just around the corner: while we're gone, Mr. Bunkport is going to come cut a hole in our roof and install the vent hood. Once that's done, we can have the stove installed, finish the walls, & get back to normal.

Goodbye sink! Hello sink!

Last week, we finally got rid of the old sink, and installed the new one!

Thursday night, we disconnected the plumbing:

And then started smashing up the cabinet:

Because of the plumbing and vents, we had to remove the cabinet piece by piece:

"Not this again. Come on, you guys."

It was a tough one to get out, but eventually we succeeded:

On Friday, Mr. Bunkport came & put new plywood subfloors in:

As well as concrete board over the plywood, to prepare for the tile. Here's AJ, wielding a screw gun like a pro:

Mr. Bunkport used sleepers under the plywood to level the worst-sloped parts, and used a think layer of self-leveling concrete to deal with the less-sloped parts:

He wrote his name in the concrete for fun:

And AJ signed for us:

When we disconnected the plumbing the night before, we discovered that the stop valve on the wall for the hot water was leaking, so he helped us with that, as well:

Even though these are standard valves, inexplicably, it took two trips to two different hardware stores to get the right ones.  And we could only find one, so we had to go with the old, mostly-working-but-will-go-before-too-long one for the cold side for now.

That hole in the middle of the wall is where the vent was when we moved in. It wasn't to code, so Mr. Bunkport had the plumber put in new ones during The Big Project of 2013-2014. We couldn't go back out through the same wall because it is too close to the property line, so they had to snake through the wall and up through the roof. That's why those are like that.

On Saturday, Mr. Bunkport came back to finish up the floor.

Goodbye mice!

When he left, we set to work installing the new sink. First, a patch for this part of the wall that wasn't able to get drywalled during The Big Project of 2013-2014 because the cabinet was there:

Next, building a base for the sink. Mr. Bunkport said we would have more luck doing this, and then attaching a pine or poplar toe kick, than with the plastic Ikea cabinet legs and toe kick, so off we went.

Again, AJ with the screw gun:

Done!

Oh wait, why did I say 30 inches? The cabinet is 36 inches.

Meanwhile...

Eventually, we got the box built to the right size, and the cabinet mounted. Next, we needed to disconnect the vents and drill holes into the side of the cabinet to run them through.

Success!

Finally, we maneuvered the hundred-pound sink on top of the cabinet.

Yes, the cabinet is securely fastened to both the box (which is itself screwed into the studs) and the studs in the wall.

Here is AJ, admiring our work (and resting):

And then in went the faucet:

And in went the new drain:

We couldn't get the supply lines on the faucet hooked up over the weekend, because, of course, they were just a few inches short of the stop valves. It took three trips to two hardware stores to find the right extensions.

"What's all the fuss about? Who needs running water?"

While AJ was running back and forth to hardware stores, I started priming walls:

Sink! Running water! Success!

Lastly, we started concocting a scheme to integrate the three different types of tile we're going to be laying (two types leftover from The Big Project of 2013-2014, and one new type). This is going to be interesting!