finally, the linen closet

with the tools living in their proper home (the garage), we could tackle the linen closet and the smells within. here's what the hall looked like when we started:


we're not sure why there was a deadbolt on the linen closet, but we took care of that along with re-installing mortise hardware (we even found a glass knob set hiding in the closet that matches the rest of the knobs in the house!). here's the stinky domain:



when we pulled out the old shelves, we realized that they were the source of the stink. while we could have just replaced these shelves to eradicate the stink, we were already set to turn it into a cedar closet, so we proceeded. here's after the cedar was installed with the new shelves, and the hall has been painted:



back to the closet door, we first made a hole plug to start the deadbolt fill:



filling the hole left from the new-school cylinder handle was trickier. this was the original door so digging out the filler used to fill the old mortise set wasn't a problem, but the hole was bored right where the mortise would have to live. to get around this, we made another hole plug, then attched the plug to a 2x4 and ran the plug through a table saw to cleanly remove material so the mortise would fit partially inside of the hole plug:



and here it is installed:



and here's the hallway with the refinished door installed (and with lori's lovely finish):



and a close-up of the linen closet finish:



here's an overall view of the completed hallway with four of lori's six doors visible:

tackling the garage

for the past two years we've stored tools in the linen closet mostly because the linen closet smelled weird. no, the linen closet didn't smell weird due to the tools; the smell came before the tools though probably the tools didn't improve the odor. lori was approaching her limit living without a linen closet so another home for the tools had to be found -- the garage. but first, the garage had to be reorganized.

here's one side before we started. the shelves were sagging, the cabinet was falling apart, and our firewood was stacked on the floor of the garage:



to remedy the shortcomings, we installed new heavy-duty shelves, bought a bike rack to hold jason's bike, bought a log-holder to store the wood, and even included storage up high for spare construction supplies:



the garage came with a significant amount of storage already built, but we weren't using it that effectively. construction supplies were haphazardly leaning about and the shelves were disorganized:



once the paint and construction supplies were organized we were able to more effectively use the space we have, and we bought hooks to hang many of our garden tools:



the last section of the garage was identified as jason's future workbench area. there's only one word to describe the original state or this area - gross:



the final product made jason very excited. he built a work bench, got a tool rollaway, and installed peg board, a small cabinet, and an overhead work light:



the workbench surface was made from cheap solid oak flooring planks - it turned out pretty well:

another room done

we installed the baseboards and then had to hunt around to find quarter round molding in white oak to go around the curio cabinets. now that everything is installed, we can finally call the dining room done.

see, baseboards:



looking towards the french doors to the front patio:



and one of the finishing touches (we were so happy to finally be rid of the unsightly gap we lived with for almost a year):

a long overdue project

we hoped to refinish both the living and dining room floors before we moved in to get rid of the horrid finish called pickle. unfortunately, we were only able to accomplish the living room so we've been living with mismatched floors for almost two years. the time finally came to complete the dining room. here's the original pickle:



here's a close-up shot of the original pickle in the dining room next to the refinished living room floors:



and here's the completed floors (baseboards pending):

kitchen epilogue

we rushed to tie up loose ends before thanksgiving, only to wind up with food poisoning forcing us to cancel our big debut. after the holidays we lounged around and enjoyed the kitchen and forgot all about blogging. now we're back (for a few posts anyway) and here are some pictures to close out kitchen-related posts.

here's the lounge with the light we ordered (and managed to install before thanksgiving):



and here are some shots of the final kitchen without tools and construction refuse: